A family of origin is the living unit in which an individual is raised and has physiological, psychical, and emotional beginnings.
Theories of family systems (Bowen, 1978; Kerr & Bowen, 1988) and emotional self-regulation development (Morris et al., 2007) both posit that one's ability to regulate emotions is transmitted across generations in families.
Conducting family of origin includes work on the following aspects:
a) Uncovering the family secret through calm, non-threatening, searching questions that family members open up to relate. It is useful for engaging obsessive, unresponsive, or uninvolved family members.
b) Addressing loss and trauma that is usually distorted and forgotten. Counsellor focuses on rediscovering such dissociated family experiences.
c) Clarifying family patterns through observations to suggest tentative hypotheses which may be elaborated and revised later. Understanding family pattern helps clarifying present dilemma and open up possibilities for alternative behaviour.
d) Reframing and detoxifying family issues is to normalize family experience. Through questioning, we help identifying the family structure or life cycle that suggests normative expectation.
e) Draw forth resilience and to design intervention. To empower clients to bear witness to family losses and to develop a sense of meaning, mastery skill for survival. This is to liberate them from the constraints of oppression.
f) Intervention in family medicine. Although counsellor is not medical profession, we ask clients about the family history of chronic illness, mental illness, alcohol or substance addiction so as to assess the family stresses and how it affect relationship. While one member is in distress, how the others react tell us something.
g) Conversation about repeating family pattern, significant events and concurrent life stresses can help family see possibilities and outcomes. Acknowledging cultural differences helped them to view their disagreements in a less threatening way.
h) Exploring family of origin’s information can transform clients’ perception of themselves. They start to realize how the impact of psychological, relational break down, alcohol or drug influences the behaviors of family members. In the process, reconnection replaces relationship cut-off and they change their perspective towards family members.