End self-destruction and suffering! © Martyn Carruthers

We offer training and counseling on systemic coaching,
developmental disorders and solving relationship problems.

Link to Part 2 – Personality Disorders

Developmental Disorders and Personality Disorders are opinions used by psychology and health professionals to help determine appropriate treatments. Note that few opinions mentioned in DSM4 (a popular psychiatric manual) can be confirmed or rejected by laboratory tests.

If you appear to have a diagnosable medical or psychiatric condition,
please visit a medical doctor or psychiatrist.

Personality Disorders and Developmental Disorders are medical terms that are rarely used in coaching. Descriptions of these disorders are useful to better communicate with health professionals. We find that statistical data are not useful when helping individual clients solve emotional and relationship problems.

Part 1: Developmental Disorders & Systemic Coaching

Symptoms associated with developmental disorders, psychological and emotional disorders often overlap with our systemic diagnosis. We offer help to people for many mental health disorders.

What stops you solving your own problems?

Developmental and personality disorders are common. Mild cases may be called personality traits, and severe cases may be called psychosis. The severity of symptoms often reflects relationship stress and possibilities for emotional release.

Systemic coaching assumes that members of a family influence each other. Common family entanglements include:

  • children who are entangled with their siblings
  • partners who are entangled with past partners
  • uncles, aunts, cousins and close family friends
  • parents who are entangled with their own parents

Entanglements, transferences and codependence are often expressed by symptoms of identity loss.

Our Systemic Models

Our systemic coaching models identity loss, and its consequences:

  • structural (family hierarchies)
  • evolutionary (families evolve in predictable patterns)
  • cybernetic (feedback loops amongst family members)
  • functional (dysfunctional symptoms have functions and benefits)
  • relationship (confusion of relationship types has predictable consequences)

Most families try to solve their problems by their own rules. If the rules are toxic, their shallow solutions may make problems worse. We help motivated family members:

  1. identify their feedback loops
  2. expose their underlying entanglements
  3. solve their relationship problems
  4. develop appropriate communication skills
  5. plan the family’s development

Adaptive learning (change behavior) can be followed by generative learning (change the structure of a relationship system). Systemic coaching focuses on evolutionary learning (changing the identities of the members) and systemic learning (changing the identity of the system). See Knowledge Management .

Projection & Transference in Coaching

Any relationship can be distorted by projection and transference. For example, a parent may relate to a child as if to a partner, leading to the consequences of emotional incest. (The most common varieties of emotional incest are between Mothers and Sons and Fathers and Daughters.)

Deficiencies or injustice in a family systems lead to a spectrum of symptoms, which often indicate the function of relationship problems. Most medical and psychiatric diagnosis is symptom based; while the systemic relationship diagnosis we use in our systemic coaching focuses on identifying the underlying relationship problems.

Treating symptoms while ignoring underlying relationship problems can lead to short-term change, typical of applying medication, esoteric and cognitive approaches to emotional or relationship disorders.

Symptoms of Developmental Disorders
  1. Antisocial attitudes and actions
  2. Aggression and perhaps violence
  3. Lacks self-esteem and self-control
  4. Lacks empathy, compassion and remorse
  5. Behavioral and learning problems at school
  6. Cannot express trust, intimacy and affection
  7. Lonely – cannot maintain healthy friendships
  8. Needy and clingy, or pretends independence
  9. Alienates parents, caregivers and authorities
  10. Withdrawal and perhaps depression or psychosis
  11. Maltreats their own children when they are parents
  12. Hopeless or pessimistic view of self, family and society

Attachment Disorders . Adjustment Disorders

Don’t wait for emotional and relationship problems to go away. It is usually easier to manage problems when the problems are still small. We can help you and your family work through problems together. If you are a parent, strive to be a role model for mature happiness.

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