Family therapy addresses the family emotional processes that create a range of functioning in the individual members of the family. Competing needs and expectations of family members and everyday life stressors increase anxiety in a family system. This anxiety gets “absorbed” by certain parts of the system and produces universal family patterns:

1. Marital conflict
2. Symptoms in a spouse
3. Symptoms in a child

When acute or chronic anxiety is high, the automatic emotional system can override the family and impair the ability for the family to solve problems. Family therapy is a process of increasing the ability for “leaders” in the family to balance automatic reactivity and subjectivity with a factual view of oneself and others in the system.