“How hard it is to understand each other, unless we already agree.” Richard Bach
The postmodernist and social constructionists’ view of a reality created by the individual experience, is what creates the barriers between the family, that one may work with.
Every person involved will have their own level of perception. Children, see the world from a looking up perspective, parents, a looking down, children also not having the years and years of experience to project, upon another member of the family. Each person not only takes in the experience from different visual and audible angles, but also in different emotional reactions and cues, depending upon who played what role. Roles being the perpetrator, victim, witness and observer.
Once clients choose to receive assistance, those separate perceptions are what exacerbate the drama that has fractured the family around the issue or interactive pattern.
The language being applied to the discussion, from each individual, fails to connect with the listener, due to the fact the memory be shared is not in alignment with their own. Using the collaborative approach with the clients offers a chance for everyone to come to an agreement about, how, what and why, a disagreement or disruptive interactive pattern is allowed to continue, through the verbal and emotional language each person sees as the reality, when it is really just their own perspective of the event.
Reaching a point of agreement, facilitating a group mind focus, towards a solution oriented outcome is only achieved by the deconstruction each individual perspective into its respective role in the event or pattern.
As an example; If I ask two people to take a box of markers and draw the moon. Once they are complete we would see that each of their moons is completely different.
The moon in the sky is the reality. The pictures are their perceptions of reality. By deconstructing this differentiating sequence, each participant can then focus on the solutions once again.
If the Therapist attempted to bring about this unity of perception, through an egalitarian approach, only create more separation between, being seen by everyone as being on someone’s side.
Working with the clients from a level of directive equality, or course directing, builds trust in the therapist as a part of the desired solution. Further facilitating the healing of individual barriers, and forming a bond of inclusiveness, that previously didn’t exist in the original reality, the participants thought was being shared.
Adaptive Reality 