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Improving Relationships Who has not had a frustrating relationship? Being human means being in relationships with others. We are interdependent. Stephanie Nickel, M.A. helps couples and individuals to understand themselves better, to become equipped to empathize with their partner and empowered with more productive ways of thinking and responding to situations that affect the relationship. Stephanie primarily utilizes the Bowen Family Systems approach to couples counseling. Bowen family systems theory is a theory of human behavior that views the family as an emotional unit and uses systems thinking to describe the complex interactions in the unit. It is the nature of a family that its members are intensely connected emotionally. Often people feel distant or disconnected from their families, but this is more feeling than fact. Family members so profoundly affect each other's thoughts, feelings, and actions that it often seems as if people are living under the same "emotional skin." People solicit each other's attention, approval, and support and react to each other's needs, expectations, and distress. The connectedness and reactivity make the functioning of family members interdependent. A change in one person's functioning is predictably followed by reciprocal changes in the functioning of others. Families differ somewhat in the degree of interdependence, but it is always present to some degree. The emotional interdependence presumably evolved to promote the cohesiveness and cooperation families require to protect, shelter, and feed their members. Heightened tension, however, can intensify these processes that promote unity and teamwork, and this can lead to problems. When family members get anxious, the anxiety can escalate by spreading infectiously among them. As anxiety goes up, the emotional connectedness of family members becomes more stressful than comforting. Eventually, one or more members feel overwhelmed, isolated, or out of control. These are the people who accommodate the most to reduce tension in others. It is a reciprocal interaction. For example, a person takes too much responsibility for the distress of others in relationship to their unrealistic expectations of him. The one accommodating the most literally "absorbs" anxiety and thus is the family member most vulnerable to problems such as depression, alcoholism, affairs, or physical illness. Dr. Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist, originated this theory and its eight interlocking concepts. He formulated the theory by using systems thinking to integrate knowledge of the human species as a product of evolution and knowledge from family research. A core assumption is that an emotional system that evolved over several billion years governs human relationship systems. People have a "thinking brain," language, a complex psychology and culture, but people still do all the ordinary things other forms of life do. The emotional system affects most human activity and is the principal driving force in the development of clinical problems. Knowledge of how the emotional system operates in one's family, work, and social systems reveals new and more effective options for solving problems in each of these areas.
effective options for solving problems
in these areas. Source: http://www.thebowencenter.org/pages/theory.html Stephanie is careful to view the relationship as her client so she does not favor one partner over the other partner.
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The first session is
always free of charge! Referrals to other counselors are provided if
the prospective client does not feel like he or she can work well
with Stephanie. Contact info: email: Steph@IntegrativeCounselingLLC.com Website:
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