The document discusses the concept of differentiation within family systems, highlighting its impact on relationships and emotional stability. It explores how unresolved emotional issues can be passed down through generations, leading to increased anxiety and fusion among family members. The assessment tool outlined aims to enhance differentiation, reduce reactivity, and facilitate healthier communication within families across multiple generations.

1. Juna Phinky L. Delostrico, RPm

3. The ability to think through issues and act rationally
instead reacting automatically to emotional pressure.

4. In stressful situations two people, who are in a close
relationship, may include a third person to reduce the
anxiety and gain stability in the situation.

5. Weak differentiation in the
family of origin may lead
fusion in the new family
relationships. In such case,
the couple’s thoughts and
emotions are not easily
distinguished form the
other.

6. This is the process by
which parents pass on
their lack of
differentiation to their
children. The child who is
object of the projection
process achieves the
least differentiation of
self.

7. The child who is most involved in the family’s fusion in each
generation has a lower differentiation of self and more
anxiety than children who are less involved. This child is
more likely to pass on the un-differentiation in the next
generation.

8. Each child has a place in the family hierarchy, and
children who grow up in the same sibling position
have common traits that affect their relationships.

9. Some people use
physical or
psychological
avoidance to
manage their
unresolved
emotional issues
from their families of
origins.

10. Social influences affect
how families function,
and so there is the
tendency for anxiety
and instability to
increase in the society
at certain times.

12. Assessment tool for collecting and organizing family
information that covers at least three generations.

18. Questions are designed to explore what is going on
inside the family members and between them. For
example, “When your husband ignores you, how do
you respond to it?”

19. Clients experience what it is like to act opposite to
their usual automatic emotional responses.

20. Helps family members to say
how they feel instead of what
others are doing.

21. 1. Increasing differentiation
2. Reducing emotional reactivity
3. Help to detriangulate from family of origin.
4. Reframing the presenting problem as a multigenerational
problem that is cause by factors beyond the individual.
5. Opening closed ties with cut off members
6. Educating

22. 1. Neutral Party: Encourages family members to
speak through the therapist rather than to each
other.
2. Coach: Teaches “differentiation moves”, or ways
for the client to maintain his or her own state of
neutrality.
3. Educator: Teaches the clients about family
systems dynamics, differentiation,
multigenerational transmission process.