Genogram

I’m reading the book, The Emotionally Healthy Church, by Peter Scazzero and in it he suggests creating a genogram to provide insight into family behavioral patterns. The basic gist is this: go back 3 or 4 generations and see if you can determine family emotional/behavioral patterns. Some easy ones to see would be alcoholism, anger management issues, inappropriate sexual behavior, etc. Not every family has those, but you get the idea.

Once you see the patterns, it help you understand where those behaviors came from, and then enables you to try to be a “chain-breaker” (that would be a good name for a song Charlie Hall :-)).

Well, I did the exercise this week and I have to say, it’s quite fascinating. I will probably bring my Genogram with me to my next counseling appointment.

Yes, I said counseling appointment. Everyone goes, don’t they? If you don’t go, and you think that people who do go are crazy, then perhaps you should make a genogram to see how far back your ignorant line of thinking goes…(this means you, Tom Cruise.)