What is a family genogram and what is it for?

Often the family genogram helps deal effectively with incomprehensible incidents in lifearising from some special events in the life of your ancestors.

Professional hints and analysis of the psychotherapist will help you quickly get to the bottom of the most exciting problems and determine ways to correct unwanted situations.

General concept

This is a sequential circuit. from generation to generation.

It resembles a graphic image of the genealogical tree, but differs from the latter in more detailed information about each member of the genus and an indication of the relationships within individual families.

It can not be classified as a test, there is no border frame, given that you can judge about presence of pathologies in relationships. It is simply a convenient and interesting tool for drawing up hypotheses about the influence of certain phenomena on a person’s current life.

Why is it needed?

Each person builds his life taking into account childhood experiences of relationships with loved ones. In this case, someone consciously uses the habits and traditions supported by their parents.

Someone seeks to avoid family policy, imposed by relatives in childhood. And someone always chooses this or that behavioral scheme in a number of situations, without even thinking.

Since the “route” is tightly imprinted in the genes, there is no way to resist the inner call.

According to Bert Hellinger's Theories a person not only accumulates the experience of building relationships with the help of his family, but also receives a baggage of such knowledge, belonging to the family-clan system, consisting of all generations of the genus.

The system has a number of laws. One of them concerns the membership of the clan.

Its essence: for the system, every member of the family who once lived, exists today and even died in infancy or who died before his birth is important.

And it is impossible to specifically commit oblivion to anyone — otherwise, someone from the descendants will be given the obligation to live the life of a guilty and forgotten ancestor.

Detailed genogram allows deal with the cause of eventsdue to the life of the genus.

Therefore, by analyzing the scheme, you can try to influence your destiny in situations where the tendency to walk in a circle due to the presence of birth routes appears - awareness of the problems in the clan makes it easier to find a way to fight the undesirable consequences of life due to the guilt or the testament of grandfathers .

When compiling the genosociogram, the visual perception of the characteristics of emotional relationships between close relatives at the current time and in the past is simplified.

This makes it easier to find the relationship between today's stumbling blocks and problems that existed before. In some cases, understanding the source of the conflict, gives hope that it will still be resolved and will cease to annoy.

Additional benefits from work on the compilation of the genogram:

organizes and expands the archive of information about relatives from several generations;
Details about the health of ancestors make it easier to predict the risk of developing inherited diseases, dependencies among descendants, help to take preventive measures in time.

What information is indicated when compiling?

All significant events and dates for people. The scheme must make:

Days and years of birth, death.
Characteristics of family relations between relatives.
Marriages (not only official, but also civil), the duration of each, especially the conclusion.
Children in unions, including adoptive (it is advisable to indicate all cases of miscarriages or abortions — the mental essence of the dead can influence the lives of living brothers and sisters).
Happy and tragic events, the connection with social changes in society at that time - if there is.
Social status, occupation of each relative.
Changing of the living place.
Criminal histories and conditions for obtaining punishment.
Circumstances of death of relatives (for natural reasons, violent death, suicide).
Chronic diseases, known addictions.
Cases of incest and consequences.
Family Legends.
Family secrets.

How many generations need to be specified? At least three generations.

List of questions for yourself and relatives

For the sake of completeness, it allows one to understand which generic tendencies affect the current life of the representatives of the genus maximum data required about the life of every family.

You need to be prepared for the fact that some of the information may will be shocking discoveriessince not all the circumstances of one or another event were made by relatives the patrimonial “public”.

Something is learned through correspondence, something is told under the influence of a spiritual impulse or because of the presentiment of a speedy departure to other worlds.

Therefore, it is impossible to manage without delicacy and thinking through your line of conduct when collecting data about your ancestors.

What information you need to know, collecting data about the families of your clan:

About the heads of families, personal qualities of the rest of the household.
The existing and existing family coalitions and ways to resolve internal conflicts.
Features of relations between distant relatives.
The primary values of families.
Moral debts of relatives or ancestors, the conditions of occurrence.
Peculiarities of behavior close.
Personal secrets and difficult topics (love on the side, recognized by the family and fostered "fruits" of such relationships, mental disorders, shameful behavior - gambling, dissolute life).
Aliens who actively influenced family events (godparents, nannies, family friends).

What documents to study?

Documents, the study of which will help to make a detailed genogram:

birth certificates, marriage or termination (reconciliation of dates sometimes leads to interesting insights);
correspondence (it is necessary to get acquainted with it with the permission of the recipients or recipients, if there is an opportunity to receive approval for research activities);
hospital cards;
employment records, extracts from state institutions;
notebooks, notebooks;
video, audio recordings of celebrations or personal appeals.

How to analyze your own story?

The applied value of the genosociogram revealed by psychotherapist or psychologist. The task of his client is to collect information about the family and present it in the most reliable way possible.

The specialist helps to design the data according to the rules for the compilation of the genogram and determines the relationship between past events and current difficulties in the life of the client.

For example, systematically repeated bouts of depression may be an unconscious reaction to the tragic events in a person’s past that he doesn’t even remember.

Studying relationships and family relationships

What does the analysis of the scheme:

Using lines of a certain form, give a schematic description of relations between close relatives (who is confronted with someone and who is united into an alliance, hidden tendencies in relations).
Data on family occupations may suggest a choice of future employment.
Understanding the circumstances of the life of a relative helps to understand the reasons for the development of the characteristics of his character, to project his further behavior and possible options for correcting unwanted actions on his part.

Categories in Family History Knowledge

The schematic image contains:

Statistical information (about the ancestor of the genealogical tree, the vastness of the clan, the fecundity of individual families).
Emotional patterns (the influence of individuals in the family on the lives of other relatives).
Religious preferences of the genus.
Chronology of the development of hereditary diseases, disorders, addictions.

In what directions to make a genosociogram?

In addition to entering personal data, it is highly desirable to indicate the type of relationship within individual family cells and designate features of the spiritual connection between more distant relatives if you are aware of obvious favors or oppositions.

What will help make the scheme more informative:

Information from conversations with elderly relatives about the composition of the family (sometimes the younger generation is unaware of family secrets, unprofitable representatives of the family, died in infancy uncles, aunts, etc.).
Family archive.
The study of medical cards close.
Modern means of communication - to communicate with distant relatives abroad, it is not necessary to spend money on visas and travel.

In drawing up the scheme it is desirable to use specially designed notation for people and relationships between them.

Squares are usually denoted by men, and by circles of women (see example). The size of the figure indicates the importance of a person in the life of the initiator of the map compiler.
Strikethrough is a sign of a person’s death.
The lines connecting the figures - the designation of marriage, the diagonal dash on it - the gap, two - a divorce.
The connection of the figures with a dotted or broken line shows distant or tensions, respectively.

Instructions for compiling a genosociogram family.

Search patterns for the analysis of the picture

Determination of patterns affecting the lives of today's members of the genus better to entrust the psychotherapist.

Since, for example, a person without knowledge of human psychology does not even think that the low self-esteem of one of the family members and the birth of his younger brother is a direct relationship.

What to do with the genogram?

Data analysis will allow get a lot of options for schemes further ways to solve existing problemsmay have arisen from the pressure on your ancestral debts today.
Undertake to study it when difficulties arise in the course of life. Awareness of the fact that there is an invisible genus behind your shoulders and each of its representatives had difficulties, often far more serious than you have today, helps to get peace of mind and returns strength to move forward.
Knowledge of chronic diseases in relatives allows identify preventive measures long before the onset of visible manifestations of disease.

Detailed genogram - This is a schematic representation of the entire animal family. Many of the information covered in it may have been considered confidential information for decades.

Therefore, it is not worth making it public domain if all the relatives living today who told you about the ugly aspects of the family do not agree to an open demonstration of the finished project.

Store it as one of the archived documents. If you want to demonstrate to your friends and acquaintances the branching of your family tree, make a mini-copy of the scheme, indicating only the names and surnames of relatives and general dates in it, but do not add details to the map.