by Danni Biondini, LMFT

I’m going to walk you through an activity I do with my therapy graduate students. (Thanks to Shelly Smith-Acuña for introducing me to this idea in her phenomenal book, Systems Theory in Action).

Check out this image on the left. Now tell me: what do you see? 

Do you see a younger woman with her face turning away, just the side of her cheek and a bit of her nose visible?

That is typically what most people see when they look at this picture.

But look again: I want you to see something else this time. Maybe blink and readjust your field of vision, then see if you can look at this photo from a different perspective.

Now, instead, do you see the elder woman, her face turned more toward us? There’s her mouth near the bottom of the photo, her nose, and her left eye in the center of the photo.

Often times, my students have difficulty seeing this other perspective. It takes effort to readjust your focus to see this other person. Some students have to draw it out with their finger: the younger woman’s chin is the elder’s nose; the necklace of the younger woman is the mouth of the elder.

Do you see her?

Sometimes you’ll grasp it but only for a moment, and then — whoops — you’re back to only seeing the younger woman. But at least you saw this other perspective, even for a moment.

This very basic skill of shifting between perspectives is at the core of what we do in family therapy.

This lesson is the basic principle of systems thinking: To truly understand the problem, we have to see it from multiple perspectives. As it relates to family therapy, systems thinking is all about seeing the multiple perspectives in a family. When I’m listening to a teenager complain that her mom doesn’t give her enough freedom, I’m holding the younger woman’s perspective in my focus. But that’s only side of it. My job is to always ask, But what about mom? How can I see her perspective?

Then I shift my focus to make sure I’m holding mom’s perspective, too.

This is Systems Thinking 101: How can I see and hold multiple, often competing or contradictory, perspectives in a family? As family therapists, we are shifting away from Either/Or thinking — either mom is right or daughter is right — to Both/And thinking — how do both of their perspectives make sense?

This is the first lesson I give my students on Systems Thinking. Subscribe below for my next post on Systems Thinking, Part 2, where I’ll cover the next essential element of systemic thinking: how do both of their perspectives impact each other and keep them locked in a cycle?