Satir Approach, Essay Example

Satir’s warm, empathetic approach, what Satir herself called a process approach, entails “making contact”, first with oneself, then with the family. “Making contact” entails taking stock of one’s own inner resources, and then engaging with the other person(s) through mind, body, and spirit. Satir saw the family as a balanced system: no matter how dysfunctional, every family has some kind of balance or equilibrium. For Satir, what was particularly of interest was what this cost every member of the family. She would find Brenda’s bed-wetting clinically significant, particularly because of the nights of the week on which it occurs most. This, following Satir, is a symptom: it is a price that is being paid for something else in the family system. Satir believed that all individuals had within themselves the resources necessary to be healthy and to grow; the task of the therapist was to help them to access those resources (Becvar & Becvar, 2013, p. 200; Gehart, 2014, pp. 171-172; Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013, p. 259).

Satir was a big believer in communication. Accordingly, she would pay attention to the communication styles used by the family in this case, trying to ascertain the different roles played by each member. Satir believed that under stressful conditions, people adopt one of five communication strategies: the placater, the blamer, the super-reasonable, the irrelevant, and—the only healthy one—the congruent communicator. She would also focus on the primary survival triad of Brenda and her parents, and Brenda’s own triad of body, mind, and feelings. She would probably lead the family in creating a family life fact chronology, helping them map out significant events. All in all, the goal would be to create a nurturing environment in which Brenda would be free to express her needs and how they are not being met. The therapist facilitates this, serving as a resource person. All of this would set the stage for helping Brenda muster the resources to meet her needs, and thus resolve the presenting symptoms (Becvar & Becvar, 2013, pp. 200-203; Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013, pp. 259-260).

References

Becvar, D. S., & Becvar, R. J. (2013). Family therapy: A systemic integration (8^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Gehart, D. (2014). Mastering competencies in family therapy: A practical approach to theory and clinical case documentation (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Goldenberg, I., & Goldenberg, H. (2013). Family therapy: an overview (8^th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooke/Cole Cengage Learning.