Book
Family Therapy in Clinical Practice
Murray Bowen
Bowen's idea of differentiation, staying connected to your family without being governed by it, is the useful frame for most adult family questions.
Tool 38 · Develop yourself
What am I repeating that I never chose?
No diagnosis, no invented childhood explanations, and no requirement to break any cycle. Understanding a pattern is often the whole of the work.
A guided 18 to 22 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
What was this behaviour for, and does it still do that?
Most family patterns were sensible once. The circumstances left. The behaviour stayed.
Nobody describes their family from outside it, including you.
What you'll explore
- 01Occasions
- 02Who did what
- 03Your own part
- 04What it was for
A note from Mark
The trap with family patterns is that everybody who describes one places themselves outside it. The observer is always the reasonable one. In practice the person who left early every Christmas for fifteen years is a full participant in whatever is going on.
The question I find most useful is what the behaviour was for. Almost none of it is madness. Somebody controls information because in 1987 information caused a catastrophe. Somebody keeps the peace because the alternative was unbearable. The circumstances went and the behaviour stayed.
That reframes the whole thing. You are not looking at damage. You are looking at an old solution still running.
Read my full view ↓
And there is no obligation to break anything. Some patterns are irritating rather than harmful, and knowing what is happening at the table is often the entire benefit.
What you'll get
You won't finish with a personality type.You'll leave with answers you can actually test.
01
What recurs
02
Your part in it
03
What it was for
04
Whether it still works
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
See everything included ↓
- 01What you came here with
- 02What recurs
- 03Who does what
- 04Where you sit in it
- 05What is not discussed
- 06Pattern or coincidence
- 07What function it served
- 08Does it still work
- 09The rival reading
- 10What deserves protecting
- 11The credible alternative
- 12What this does not explain
- 13What remains unresolved
- 14Where this goes next
What now?
01 · Save it
What actually recurs, with occasions.
02 · Test it
Watch the next family occasion rather than participating in the usual way.
Explore this further ↓
What I would do
- 01
Count occasions before naming anything a pattern.
- 02
Put yourself inside the pattern. There are no observers in families.
- 03
Ask what the behaviour was for. Most of it was adaptive once.
- 04
Separate inconvenient from harmful. Most of it is the former.
- 05
Allow understanding to be the whole result.
Test it
- 01
Has it happened four times, or twice and once nearly?
- 02
What role do you take without being assigned it?
- 03
What would the person you find most difficult say the pattern is?
The alternative
The expected conclusion is that the family is dysfunctional and the pattern should be broken. Frequently the evidence says something more interesting. A behaviour that looks irrational from outside was often an intelligent response to conditions at the time: money was controlled because there was almost none, peace was kept because the house could not survive another argument. The useful question is not whether it is healthy but whether it still works. Sometimes it does. Sometimes what looks like a pattern turns out to be three separate events that happen to resemble one another.
Think about this
- What has happened more than twice, in the same way.
- Who is always the one who does that.
- Where you sit in it, rather than where you would like to sit.
- What the behaviour was originally for.
- Whether it still does that job.
Take this to Ask Mark
You've done the exercise. Now challenge what came back.
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
Take this to Ask Mark →Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
What does my family need from me
If the pattern is mostly about what you carry
Further thinking
Family Therapy in Clinical Practice
Murray Bowen
Genograms: Assessment and Intervention
Monica McGoldrick
Family Routines and Rituals
Barbara Fiese
Explore the thinking ↓
Book
Genograms: Assessment and Intervention
Monica McGoldrick
The method for mapping a family across generations. It turns vague inherited feeling into something you can look at.
Book
Family Routines and Rituals
Barbara Fiese
Fiese shows how much of family life is carried by small repeated practices rather than by decisions. Useful for seeing what you inherited without choosing.
Book
Strengthening Family Resilience
Froma Walsh
Walsh looks at what families do well under pressure. A necessary counterweight when you are only cataloguing what went wrong.