#GENOGRAM SOCIAL WORK PROGRAM FOR PC SOFTWARE#

Some licensed mental health professionals have access to software that can help us co-create elaborate family genograms for our clients, but honestly, you definitely don’t need to have this or have a therapist who has access to this in order to create a powerful family genogram. With this knowledge, with this increased self-awareness, we can then be more mindful of what we may need to do if we want to stop certain intergeneration patterns from perpetuating (with our kids, with our spouse, with ourselves, etc.), we can better understand why our living relatives are the way they are, and we can, perhaps, have greater compassion for ourselves and others when we see more plainly what their experience has been like.Īnd, put plainly, making a family genogram can just be plain old fascinating!įamily genograms can be simple or astonishingly complex. When we can see the patterns (for better or for worse) of interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics that have come before us, influenced us, and may still be influencing us, we’re armed with increased self-awareness. When we create a family genogram, we can make explicit the intergenerational patterns that have played out across the generations of our ancestors (patterns that may still be playing out today). I’m a big believer that knowledge is power (hence my love of those personality-inventorying quizzes!). Think of it as a family tree for grownups or as an ancestral, psychological map-making. The goal of the family genogram is to offer us a graphical, rich, detailed look at the unique and possibly complex medical and psychological factors that play out across the generations of your family.

Remember those family trees most of us had to make in elementary school?Ī genogram goes far beyond the listing out of individuals and names and dates of birth and death to use a set of symbols to identify deeper, richer, and important information about the kinds of relationships that exist(ed) across the family tree and what the individuals on the family tree may have dealt with/deal within their lives. So, if you, too, enjoy tools that help illuminate puzzle pieces of your personality and history, and if you’d like to explore one of my favorite psychological tools, keep reading. Now, a family genogram isn’t as simple as answering a checklist of questions a family genogram requires more effort and self-reflection (if not historical digging) on your part, but once you complete your family genogram, it can often contain very valuable data that can better help you understand where you come from, why dynamics are the way they are now, and what you may need to be mindful of in terms of your own personal work if you would like to create intergenerational change (with your own kids, your own spouse). No quiz is ever going to contain the be-all-end-all answer to who you are and show you all of what you may need to know as you move through the world.īut, recognizing this, one of the most powerful “puzzle pieces” I’ve come across for myself and my clients can sometimes be found in the tool of making a family genogram.

Now, importantly, I think of these quiz results as pieces of the puzzle of you, not the whole puzzle. Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Love Languages, Strengths Finder, Kolbe Index, all of those tests I’ve taken, enjoyed and are, I think, great for potentially discovering more poignant data pieces about yourself. I’m a sucker for personality typing quizzes.įor as long as I can remember, I’ve loved those tests, quizzes, and inventory lists that help me collect more puzzle pieces of who I am.

#GENOGRAM SOCIAL WORK PROGRAM FOR PC SOFTWARE#

Genogram social work program for pc