Working with a family system vs. one person
When more than one family member is in the room, everyone present is my client. Nothing said to me will be permanently withheld from the others, though I choose the timing carefully and I will usually encourage the person holding something to bring it themselves. The work is about patterns rather than blame: who speaks, who withdraws, who carries what, and how the same loop keeps repeating. When I work with one person from a family, that person is my client and the confidentiality is theirs. We still work with the system, but we work on the part of it they can actually influence, which is their own response. That is often the most realistic route to change when other family members will not attend, and it is frequently more powerful than people expect.
