Relationship maturity and how it can grow at each phase of the life cycle

“Each stage of the life cycle, from leaving home to facing death, provides distinctive opportunities to work on being a bit more differentiated — to be real people in our important relationships. P 5-6

“Life stages help us appreciate how we’re never operating in an individual vacuum but always within a system of relationships. In the space between people, where anxieties flow back and forth, we can find clues as to how we relate that go well beyond explanations based on genetic make-up and temperament.” P 7-8

Growing Yourself Up. Jenny Brown, Exisle pub, 2012.

This 1 day workshop will explore the particular challenges and growth opportunities at each key family life transition.  Each life transition presents unique challenges to a person’s and a family’s capacity to adapt to change. The degree of relational maturity, or differentiation of self, impacts the way that an individual and a family system is able to negotiate important developmental tasks of the life cycle.

This workshop will invite participants to explore systems theory through the lens of their own life cycle transitions and to think about how an awareness of life cycle challenges to systems stability can be useful in assisting those who are in the midst of transition stressors.

The adjustment issues of each stage will be thoroughly explored and then applied to clinical work and the workers own growth. It will cover Focussed Psychological Strategies in Relationship skills Training & Psycho education on relationship effectiveness.

Part 1

• Differentiation in Childhood and Adolescence
• The Leaving Home transition – the fingerprint for future relationships
• The single young adult- Re-negotiating degree of dependence on parents and others.
• Partnering- The maturity demands and opportunities of marriage and sex
• Parenting- The arrival of another generation and its predicable stressors and management patterns

Part 2

• Disruptions to the Life Cycle – separation & divorce, premature death, chronic illness.
• The second Half of Life- new challenges as grand parenting issues emerge.
• Relational adjustments with work changes, such as retirement.
• Family Systems and death and loss.

This workshop has been developed as a companion to Jenny Brown’s Book “Growing Yourself Up; How to bring your best to all of life’s relationships”. Participants will receive this book as part of their registration.

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