Joining the Family: Meeting the Person, Not the Defence

In my therapy work, I often advocate for family therapy, to work directly with the person my clients have struggles with, to invite the family. When a client says, “My parents won’t come,” or “My teenager refuses,” I don’t hear a scheduling problem. I hear resistance.

Often, it is protection—against shame, blame, vulnerability, or fear.

Sometimes, it is protection against one more demand in a life already too heavy.

If I meet that resistance too directly, I meet the defences.

If I can understand what it protects, I have a chance of reaching something more human underneath.

Joining, for me, is not about pleasing them or making them like you or believe that you are the competent therapist.

It is about finding a way to reach them, each one of them.

It is about entering their world and touching their heart.

It is about creating genuine moments of which they can connect with you without the defenses.

Let me share two stories.

A teenage female had been placed in a shelter due to domestic violence, and I was asked to support reunification. Both parents completed the intake form in their own language. Under “presenting problem,” they wrote: “Leave us alone. We have enough stress as refugees.”

It read like a refusal. But it was also a strong message to us, the "professional". Therapy, to them, may not have felt like help. It may have felt like another institution asking for time without understanding what survival already costs.

Perhaps even another professional teaching them how to be better parents.

If I continued to play that role as the “parenting expert,” I would likely push them further away. Their responses gave me a great insight of how powerless they felt as parents surviving in the foreign country, adapting to different cultures and generations. I learnt to be more attuned to what families need from us, if I hear them carefully.

Another story that illustrates joining differently was a case I received for a teenage girl—let’s call her Alicia. She hugged her friend goodbye at the school. I was called to a virtual meeting room by a psychiatrist to join urgent meeting, brainstorming the next step while she was being monitored at the school

She was admitted to a psychiatric ward with severe depression. I was told by the teachers, “She refuses family therapy.” It would have been easy to stop right there. Some part of me did not want to give up so I decided to visit her at her psychiatric ward.

She was polite, but distant. “Nothing will change,” she said. “This is just how my family is.”

I felt the pull to persuade—to offer hope, to shift her thinking.

But moving too quickly often leads to withdrawal.

So I stayed with her.

I asked if she could help me understand her family. And ask her to help me to understand her fear and who esle were fearful.

Slowly, I began to understand that she was physically and sexually assaulted. Home was not safe. Her resistance came from protection. She did not know if the family would get more hurt by speaking up in the session. She carried the weight of the family's safety on her. I made that explicit and asked if she could give me a chance to gain her trust.

There was a small shift. Not hope—but willingness. She agreed to try one session. I thanked her for helping me to know her family. I did not know what changed her mind, but that small willingness became the start of a two-year family therapy journey. Joining wasn't simple and direct. I knew I had to work with also the family members who were labelled as the "Perpetrator" and the "Enabler" - in this case, the parents.

Parents often require a different kind of joining. Many expect righteous judgement. By the time I met them, they had already been described—alcoholic, aggressive, irresponsible, many other words. It was easier to meet the negative labels instead of the person. I felt that pull too.

But if I joint the label and became the protector of the child, I met the defense then I would be useless to the family. Certainty about the problem often hardens the pattern. I reminded myself to meet them as who they are - the person, not the problem. Not to excuse harmful behaviour, but to understand them through multigenerational lens, to touch their pains. The more I join the labels, the more I reinforce the harmful cycle. If I can understand it with them, there is at least a possibility they may begin to question it themselves. Prof. Maurizio Andolfi once taught the way to enter the family through the belt the father used to hit the child—calmly, respectfully, and full of curiosity and care. In those moments of calmness, it allows space for humanity, trust, safety..... antitodes of aggression.

For me, joining itself is an intervention. It is not a one time off intervention, it is a continuous conscious effort. Families rarely enter therapy because they are certain of the good outcome. More often, they continue the journey because something feels different every time they step out of the room - sometimes better, sometimes worse- but we figure things out together. As a therapist, I see myself an active agent, constantly co-creating changes in family dynamics. It starts at the very first phone call, the very first handshake, the very first cup of tea the client finally accepts... I learn to not take no as a "no", but take "no" as a differnt form of "yes".

I think again of that intake form: “Leave us alone.” I no longer see it as a barrier to push through or challenge. It is where I begin. And if, somewhere along the way, “leave us alone” becomes “maybe we can trust you”, then something critical has already happened.

Finally, I returned to a lesson from my graduate diploma in multigenerational therapy. Dr. Lorena once said: “We can’t teach joining; therapists need to find their own ways to join. It is a very unique, personal skill.” This stays with me. Every family is different, and every moment of joining requires presence, curiosity, and care. There is no one formula—only the heart to enter a family gently, patiently, and respectfully. "You get what you want, what you don't want, you don't get" - Maurizio.

At times I can be stubborn, I don't take "No" as "No". Sometimes I question if my way joining is different from my peers, not dramatic enough, not creating enough confusion in reframing, not efficient enough...but now I learn to embrace a different style, my style. Joining can happen in the quiet, subtle shifts—the moments that feel almost invisible—that real movement actually begins. And as therapists, our task is to notice, to make explicit, to accompany, and trust the journey, just as we help families to trust themselves. #multigenerational #familytherapy #joining