Clinical Skills
The micro-skills underneath the orientations — the actual moves in your hands. Browse by category, see how to execute, when to reach for it, and the mistakes that undo it.
Filtered: Gender-Affirming Therapy
Affirming
Assessment
Systemic
Genogram Construction
Mapping three generations of family relationships, patterns, and roles.
What it is
A visual tool from Family Systems: a family tree that records members, relationships, cutoffs, alliances, and repeating patterns across at least three generations, making systemic dynamics visible and discussable.
How to do it
- 1Explain the purpose and invite collaboration
- 2Map the client's generation, then parents, then grandparents
- 3Note dates, occupations, locations, and significant events
- 4Add relationship lines — close, conflicted, distant, cut off
- 5Identify repeating patterns (illness, divorce, roles)
- 6Explore what the genogram reveals with the client
When to use
- Family Systems and Bowenian work
- Clients stuck in repeating relational or generational patterns
- Identity exploration or role-transition work
When to avoid
- When the client has no safe family contact and the map would be destabilizing
- Session time too short to do it justice
- Client disinterested in family context
Example lines
'Let's draw out your family — who's close to whom, where are the cutoffs, what patterns do you see repeating?'
Common mistakes
- Treating the genogram as data collection rather than an intervention
- Filling it in without the client's interpretive input
- Missing the emotional charge of certain relationships