When families come to therapy worried about their teen’s phone use, I didn’t always turn to structural systems theory right away. Parents would often tell me their teen is “addicted"; the teen would rolls their eyes, and if I could get them to use TikTok a little less, I'd count that as a success...
Reframing comes up a lot in training, but it’s rarely taught in a way that sticks. It looks straightforward: you see a problem one way, then help the family see it another.
It sounds like it should be easy, right?
In practice, they’re always a bit harder to land, and when a reframe tanks, we star...
With nearly every family I work with, I eventually end up asking myself “What are the rules in this family?”
I’m obviously not referring to new rules like “no phones at dinner.” Instead, I focus on the unspoken rules—those every family member recognizes, but no one articulates, and it's often the...
by Oliver Drakeford LMFT —
Apr 21, 2026
family rules
TLDR:
"Enmeshment" is a term that has been doing double duty for 50 years — covering both healthy closeness and genuine psychological control. This week, I'm breaking down the difference, introducing a four-quadrant model to help you tell them apart, sharing a free PDF with the full matrix, sessi...
When a child's lying becomes the main issue in family sessions, it's rarely just bad behavior—it's almost always a sign of deeper family issues.
This Week's H.I.T Home & Take Home Free PDF For Subscribers:
If you find yourself tangled in a web of a client's lies, this week's toolset will help yo...
When kids act out, a hidden driver is often split parenting: one parent gets harder, the other softer, each making things worse for the other.
TLDR: When a child's behavior becomes the presenting problem, there's often a parenting split quietly running in the background — one parent getting hard...
In a first family session, you need to collect a lot of data—and some comes before you ask your first question.
TLDR: This week, I'm breaking down the six structural concepts that let you read any family's architecture from the first session — subsystems, boundaries, hierarchy, triangulation, an...
Family systems theory has its own language. Some of it is genuinely useful shorthand. Some of it sounds more complicated than it is. And a few terms mean something very specific and are important. Either way, there's a lot of words I get confused with, so here's a big breakdown of terms that I'll...
One of the great things about working in residential treatment center for teens early in my career was the variety of cases, families and teens I saw. Things like NSSI and SI no longer phase me, but there's still a plethora of diagnosis that would give me a moment of anxiety and cause me to consi...
by Oliver Drakeford LMFT —
Mar 23, 2026
case study
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