Melissa Abello

I am especially passionate about working with individuals experiencing anxiety, sexual addiction, depression, challenges with parenting, and relational conflict. I also work heavily with couples experiencing communication difficulty, affair recovery, sexual addiction, infertility, and parenting challenges. I am deeply passionate about serving others through counseling. My desire is to help people be set free from their pain, so that they can truly live life to the full (John 10:10). I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Human Services from Assumption College in Worcester, MA and a Master’s Degree in Counseling with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy from Stephens College in Columbia, MO. My husband and I serve as ministers and currently reside in Columbia, MO. I am also certified in Good Enough Parenting workshops. I also serve part time with Focus on The Family in Branson, MO doing marital intensive work.

05-09-18 TEAM MEETING – DIDACTIC – SYSTEMS THEORY

by

  • Systems Thinking
  • People do not exist in a vacuum.  When we think about an individual we have to think about the larger family context and community context.
  • Family systems therapy helps individuals resolve their problems in the context of their family units, where many issues are likely to begin. Each family member works together with the others to better understand their group dynamic and how their individual actions affect each other and the family unit as a whole. One of the most important premises of family systems therapy is that what happens to one member of a family happens to everyone in the family.
  • A psychiatrist and theorician, Murray Bowen, MD dedicated his life to the “human cause” and produced a remarkable new theory of human behavior called Family Systems Theory, or Bowen Theory.  Influenced by his wartime experience as a general medical officer in the Army from 1941 – 1945, Dr. Bowen decided to specialize in psychiatry and began his formal training in psychiatry in 1946 at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.  After training, he remained there on staff until 1954.  While a resident physician at Menninger, Bowen realized that Freudian theory, the predominant theory in psychiatry at that time, was based on human subjectivity – what patients said and what their analysts interpreted it to mean.  Bowen came to believe that, despite the complexities and vagaries of human existence, the study of the human behavior could be more objective. From 1954 to 1959, he conducted research on families with a schizophrenic member at the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Maryland.  He continued family research and taught at the Georgetown University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry in Washington, D.C., from 1959 until his death in October of 1990.  Dr. Bowen was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Georgetown University Family Center.  
4 if the 8  Concepts of Bowen Family Systems Theory:
  • 1.) Differentiation
  •  All living Systems have two life forces
  • Life forces: motives them to preserve integrity of both individuality and togetherness
  • Togetherness: preserve relational systems
  • Separateness and preserve self within relationships 
  • 2 Threats to viability provoke anxiety 
  • Symptoms may occur in response to threat:
  • Couple’s symptoms of anxiety may cause a threat to viability: Infidelity, environment situations, (loss of child, moving, losing parents), conflict, emotional distance, differences etc.
  • Symptoms may also be threats:
  • Couples that are symptoms : experiencing emotional distance as a threat to viability might then experience infidelity as means of pushing couples into crisis to deal with viability of individual or of the relationship.  Some will come together if viability of relationship is more important to one or both or they will break apart if viability of individual is important.
  • Threats and systems are often cyclical over the seasons
  •  Our level of differentiation determines weather we respond to or react to threats or systems.  Poor differentiation leads to emotional reactivity.  Some systems handle threats to viability well and others are not.
  • Differentiation: ability to maintain ones own autonomy while allowing other components of system to do the same.  Poor differentiation leads to emotional reactivity, which is inability to distinguish and choose between cognitive and affective reactions in anxiety provoking situations.
  • Thinking system and intellectual system and feeling system and acknowledge what is going on in
  • Primary cause of interpersonal anxiety is inability to comfortably manage emotional distance or closeness or to uphold healthy distance regulation 
  • Distance Regulation (similar to differentiation): ability to be autonomous within the context of a relationship 
  • We are in dialogue with each other in relationships we fluctuate between closeness and distance.  Natural dance that is always happening.
  • Healthy Distance regulation: keep system members close but not too close.  Individuals retain and hold their own identity while maintaining the identity of the system.  
  • Fusion: IF they are too close they will become fused to one another and they will become highly reactive to one another
  • Cut off: It is another side to the same coin.  We cut off from people we are fused with.  Extreme reaction to high levels of fusion.  We would not cut off from those who we very hurt by.  It is one way of dealing with anxiety of fusion. 
  • Use differentiation is a manifestation of distance regulation
  • Healthy Marriage Model
2.)Triangles:
A triangle is a three-person relationship system. It is considered the building block or “molecule” of larger emotional systems because a triangle is the smallest stable relationship system. A two-person system is unstable because it tolerates little tension before involving a third person. A triangle can contain much more tension without involving another person because the tension can shift around three relationships. If the tension is too high for one triangle to contain, it spreads to a series of “interlocking” triangles. Spreading the tension can stabilize a system, but nothing gets resolved.
People’s actions in a triangle reflect their efforts to assure their emotional attachments to important others, their reactions to too much intensity in the attachments, and their taking sides in others’ conflicts. Paradoxically, a triangle is more stable than a dyad, but a triangle creates an odd man out, which is a very difficult position for individuals to tolerate. Anxiety generated by anticipating being or by being the odd man out is a potent force in triangles.
The patterns in a triangle change with increasing tension. In calm periods, two people are comfortably close “insiders” and the third person is an uncomfortable “outsider.” The insiders actively exclude the outsider, and the outsider works to get closer to one of them. Someone is always uncomfortable in a triangle and pushing for change. The insiders solidify their bond by choosing each other in preference to the less desirable outsider. When someone chooses another person over oneself, it arouses particularly intense feelings of rejection.
If mild to moderate tension develops between the insiders, the most uncomfortable one will move closer to the outsider. One of the original insiders now becomes the new outsider and the original outsider is now an insider. The new outsider will make predictable moves to restore closeness with one of the insiders. At moderate tension levels, triangles usually have one side in conflict and two harmonious sides. The conflict is not inherent in the relationship in which it exists, but reflects the overall functioning of the triangle.
At a high level of tension, the outside position becomes the most desirable. If severe conflict erupts between the insiders, one insider opts for the outside position by getting the current outsider fighting with the other insider. If the maneuvering insider is successful, he gains the more comfortable position of watching the other two people fight. When the tension and conflict subside, the outsider will try to regain an inside position.
Triangles contribute significantly to the development of clinical problems. For example, getting pushed from an inside to an outside position can trigger a depression or perhaps even a physical illness, or two parents intensely focusing on what is wrong with a child can trigger serious rebellion in the child.
3.) Nuclear Family Emotional Process
The concept of the nuclear family emotional system describes four basic relationship patterns that govern where problems develop in a family. People’s attitudes and beliefs about relationships play a role in the patterns, but the forces primarily driving them are part of the emotional system. The patterns operate in intact, single-parent, step-parent, and other nuclear family configurations.
Clinical problems or symptoms usually develop during periods of heightened and prolonged family tension. The tension level depends on the stress a family encounters, how a family adapts to stress, and on a family’s connection with extended family and social networks. Tension increases the activity of one or more of the four relationship patterns. Where symptoms develop depends on which patterns are most active. The higher the tension, the more chance that symptoms will be severe and that several people will be symptomatic.
The four basic relationship patterns are:
Marital conflict – As family tension increases and the spouses get more anxious, each spouse externalizes his or her anxiety into the marital relationship. Each focuses on what is wrong with the other, each tries to control the other, and each resists the other’s efforts at control.
Dysfunction in one spouse – One spouse pressures the other to think and act in certain ways and the other yields to the pressure. Both spouses accommodate to preserve harmony, but one does more of it. The interaction is comfortable for both people up to a point, but if family tension rises further, the subordinate spouse may yield so much self-control that his or her anxiety increases significantly. The anxiety fuels, if other necessary factors are present, the development of a psychiatric, medical, or social dysfunction.
Impairment of one or more children – The spouses focus their anxieties on one or more of their children. They worry excessively and usually have an idealized or negative view of him. The more the parents focus on the child the more the child focuses on them. He is more reactive than his siblings to the attitudes, needs, and expectations of the parents. The process undercuts the child’s differentiation from the family and makes him vulnerable to act out or internalize family tensions. The child’s anxiety can impair his school performance, social relationships, and even his health.
Emotional distance – This pattern is consistently associated with the others. People distance from each other to reduce the relationship intensity, but risk becoming too isolated.
The basic relationship patterns result in family tensions coming to rest in certain parts of the family. The more anxiety one person or one relationship absorbs, the less other people must absorb. This means that some family members maintain their functioning at the expense of others. People do not want to hurt each other, but when anxiety chronically dictates behavior, someone usually suffers for it.
4.) Family projection process 
The family projection process describes the primary way parents transmit their emotional problems to a child. The projection process can impair the functioning of one or more children and increase their vulnerability to clinical symptoms. Children inherit many types of problems (as well as strengths) through the relationships with their parents, but the problems they inherit that most affect their lives are relationship sensitivities such as heightened needs for attention and approval, difficulty dealing with expectations, the tendency to blame oneself or others, feeling responsible for the happiness of others or that others are responsible for one’s own happiness, and acting impulsively to relieve the anxiety of the moment rather than tolerating anxiety and acting thoughtfully. If the projection process is fairly intense, the child develops stronger relationship sensitivities than his parents. The sensitivities increase a person’s vulnerability to symptoms by fostering behaviors that escalate chronic anxiety in a relationship system.
The projection process follows three steps:
(1) the parent focuses on a child out of fear that something is wrong with the child;
(2) the parent interprets the child’s behavior as confirming the fear; and
(3) the parent treats the child as if something is really wrong with child.
These steps of scanning, diagnosing, and treating begin early in the child’s life and continue. The parents’ fears and perceptions so shape the child’s development and behavior that he grows to embody their fears and perceptions. One reason the projection process is a self-fulfilling prophecy is that parents try to “fix” the problem they have diagnosed in the child; for example, parents perceive their child to have low self-esteem, they repeatedly try to affirm the child, and the child’s self-esteem grows dependent on their affirmation.
Parents often feel they have not given enough love, attention, or support to a child manifesting problems, but they have invested more time, energy, and worry in this child than in his siblings. The siblings less involved in the family projection process have a more mature and reality-based relationship with their parents that fosters the siblings developing into less needy, less reactive, and more goal-directed people. Both parents participate equally in the family projection process, but in different ways. The mother is usually the primary caretaker and more prone than the father to excessive emotional involvement with one or more of the children. The father typically occupies the outside position in the parental triangle, except during periods of heightened tension in the mother-child relationship. Both parents are unsure of themselves in relationship to the child, but commonly one parent acts sure of himself or herself and the other parent goes along. The intensity of projection process is unrelated to the amount of time parents spend with a child.

MCO - CEU Tracker

  • MM slash DD slash YYYY

05-06-18 MCO TEAM MEETING DIDACTIC: SYSTEMS THEORY – PT 2

by
We are continuing our study of Bowen’s eight concepts of Systems theory.  The following are the last four concepts he lines out as being important to understand about a family system.  Within the video I am going to share how we can apply this to our sessions with clients.
The last four concepts are:
5.) Multi-generational Transmission Process
The concept of the multi generational transmission process describes how small differences in the levels of differentiation between parents and their offspring lead over many generations to marked differences in differentiation among the members of a multi generational family. The information creating these differences is transmitted across generations through relationships. The transmission occurs on several interconnected levels ranging from the conscious teaching and learning of information to the automatic and unconscious programming of emotional reactions and behaviors. Relation ally and genetically transmitted information interact to shape an individual’s “self.”
The combination of parents actively shaping the development of their offspring, offspring innately responding to their parents’ moods, attitudes, and actions, and the long dependency period of human offspring results in people developing levels of differentiation of self similar to their parents’ levels. However, the relationship patterns of nuclear family emotional systems often result in at least one member of a sibling group developing a little more “self” and another member developing a little less “self” than the parents.
The next step in the multi generational transmission process is people predictably selecting mates with levels of differentiation of self that match their own. Therefore, if one sibling’s level of “self” is higher and another sibling’s level of “self” is lower than the parents, one sibling’s marriage is more differentiated and the other sibling’s marriage is less differentiated than the parents’ marriage. If each sibling then has a child who is more differentiated and a child who is less differentiated than himself, one three generational line becomes progressively more differentiated (the most differentiated child of the most differentiated sibling) and one line becomes progressively less differentiated (the least differentiated child of the least differentiated sibling). As these processes repeat over multiple generations, the differences between family lines grow increasingly marked.
Level of differentiation of self can affect longevity, marital stability, reproduction, health, educational accomplishments, and occupational successes. This impact of differentiation on overall life functioning explains the marked variation that typically exists in the lives of the members of a multi generational family. The highly differentiated people have unusually stable nuclear families and contribute much to society; the poorly differentiated people have chaotic personal lives and depend heavily on others to sustain them. A key implication of the multi generational concept is that the roots of the most severe human problems as well as of the highest levels of human adaptation are generations deep. The multi generational transmission process not only programs the levels of “self” people develop, but it also programs how people interact with others. Both types of programming affect the selection of a spouse. For example, if a family programs someone to attach intensely to others and to function in a helpless and indecisive way, he will likely select a mate who not only attaches to him with equal intensity, but one who directs others and makes decisions for them.
6.) Emotional Cutoff
The concept of emotional cutoff describes people managing their unresolved emotional issues with parents, siblings, and other family members by reducing or totally cutting off emotional contact with them. Emotional contact can be reduced by people moving away from their families and rarely going home, or it can be reduced by people staying in physical contact with their families but avoiding sensitive issues. Relationships may look “better” if people cutoff to manage them, but the problems are dormant and not resolved.
People reduce the tensions of family interactions by cutting off, but risk making their new relationships too important. For example, the more a man cuts off from his family of origin, the more he looks to his spouse, children, and friends to meet his needs. This makes him vulnerable to pressuring them to be certain ways for him or accommodating too much to their expectations of him out of fear of jeopardizing the relationship. New relationships are typically smooth in the beginning, but the patterns people are trying to escape eventually emerge and generate tensions. People who are cut off may try to stabilize their intimate relationships by creating substitute “families” with social and work relationships.
Everyone has some degree of unresolved attachment to his or her original family, but well-differentiated people have much more resolution than less differentiated people. An unresolved attachment can take many forms. For example, (1) a person feels more like a child when he is home and looks to his parents to make decisions for him that he can make for himself, or (2) a person feels guilty when he is in more contact with his parents and feels he must solve their conflicts or distresses, or (3) a person feels enraged that his parents do not seem to understand or approve of him. An unresolved attachment relates to the immaturity of both the parents and the adult child, but people typically blame themselves or others for the problems.
People often look forward to going home, hoping things will be different this time, but the old interactions usually surface within hours. It may take the form of surface harmony with powerful emotional undercurrents or it may deteriorate into shouting matches and hysterics. Both the person and his family may feel exhausted even after a brief visit. It may be easier for the parents if an adult child keeps his distance. The family gets so anxious and reactive when he is home that they are relieved when he leaves. The siblings of a highly cutoff member often get furious at him when he is home and blame him for upsetting the parents. People do not want it to be this way, but the sensitivities of all parties preclude comfortable contact.
7.) Sibling Position
Bowen theory incorporates the research of psychologist Walter Toman as a foundation for its concept of sibling position. Bowen observed the impact of sibling position on development and behavior in his family research. However, he found Toman’s work so thorough and consistent with his ideas that he incorporated it into his theory. The basic idea is that people who grow up in the same sibling position predictably have important common characteristics. For example, oldest children tend to gravitate to leadership positions and youngest children often prefer to be followers. The characteristics of one position are not “better” than those of another position, but are complementary. For example, a boss who is an oldest child may work unusually well with a first assistant who is a youngest child. Youngest children may like to be in charge, but their leadership style typically differs from an oldest’s style.
Toman’s research showed that spouses’ sibling positions affect the chance of their divorcing. For example, if an older brother of a younger sister marries a younger sister of an older brother, less chance of a divorce exists than if an older brother of a brother marries an older sister of a sister. The sibling or rank positions are complementary in the first case and each spouse is familiar with living with someone of the opposite sex. In the second case, however, the rank positions are not complementary and neither spouse grew up with a member of the opposite sex. An older brother of a brother and an older sister of a sister are prone to battle over who is in charge; two youngest children are prone to struggle over who gets to lean on whom.
People in the same sibling position, of course, exhibit marked differences in functioning. The concept of differentiation can explain some of the differences. For example, rather than being comfortable with responsibility and leadership, an oldest child who is anxiously focused on may grow up to be markedly indecisive and highly reactive to expectations. Consequently, his younger brother may become a “functional oldest,” filling a void in the family system. He is the chronologically younger child, but develops more characteristics of an oldest child than his older brother. A youngest child who is anxiously focused on may become an unusually helpless and demanding person. In contrast, two mature youngest children may cooperate extremely effectively in a marriage and be at very low risk for a divorce.
Middle children exhibit the functional characteristics of two sibling positions. For example, if a girl has an older brother and a younger sister, she usually has some of the characteristics of both a younger sister of a brother and an older sister of a sister. The sibling positions of a person’s parents are also important to consider. An oldest child whose parents are both youngest encounters a different set of parental expectations than an oldest child whose parents are both oldest.
8.) Societal Emotional Process
Each concept in Bowen theory applies to non-family groups, such as work and social organizations. The concept of societal emotional process describes how the emotional system governs behavior on a societal level, promoting both progressive and regressive periods in a society. Cultural forces are important in how a society functions but are insufficient for explaining the ebb and flow in how well societies adapt to the challenges that face them. Bowen’s first clue about parallels between familial and societal emotional functioning came from treating families with juvenile delinquents. The parents in such families give the message, “We love you no matter what you do.” Despite impassioned lectures about responsibility and sometimes harsh punishments, the parents give in to the child more than they hold the line. The child rebels against the parents and is adept at sensing the uncertainty of their positions. The child feels controlled and lies to get around the parents. He is indifferent to their punishments. The parents try to control the child but are largely ineffectual.
Bowen discovered that during the 1960s the courts became more like the parents of delinquents. Many in the juvenile court system considered the delinquent as a victim of bad parents. They tried to understand him and often reduced the consequences of his actions in the hope of effecting a change in his behavior. If the delinquent became a frequent offender, the legal system, much like the parents, expressed its disappointment and imposed harsh penalties. This recognition of a change in one societal institution led Bowen to notice that similar changes were occurring in other institutions, such as in schools and governments. The downward spiral in families dealing with delinquency is an anxiety-driven regression in functioning. In a regression, people act to relieve the anxiety of the moment rather than act on principle and a long-term view. A regressive pattern began unfolding in society after World War II. It worsened some during the 1950s and rapidly intensified during the 1960s. The “symptoms” of societal regression include a growth of crime and violence, an increasing divorce rate, a more litigious attitude, a greater polarization between racial groups, less principled decision-making by leaders, the drug abuse epidemic, an increase in bankruptcy, and a focus on rights over responsibilities.
Human societies undergo periods of regression and progression in their history. The current regression seems related to factors such as the population explosion, a sense of diminishing frontiers, and the depletion of natural resources. Bowen predicted that the current regression would, like a family in a regression, continue until the repercussions stemming from taking the easy way out on tough issues exceeded the pain associated with acting on a long-term view. He predicted that will occur before the middle of the twenty-first century and should result in human beings living in more harmony with nature.