In the consultation group I ran yesterday, one theme that came up was setting consequences for teens, and if you work with families, youāre likely very familiar with this topic.
For most families, the advice of āage-appropriate consequencesā and ābeing consistent, clear and conciseā is always goi...
My associate JB has been working with a teen for a while, and despite her best efforts, has not been able to get the family to agree to family therapy sessions with another therapist. Sheās been doing the best she can, fielding parent consultations and the occasional session with the teen and oth...
A first family session hands you an enormous amount of information at once, and in family systems therapy, thereās information that goes beyond what each member of the family says. Even if you manage to collect all of this information, most of us were never taught how to sort it out or make use o...
When families come to therapy, they usually want help fixing their problems, but theyāre often hesitant or afraid to make changes. This paradox is at the core of many cases that get stuck and why I simultaneously love and hate family therapy.
Giving a family a task isnāt just about assigning home...
I moved from London to Los Angeles in my twenties and effectively drew an 8,000-mile boundary between us. If you'd asked me then, I'd have called it a career move, but it took eight years of my own four-times-a-week psychoanalysis to work out what an 8-hour time zone, an ocean, and a continent ac...
by Oliver Drakeford LMFT CGP ā
Aug 11, 2026
cut off
I ran a treatment center for a few years, and part of that job was training therapists to think systemically, so watching a eyes glaze over as I explained how to create a hypothesis became very familiar to me.
I realize now that I was not only asking them to learn a theory, but I was asking them ...
Have you ever had an experience where you ask a question and, when you didnāt get the answer you wanted, you ask it differently, only to get a completely different reaction?
One way you asked opened up the conversation, while the other led to a dead end. Ā
I used to think that was about the famil...
by Oliver Drakeford LMFT CGP ā
Jul 28, 2026
questions
Just a quick update -
I had a cracking migraine earlier this week so was not as organized as I would like to pretend to be :)Ā
VIDEO #1
Watch how to use theĀ Three-Column Family Therapy Case Formulation Framework here, it's on the youtubes.Ā
2. PODCAST EPISODE
Listen to theĀ news...
Case conceptualization for family work is hard; itās easy to blur modalities and start thinking about attachment styles, then consider the DSM-5 diagnosis, IEPs and learning difficulties too. If you want to take a systemic approach to case hypotheses, Iāve got a simple way to organize all your th...
by Oliver Drakeford LMFT CGP ā
Jul 21, 2026
hypothesis
This week, Iām sharing four ways therapists can get pulled into a system without noticing, plus some questions that can help us find our way back.
I donāt know about you, but one of my biggest struggles is not taking sides when Iām working with couples or families.
After years of doing this work,...
I think I spend more on my dogās food than I do on my own, and last week I noticed those big brown, innocent-guilt-inducing eyes staring at me every time I ate. I was about to go get him a treat when I realized heād actually eaten more than me that day. No wonder the vet is on me to get him to l...
by Oliver Drakeford LMFT CGP ā
Jul 07, 2026
skills
Hereās a hypothetical situation for you: imagine youāve got an eight-year-old child, and one morning as youāre getting into the car to go to school, they stop and look at you and say,
āI donāt feel safe getting in a car with your driving skills, and I think you need to let me drive - please give...
