Applying Family Systems Therapy to Eating Disorder Recovery

There are different types of family-based interventions for eating disorders. Eating disorders are sometimes treated with family-based treatment (FBT), which is different from Family Systems Therapy. FBT is focused on strengthening parents and giving them the power to guide their child’s recovery. In terms of relational healing and eating disorders, especially for older teens and adults, Family Systems Therapy can also give us a way of understanding disordered eating and recovery. 

What is Family Systems Therapy?

Family Systems Therapy was developed by Murray Bowen and focuses on treating families as a unit. Family Systems therapists encourage families to identify patterns, cycles, and roles which are reinforcing either problems or solutions in the family system. The underlying premise of Family Systems Therapy is that family members are all interconnected, so a problem with one member of the family will affect the whole family, and vice versa. 

Key Techniques in Family Systems Therapy for Eating Disorders

Some key techniques of Family Systems Therapy include identifying patterns, improving communication, and rebuilding trust. Through identifying unhelpful patterns, family members address rigid family roles which contribute to stress or isolation. 
Through improving communication, family members can address how to create the emotional safety necessary to have open dialogues about problems and solutions. And lastly, family therapists might help family members rebuild trust through facilitating or roleplaying some of these transparent conversations around generational patterns and renegotiating family roles.

The Power of Relational Healing

Relational healing is powerful because it creates lasting change. Each positive family interaction becomes a reinforcement for the change family members have created. In terms of eating disorders, relational healing might look like:

• A mother realizing her own eating disorder behaviors have been passed down to her adult daughter, and working toward recovery together.
• A father recognizing how his criticisms around food and exercise have negatively impacted his son’s relationship with his body, and working to challenge some of his own unrealistic beliefs around food and body image.
• A family cooking meals together and eating together for the first time in years, since their loved one has recovered from their eating disorder.
• Two siblings who realize their disordered eating has impacted one another’s self-esteem and looking for positive ways to connect outside of their shared eating disorder symptoms.
• A daughter who is willing to respectfully confront her critical parents on how their unhealthy expectations of her have contributed to her relationship with food and body. Parents being willing to listen to the impact of their behaviors, regardless of their intentions.