Your Family Revealed: A Guide to Decoding the Patterns, Stories, and Belief Systems in Your Family

by Elaine Carney Gibson

Overview

A clear, compelling, and user-friendly guide to help you understand your family and transform unhealthy dynamics to create a more empowered life

No matter what your relationship with your family looks like today, your family dynamics have a tremendous influence on how you feel about yourself, show up in the world, and relate to others. When these dynamics are subconscious, we remain bound and encumbered by them. But when we bring them to the surface, we can engage our power to change, grow, and create a more meaningful life.

Your Family Revealed is an invitation to a journey of self-discovery. Drawing on 50 years of experience, psychotherapist Elaine Carney Gibson shares an accessible guide for better understanding yourself and your family so that you can find healing—for yourself and your loved ones. Here she provides real-world examples, insightful exercises, and reflection questions to help you navigate your own family’s dynamics, including:

• How a family system operates—the fundamental ways your history shapes you
• Safe and unsafe topics—the unspoken roles, rules, patterns, and possibilities within a family
• Bringing your family’s myths, stories, and secrets into the light in a compassionate way
• How your own family role has shaped your habits, values, and the way you relate to others
• Powerful ways to heal the wounds of your past while strengthening the qualities you cherish

“Our stories help us to learn our family’s values,” writes Gibson. “They help us to know who and what is important. They help us to define who we are and our place in the world.” For adults looking to better understand themselves and their families of origin, parents wanting to create and maintain healthy family ecosystems, and therapists seeking practical ways to work with clients, Your Family Revealed is an essential resource.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781649630049
Publisher:	Sounds True, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/18/2022
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	1,049,095
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Elaine Carney Gibson, LMFT, LPC, is a practicing psychotherapist of 50 years. She sees individuals, couples, and families, specializing in Relationship Therapy. She taught graduate courses in marriage and family therapy for many years and is the director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Training Institute of The Link Counseling Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Why Does It Matter? 5

The Importance of Understanding How a Family System Operates

Chapter 2 Who's in Charge? 17

Defining How a Family Structures Itself for Good or Bad

Chapter 3 Is It Safe to Say What You Mean and to Mean What You Say? 41

Identifying Communication Roles, Rules, Patterns, and Possibilities

Chapter 4 How Much Togetherness? 61

The Balance Between Individuality and Togetherness in a Family

Chapter 5 Why a Three-Legged Stool? 83

Family Triangles

Chapter 6 Who Owes What to Whom? 107

Family Loyalty, Legacy, and Ledger

Chapter 7 Keep or Reveal a Family Secret? 133

Traversing the Minefield of Family Secrets-Dangerous Territory!

Chapter 8 How Powerful Are Stories, Myths, and Rituals? 149

The Shaping of Generations

Epilogue 167

Acknowledgments 171

Glossary 173

Notes 177

Resources 181

About the Author 187

Editorial Reviews

A clear, easy-to-read guide on ‘how families work’—for anyone who wants to understand themselves better.” —Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, couple therapist, founder of the PACT Institute, and author of Wired for Love

“A fascinating, warm-hearted guide to understanding how our families shape our personalities, relationships, and emotions. Elaine Gibson’s book teaches us how to explore the most important dynamics in our lives, giving us powerful insights into our own everyday patterns and habits. Your Family Revealed is an invaluable resource that offers readers the gift of self-awareness—as well as a few hundred ‘aha’ moments.” —Jackson MacKenzie, author of Whole Again and Psychopath Free

“It is rare to find a self-help book that takes difficult psychological concepts and puts them in a form that is helpful to everyone’s daily living. By providing workbook exercises, this book is an excellent resource for anyone who is doing their own therapeutic work, anyone who wants to know more about how to understand their family dynamics, and clinicians who want a succinct review of fundamental psychological theories. It offers helpful hints on how to handle family emotional triangles, family secrets, and dysfunctional family patterns while using wonderful real-life case examples. It is a ‘must read’!” —Michael L. Chafin, MDiv, MEd, LMFT, former president of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

“It was my honor to read Elaine Carney Gibson’s Your Family Revealed. Gibson’s knowledge of family systems theory, years of clinical experience and wisdom, and generous sharing of personal stories and insight are woven together with her warm and gently guiding voice. Your Family Revealed uniquely combines clinical theory in an accessible format with opportunities to apply and explore the reader’s own family experiences. This work is a gift to the counseling professional and beyond to anyone wishing to grow through insight about the family.” —Erika Pluhar, PhD, EdS, LMFT, LPC, CST-S

“This book is packed with key issues, explained from both personal and professional perspectives, related to understanding one’s family system. Garnering wisdom distilled from her 50 years of clinical work and over 35 years of training family therapists, Elaine Carney Gibson has written an engaging, intelligent, accessible book for both the lay and professional reader. It is an important book for our time, and I highly recommend it.” —Catherine McCall, author of the international bestselling memoir Never Tell, retired family therapist, and contributing writer for Psychology Today magazine

“In her book, Your Family Revealed, Elaine Carney Gibson has managed to synthesize numerous concepts from the history of marriage and family therapy into a highly readable and applicable volume. Each thematic chapter offers theoretical perspectives gleaned from years of experience that is supported by intriguing and often entertaining examples. This is a truly helpful book for anyone who could benefit from a more enlightened understanding of the systems that we grow up in and those we create. It provides meaningful insights into the dynamics of human relationship and helps reveal the motivations and origins guiding many familial and relational challenges. Whether the reader is a therapist, an educator, or simply someone who wants a better understanding of the intricate relationship between ourselves and the systems we inhabit (as well as those that inhabit us), this accessible and informative book has much to offer.” —Stuart D. Smith, LPC

“As a recently retired family law attorney, I regret that I did not have access to the caring insights into couples and families presented so beautifully by Elaine Gibson. The relationships she describes in Your Family Revealed clearly illuminate familial struggles, helping to give direction to solutions for ways forward, even in conflict, whether in divorce or child custody cases. This superb book should definitely be in the library of every domestic relations attorney.” —Carol B. Powell, attorney-at-law, Atlanta, Georgia

“I've finally found the book that I would wish for every person exploring their path of self-discovery. Elaine Gibson’s book, Your Family Revealed, provides us with nuggets of wisdom that help us understand ourselves and our families. If one book can widen your mind, deepen your heart, and inspire your spirit, this is it!” —Rev. Cameron Trimble, CEO of Convergence, author of Searching for the Sacred


“Elaine has created an illuminating work that is truly a reflection of her five decades as a psychotherapist and educator. At a time when people’s curiosity about their ancestors is growing, this book can help individuals, couples, and families decipher their relationships with greater clarity and understanding. This book explains powerful concepts usually reserved for textbooks in ‘user friendly’ language that results in an inspired guide for one’s own life.” —Janet Mainor, MS, LPC, NBCC, CPCS, executive director of The Link Counseling Center

From the Publisher

09/16/2022

Gibson, a licensed professional psychotherapist specializing in marriage and family therapy, is a proponent of examining family situations so that people can understand why their family works the way it does. In this book, she suggests multiple ways to do so, providing information about types of family structures and communication styles. She also describes various ways families keep secrets, handle togetherness, and tell stories about themselves. Each chapter ends with questions about what patterns or traits discussed in the preceding chapter might apply to readers' families. Gibson peppers the book with practical examples from her own experiences as a therapist to further illustrate how some of the family structures described may work. VERDICT An involving, approachable book for readers looking for new and different ways to think about their own families.—A. Gray

Library Journal