What Is Systemic Therapy? Looking at Relationships, Not Just Symptoms
Written by: Shaelyn McCabe, MFTC
One of the most common things I hear as a therapist is some version of the question: “What’s wrong with me?”
Sometimes it sounds like:
Why am I so anxious?
Why do I keep ending up in the same kinds of relationships?
Why can’t I seem to change this pattern?
Why do I feel stuck?
These questions are deeply human and they often come from a place of pain, frustration, and a genuine desire to understand ourselves. While these questions matter, as a systemic therapist, I ask a different one:
What has happened in the relationships and systems surrounding this person that makes this struggle make sense?
That question sits at the heart of how I practice therapy, and it reflects a belief our therapists share at Life Reimagined Therapy Group. We believe people are wired for connection. We believe our stories are shaped within relationships. And we believe that healing often begins when we understand ourselves within the larger context of our lives.
People Don’t Exist In Isolation
One of the reasons I was drawn to systemic therapy is because it put words to something I had been noticing long before I became a therapist. Before entering the therapy field, I worked as a special education teacher. Every day, I worked with students who were struggling academically, behaviorally, emotionally, or socially. Like many educators, I wanted to help them succeed. I spent time building relationships, creating support plans, teaching skills, and trying to understand what each child needed.
Over time, I noticed that many of the challenges I was seeing in the classroom did not begin in the classroom. A student’s anxiety, emotional outbursts, difficulty focusing, or struggles with relationships often made more sense when viewed within the larger context of their life. There were family dynamics, unmet needs, community influences, cultural factors, and life circumstances affecting what was happening at school.
While I believe meaningful change can happen in the classroom, some struggles were difficult to address if the environments surrounding the child remained unchanged. The classroom was only one part of a much larger story. My experience teaching fundamentally shaped how I understand people.
Rarely do I meet someone whose struggles exist entirely within themselves. The anxious person grew up in an environment where unpredictability felt unsafe. The partner who struggles to express emotions may have learned early in life that vulnerability was risky. The person who constantly cares for everyone may be carrying messages they learned from family, culture, community, or society about who they should be.
When I sit with clients today, I don’t see isolated individuals. I see people whose lives have been shaped by relationships, experiences, culture, communities, and stories. This perspective is at the heart of systemic therapy and continues to shape the way I practice as a therapist today.
What is Systemic Therapy?
Systemic therapy is an approach that looks beyond symptoms and explores relationships, experiences, and systems that influence our lives. You may also hear it called family systems therapy or relational therapy because it recognizes that people make sense within the context of their relationships and life experiences. Rather than focusing solely on what is happening within an individual, systemic therapy asks a broader question:
What is happening around this person that might help us understand their experience more fully?
These systems may include:
Family relationships
Romantic relationships
Friendships
Cultural background
Community
Workplace environments
Social expectations
One of the core beliefs behind systemic therapy is that people make the most sense when we understand them in the context of their life. Our lives are organized through connection with others.
Building Awareness in Our Lives
Many of the ways we think, feel, and relate to others develop outside of our awareness. Over time, our experiences become so familiar that we stop noticing or questioning them. For example:
The way conflict was handled in your family
The messages you received about emotions
The expectations placed upon you
The role you learned to play in relationships
The cultural values that shaped your understanding of yourself and the world around you
These experiences often become the lens through which we view life. They influence how we respond to stress, navigate conflict, ask for help, set boundaries, and connect with others.
Yet, many of these patterns operate automatically. We may also experience these patterns internally, as different parts of ourselves reacting in certain situations, something that approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS) helps us understand as different internal “parts” that form in response to lived experience. We may not realize why we avoid conflict, struggle to trust others, feel responsible for everyone’s needs, or become anxious in certain situations. We simply know these reactions keep showing up.
One of the goals of therapy is to build awareness of these patterns and the stories beneath them. When we can see our patterns more clearly, we gain the opportunity to respond differently. We become less reactive and more intentional. We begin to understand not only what we do, but also why those responses developed in the first place.
The goal of building awareness around our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors is to build the capacity to understand ourselves with greater compassion and create the space for new possibilities moving forward that foster greater connection with others in our lives.
Looking Beyond Symptoms
Many people come to therapy hoping to reduce anxiety or depression, improve communication, heal from trauma, strengthen relationships, or feel more confident. These goals matter. But, at the same time, I have found that symptoms often tell a larger story and lasting healing often comes from understanding and addressing the patterns and processes beneath the symptoms:
Anxiety may be pointing to a need for safety
People-pleasing may have developed as a way of maintaining connection
Perfectionism may have emerged in environments where mistakes felt costly
Relationship conflict may reflect patterns that both partners learned long before they met one another
When we understand symptoms within the context of a person’s story, they often begin to make more sense. This shift creates something many people desperately need: compassion.
Instead of asking: “What’s wrong with me?” we begin asking, “What experiences shaped this response?”
Curiosity and compassion creates room for growth.
Why Patterns Matter
One of the things I pay most attention to in therapy is patterns. Many of the struggles people experience are not isolated events. They are recurring ways of relating to themselves and others. For example:
One partner may withdraw when conflict arises
The other partner pursues connection more intensely
The more one pulls away, the more the other reaches
Eventually both people feel hurt, misunderstood, and disconnected
The problem is no longer one person’s behavior. The pattern itself becomes the problem. This pattern is what Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) refers to as a cycle between partners. In EFT, we work to identify these recurring interaction patterns and create new experiences of connection and responsiveness.
This is one of the reasons I love working with couples and relationships. Some of the most meaningful changes happen when people begin to see the patterns they are caught in and learn new ways of relating to one another. This way of understanding relationships is also reflected in Virginia Satir’s Human Growth Model, which emphasizes how we adapt and take on roles within relationships in order to stay connected.
What This Means in Therapy
At Life Reimagined Therapy Group, we don’t simply ask what is happening. We ask:
What relationships have shaped this experience?
What messages have been learned over time?
What patterns keep showing up?
What strengths helped this person survive?
What systems are influencing their current reality?
What possibilities exist for creating something different?
We approach therapy with curiosity and compassion for each and every client. We believe that all behaviors and symptoms make sense within the context of a person’s story, even when those patterns create pain, because they developed for a reason. We strive to help clients understand the context surrounding those patterns and approach themselves with greater compassion to create meaningful change.
Questions for Reflection
As you read this, I invite you to consider:
What messages did you learn about emotions growing up?
How was conflict handled in your family?
What role did you tend to play in relationships?
Are there patterns that seem to repeat throughout your life?
What beliefs about yourself have been shaped by your family, culture, or community?
Which of those beliefs still align with who you want to be today?
You do not need immediate answers. Often healing begins with awareness and growth starts with curiosity.
Reimagining New Possibilites
The longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that people are not problems to be fixed. We are all people living within relationships, shaped by stories, adapting to circumstances, and doing our best to navigate the systems around us. Sometimes therapy helps us to understand those systems more clearly. Sometimes it helps us recognize patterns we want to change. Sometimes it offers a new experience of connection that allows healing to take root.
At Life Reimagined Therapy Group, this belief shapes everything we do. We believe healing happens in relationship, growth begins with awareness and curiosity, and new possibilities emerge when we can see our stories within the larger context of our lives.
If you’re curious about exploring your own story through a relational and systemic lens, I’d be honored to walk alongside you in that process.
Life Reimagined Therapy Group offers therapy in Arvada, CO. We also serve the surrounding communities including Wheat Ridge, Westminster, Golden, Lakewood, and the greater Denver area, as well as telehealth therapy throughout Colorado. Schedule a free consultationto learn more!
References:
Bavelas, J. B., & Segal, L. (1982). Family Systems Theory: Background and Implications.
Lebow, J. L., & Diamond, R. M. (2019). Brief History of Couple and Family Therapy.
Von Bertalanffy, L. (1972). The History and Status of General Systems Theory.
Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J., & Jackson, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication.
