Imagine the situation: your son or daughter 10-11 years old flatly refuses to go to school. He or she feels bad there: it doesn’t work to establish relations with classmates, teachers “find fault” and “underestimate grades”. Perhaps, reading these lines, you didn’t even have to use imagination: the described hypothetical case is your harsh reality. Having tried different means, you finally decided to contact a psychologist. How can representatives of different approaches help you?
There are so many schools of modern psychology that parents are involuntarily lost: which one to choose? At the Genesis Genesis conference, authoritative specialists of various therapeutic directions told how they will build work with a specific request – the child refuses to go to a prestigious school, citing the fact that his peers are not interesting, and teachers are fools.
Read about the principles of work in the methods of KPT, Gestalt therapy and the Adlerian approach here.
How to work with this case a system family approach?
Says psychologist Alla Chugueva
Even if one person comes to the consultation, a systemic family psychotherapist works with the whole family, and this is the main difference between the approach. First of all, I will request information about the family. Does the child have a dad? Parents live together or they are divorced? Who else is involved in the family system, what is the related environment?
The meeting with the whole family is the best option. But in our realities it is not always possible to collect everyone. Therefore, mom and child can come, dad, mother, child and, finally, one mother is normal, we will hire all these cases.
The main ideas of our approach are as follows: the system is more than the sum of its elements, the system has its own laws by which it lives. When everything is stable in the family, we say that it is in homeostasis, to which any system ultimately seeks. But there is a paradox: at the same time, the system strives for development. And since development occurs through the crisis, changes, the system begins to resist them. It is at this critical moment that people usually turn to a psychologist.
So, mother talks about the problem (we call it “symptom”): poor study or the child’s unwillingness to go to school. We do not study the question of why the child is studying poorly or does not want to go to school (this mother will tell you so). We will ask ourselves: how long this situation lasts. Obviously, poor study is part of family homeostasis. This is the dysfunctional situation that somehow maintains stability in the family. And we need to find out how different family members relate to this problem, to whom and what bonuses, the advantages it promises?
How poor studies of the child participate in the homeostasis of the family? As an option, it helps marital contact and emotional proximity
For example, a triangle could form in the family: the child’s problem forces mom and dad to talk as often as possible. Maybe if there were no problems with study, they would have nothing to discuss. We also study what rules work in this family system, study the boundaries of the family and those myths that go from generation to generation. For example, myths “all excellent students in our family” and “without higher education, life will turn into hell” can strengthen the alarm and prevent parents from taking a child from a prestigious school, where classmates may humiliate him or teachers are not quite adequately behaved.
We look at what stage of development this family is located. Perhaps another child was born, and therefore the boy lacks contact with his mother. Or maybe his senior teenage brother actually behaves: walks school, smokes, drinks, and the younger focuses on the elder and takes an example from him.
Having received quite complete information about https://www.kestaksan.com/bezdepozitnye-bonusy-mostbet-vyigryvajte-zdes/ the family, we can build hypotheses that explain how poor study of the child is involved in the homeostasis of the family. As an option, it helps marital contact and emotional proximity. Or allows all generations of the family to unite and show warmth, attention, care for each other. Or maybe the child signals that he is difficult to worry about the divorce of parents. Or gets the missing attention of the mother after the birth of his sister.
Depending on which of the hypotheses will be the most reliable, we will choose one or another way of working. We use different techniques and methods: emotionally-phocked therapy, work with subcity, communication training, homework, game methods-to change dysfunctional, unhealthy interactions in the family into prosperous and functional.
The most unexpected is that we do not work with the symptom with which the client originally came: “The child is not studying and does not want to go to school”. We will not study the child at all and look for ways to send him to school. We will work with another – with the contact of the spouses, relations of the child and parents, the communication of brothers and sisters, family myths and family history. And already as this family system is healed, the symptom (poor study) will disappear by itself. This is the paradox of systemic family therapy.
How to work with this case intermodal therapy with expressive arts?
Says psychologist Varvara Sidorova
There are a lot of arts of therapy, some were created on the basis of dance, others – painting or music. Our direction, intermodal therapy with expressive arts (Expressive Art-Thraapy), suggests using different types of art and smooth transitions between them in one session, as this corresponds to the nature of the human. After all, all these abilities: to hear, see, move – integrated into us.
I will assume that on the territory of art a client can feel a little more relaxed than at a reception for a psychologist of any other direction. There is no need to match anything here, you don’t need to think. Art is a “hug of space”, it accepts anything, all experiences, all roles.
I do not ask customers to be artists. I ask them only to be attentive and feeling. For example, I will ask you to draw a line. And then I will offer to see the image in this line. Someone will have a snake, someone has a road or rocket soaring up. And then I will offer to come up with a story about this rocket or snake. And then, through the creation of something new, other meanings are born.
Any problem is some deadlock, stagnation. Game and creativity give an opportunity to look at the situation from a different angle, see new prospects. And transfer the experience gained on the territory of art to real life.
So, back to a given occasion. Mom comes without a child, tells how bad he is at school. There are no friends, teachers are fools. What exactly will I do?
First of all, to listen to the client, showing sincere curiosity, empathy, and asking clarifying questions. I’m really interested to know: the boy has no friends at all – or only at school? And before they were? Classmates do not like – that, absolutely everything? Teachers are fools – whose opinion, who thinks so?