Bowen: A Look at My Family
Treatment Planning and Traditional Family Therapy
Bowen: A Look at My Family History
My family is an odd mixture of those who have a lineage that goes back to Europe, Italian and Czechoslovakia in the early 1900, and those who we believe come from England and have been in this country since just after it was colonized. I am not close with my family members so I don’t know much about any of them. I had a relationship when I was younger with my grandparents, aunt and uncle on my mom’s side of the family. As for my father’s side, I spent time when I was really young with my grandparents and my aunt, but after about age 6 I never really saw them.
I am an only child and my mother moved us away from the family when I was two. She was a widow by then, as my dad was killed when I was just a little over a year ‘old. I was not brought up around my family so I don’t know much in the way of personal details. I can’t even remember my mother’s uncles or aunts. As for my father’s side of the family, other than his parents, my aunt Carla and her children I never met anyone else. I know the family is huge each of my father’s parents had I believe 10 or 11 siblings and the family, except my grandparents lived somewhere in Texas.

Triangulation
According to the reading triangulation is very important to a family system. It is referred to as the ‘basic building blocks” of a family (Gehart, p.234 para. 6 2010). It is when one individual within a family pulls in another person, or something else to redirect the problem. This can be another person, an issue or even a task. It is an attempt to relieve the tension. This is unfortunately not a productive way to resolve an issue and the more one attempts to alter a relationship in this way the more the relationship is likely to remain the same (Gehart, 2010)
Differentiation of Self
The belief is that a family naturally will be drawn together. That it is part of one’s survival instinct to automatically come together both emotionally and physically to survive. The problems stems when there is an overlap and the individuals in the family become too enmeshed in one another and there is not enough autonomy (Gehart, 2010).
Nuclear Family Emotional System
This is the four basic patterns within a family including one’s attitude and his or her beliefs about a relationship (Gehart, 2010). It is the belief that the emotions push the individual’s apart from one another. It is said that the clinical issues occur when there unusually high tension within a family. That the level of the problem depends on the amount of stress a family unit may have (Gehart, 2010).
These stressful emotional situations can include problems within a marriage. The members of the families will become tenser and the married couple or partners will become more uneasy (Gehart, 2010).
When one spouse is dysfunctional, he or she may act in a manner that increases the pressure on the other spouse and the family. While the spouses attempt to put up with each other to keep the peach one of them just does not fit into the relationship any longer.
The problem will escalate if problems within the family increase. It makes it more difficult for the couple to interact with one another (Gehart, 2010).
There may be a child with a deficiency of some e sort. The parents will put their attention on the child or child’s. . There is also emotional distance. When one refers to this it is in reference to individuals keeping away from one another to reduce stress within the relationship however when this occurs individuals are at a higher risk of becoming secluded (Gehart, 2010).

Family Projection Process
Family projection speaks to maturity or immaturity of a parent and how he or she will project this onto his or her child. For instance, if a parent is afraid of something often their child will be as well and the text speaks of anxiety. If a parent is always nervous about a certain