Why Systemic Therapy Matters: Or, Why You’re Not the Only Car on the Road

Peter Attridge, Ph.D., LMFT

I spend a fair amount of time in traffic.


Not the cinematic kind with windows down and music blasting—the kind where you’re somehow both late and completely stationary, inching forward just enough to keep hope alive. The kind where someone cuts across three lanes like they’ve received a personal invitation from destiny, and you find yourself having a surprisingly theological internal dialogue about justice, mercy… and turn signals.


And somewhere in the middle of that—usually when I realize I’ve been gripping the steering wheel like it personally offended me—I’m reminded of something I tell clients fairly often:


You’re not the only car on the road.


It’s obvious when you say it like that. Almost annoyingly obvious. But it’s much harder to live like it’s true—especially when you’re stressed, hurt, or convinced that your situation is uniquely frustrating.


That tension—between what we know intellectually and how we actually live—is where systemic therapy tends to do its best work.


The Comfortable Fiction of “It’s Just Me”

Most people don’t walk into therapy saying, “I think I’m part of a larger relational system that influences my behavior.” They say things like, “I’m overwhelmed,” or “I can’t stop thinking this way,” or “Why does this keep happening?”And underneath those questions is usually a quieter assumption: Something is wrong with me.


Now, to be fair, personal responsibility matters. Therapy is not about outsourcing your agency. But one of the first shifts that happens in systemic work is this:


We stop pretending that your struggles exist in isolation. Because they don’t.


You don’t just feel anxious. You feel anxious in conversations, in relationships, in environments that either amplify or soothe that anxiety. You don’t just shut down. You shut down in response to something—or someone. You don’t just get angry. You get angry within a pattern that has a history.


And once you start to see that, things get more complicated—but also more hopeful.


Traffic Is a System (Even When It Feels Personal)

Let’s go back to traffic, because it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting here. You’re driving along, everything’s fine, and then suddenly—brake lights. A slowdown. No clear cause. You inch forward for a while, mildly irritated, maybe a little self-righteous. And eventually, the road opens up again… with no visible explanation. No accident. No construction. Just… nothing. What you experienced was a ripple effect. Someone, somewhere, tapped their brakes. The next person reacted a little more strongly. The next person overcorrected. And within seconds, you had a wave of slowdown moving backward and creating traffic.


Here’s the key: by the time it reached you, the original cause was invisible and that’s how most relational problems work.


By the time someone shows up in therapy saying, “This is the problem,” what they’re actually experiencing is the end of a much longer chain of interactions.


  • A partner withdraws → the other pursues.
  • The pursuit intensifies → the withdrawal deepens.
  • The cycle repeats until both people feel misunderstood.


No one woke up and decided, “Today I will create a dysfunctional pattern.” But here we are.


Systems Don’t Care Who Started It

This is usually the moment in therapy where things get… delicate. Because once we start talking about patterns, someone inevitably wants to know: So whose fault is it? It’s a fair question. It’s also the wrong one.


Systemic therapy isn’t particularly interested in assigning blame; it’s interested in understanding the loop. If traffic backs up, it’s not especially helpful to track down the exact driver who tapped their brakes three miles ago and hold a tribunal...though that would be nice sometimes. What’s more helpful is understanding how the pattern formed—and how it keeps going.


In families and couples, that often looks like this:


  • The more one person criticizes, the more the other withdraws.
  • The more the other withdraws, the more intense the criticism becomes.


Both people feel justified. Both people feel stuck.


And both are participating in something larger than either of them intended.


The Slightly Uncomfortable Truth: You Affect the System

Here’s where systemic therapy becomes both challenging and empowering. If you are part of the system, then you are influencing it though not controlling it entirely. While you’re not responsible for everything, you’re influencing it in ways that matter.


This is often where I’ll say something that clients don’t always love initially:


“You may not have created this pattern… but you are participating in it.”


And to their credit, most people sit with that. Sometimes with a raised eyebrow. Sometimes with a deep sigh. Sometimes with a scoff.


Because it means two things at once:


  1. You’re not the sole problem.
  2. You’re also not completely off the hook.

Which, as it turns out, is actually good news.


Small Changes, Real Impact

One of the things I appreciate most about systemic work is that it doesn’t require everyone to change at once. In fact, that almost never happens. Usually, one person starts doing something slightly different.


They pause instead of reacting.


They ask a question instead of making an accusation.


They stay present instead of shutting down.


At first, it feels unnatural, like driving at a different speed than the rest of traffic—slightly awkward, maybe even a little risky.


But systems adjust.


If one person stops escalating, the pattern has to shift. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not cleanly. But it shifts. This is where systemic work overlaps with something I often tell clients: growth is rarely dramatic—it’s usually quiet, repetitive, and a little inconvenient. (If you’ve ever tried to “fix your life” in a week, you already know how that story ends.)

Family Systems: The Road You Learned to Drive On

Of course, none of this starts in adulthood. We learn how to “drive” in relationships long before we realize we’re doing it.


How was conflict handled in your family?


Who expressed emotion—and who didn’t?


What happened when someone needed something?


These early environments shape how we show up later:


  • The person who avoids conflict may have grown up in a home where conflict felt dangerous.
  • The person who over-explains may have learned that being misunderstood had consequences.
  • The person who takes care of everyone else may have been the stabilizer in a chaotic system.


These patterns are not random. They’re adaptive.


Or, as I sometimes say in sessions, “Your brain is not broken—it’s just loyal to an old environment.” The problem is that what worked then doesn’t always work now.

A Quiet Intersection with Faith

Without making this overly theological, systemic thinking fits rather naturally with a Christian understanding of the person. We are not meant to exist as isolated individuals. We are relational by design. From a clinical perspective, that means your emotional life is shaped in connection. From a spiritual perspective, it means something similar: we belong to one another in ways that are not purely symbolic.


When one part of a family system shifts, others feel it.

When one person grows, it rarely stays contained.


This echoes something I’ve written elsewhere—that we don’t heal in theory; we heal in relationship, often slowly and sometimes awkwardly. And that matters, because it reframes healing from a private project into something that has real relational weight.


Not pressure—just weight.


The Courage to See Clearly

Systemic therapy asks something that is simple, but not easy:

“Can you see the whole picture?”


Not just your intentions or your feelings, but the interaction itself.


What do you do when they do that?

And what do they do when you do that?

And how long has that been happening?


It requires a kind of humility—not the self-critical kind, but the honest kind. Because it’s much easier to say, “They’re the problem.” It’s harder—but far more useful—to ask, “What happens between us?”


Why This Actually Works


If therapy stays focused only on the individual, it often misses the very thing that keeps the problem going:

You can gain insight.

You can learn coping strategies.

You can even feel better—for a while.


But if you return to the same relational patterns without understanding them, those patterns tend to… reintroduce themselves just like those orange construction barrels we all love so much. Systemic therapy connects the dots. It helps people understand not just what they feel, but how those feelings get organized in a relationship.


And that’s where lasting change tends to happen.


Back to Traffic (One Last Time)


If every driver understood—really understood—that their behavior affected the flow of traffic, things wouldn’t be perfect. But they might be different. There would be a little more space. A little less overreaction. A slightly greater awareness that we are all participating in something shared.


Relationships work the same way.


You don’t need perfection. You need awareness.


A Final Thought


As a therapist, I’ve become less interested in identifying “the problem person” and more interested in understanding the pattern people are caught in. Because most people aren’t trying to create dysfunction. They’re trying—often sincerely—to navigate relationships with the tools they’ve been given.


Sometimes those tools work. Sometimes they don’t.


And sometimes, as I’ve written before, we end up measuring ourselves—or our relationships—by performance rather than by something deeper and more stable. Systemic therapy offers a different path. It helps people step back, see the system more clearly, and begin making small changes that ripple outward—into marriages, families, and even the next generation.


And yes, occasionally, I think about all of this while sitting in traffic.


Because the lesson holds:

You’re not the only car on the road.

What you do matters.

And even small shifts can change the flow.


If this kind of work resonates with you—if you’re starting to notice patterns in your relationships that feel bigger than just “you”—this is exactly the kind of work we do at www.holyfamilycounselingcenter.com. Not to assign blame, but to help you see more clearly, respond more intentionally, and move toward relationships that actually feel different—not just temporarily better.

Trudging: The Long, Slow Road of Healing

By Peter Attridge, PhD, LMFT • August 25, 2026
“Uh…trudging. You know, trudging?” If you have seen A Knight’s Tale, you may remember this wonderfully strange scene. William Thatcher comes across Geoffrey Chaucer walking along the road—dirty, disheveled, and apparently having a very bad day. When William asks what he is doing, Chaucer explains that he is “trudging.” He defines it as the slow, weary, depressing, yet determined walk of someone who has nothing left except the impulse to simply soldier on. And if this doesn’t give a good impression of the healing, I don’t know what does. Of course, this is not the inspirational-poster version of healing, or where you wake up one morning, discover that you have finally “done the work,” and suddenly become the emotionally regulated, perfectly self-aware, spiritually mature person you always hoped you would be. In my years of working as a therapist, I have found that real healing is often much less glamorous.Often, healing looks like trudging, slowly putting one foot in front of the other. Then another. And another. Sometimes you make great progress. Sometimes you seem to walk for miles only to discover that you have somehow arrived back at the same place. Sometimes there are beautiful views, sometimes there is rain, and sometimes both at the same time. There are blisters and you seriously question why you thought walking this particular road was a good idea in the first place. Yet you keep going because the horizon is a little closer, things just a smidge brighter. That is the part of healing we do not talk about nearly enough. We Like the Destination More Than the Journey We live in a culture that loves transformation stories. We love before-and-after pictures. We love placing our hand against the camera and pulling it away fully transformed while “Can we skip to the good part?” plays in the background. We love the moment in a movie when the main character finally realizes what has been holding him back, says something profound, and rides triumphantly into the sunset. I’m here to tell you that therapy does not always work that way. Neither does life. You may understand exactly why you react the way you do and still react that way. You may know that your childhood shaped you without knowing how to stop carrying your childhood into every relationship. You may recognize that you need better boundaries and still feel guilty every time you set one. You may forgive someone and still feel hurt. You may know intellectually that you are loved and still struggle to believe it when you are lonely. None of this necessarily means you are failing but it may mean that you are trudging. Healing is rarely a straight line from brokenness to wholeness. It is more like a pilgrimage. And pilgrims, by definition, travel; they make stops, they rest, they get lost, they get sick, and they have to ask for directions. Occasionally they may get waylaid for a long time to build up money, strength, or whatever else is needed to continue the journey. Then they keep going. The Trouble with the Shortcut One of the hardest things about healing is that we want a shortcut, and it makes sense. If something has hurt for ten years, we would prefer not to spend another ten years working through it. If a marriage has developed unhealthy patterns over fifteen years, it would be wonderful if one good conversation could repair everything. If grief has taken up residence in our hearts, we would love to tell it that its lease has expired. But psychological and spiritual growth rarely responds to our preferred timeline. There are reasons for this. Our brains learn through repetition. Relationships develop through repeated interactions. Habits are formed over time. Attachment patterns are not created in a single afternoon, and they generally are not undone in one either. This is one reason therapy can sometimes feel frustrating. A person may say, “I understand this now. Why am I still doing it?” And I tell them that understanding is important, but understanding is not the same thing as transformation. Knowing the road is not the same thing as walking it. And walking it once is not the same thing as learning how to travel it. Sometimes we need to walk the same stretch of road again and again before we begin to recognize the landscape, remember where the pitfalls are, and hopefully learn a better path. There Will Be Stops Every pilgrimage has stops.This matters because we often interpret stopping as failing. Yet, working on ourselves can involve hitting a plateau where we don’t see the effort changing the landscape. But stopping is not necessarily quitting. Sometimes you stop because you are tired, or need to heal a new or remembered injury. Sometimes you stop because you have reached a place where you need to reconsider your direction. There is wisdom in stopping. In therapy, progress sometimes looks like learning to pause before reacting, or noticing an emotion before immediately trying to get rid of it. It may mean taking a breath before sending the text or sitting with discomfort rather than immediately distracting yourself. That pause can feel like doing nothing. Instead, think of it as practice. A person who has spent years responding automatically may discover that there is now a tiny space between feeling something and acting on it. That tiny space can be the beginning of freedom. The pilgrim has stopped. But the pilgrim has not quit. Sometimes You Will Walk Backward Perhaps the most discouraging part of healing is what we call a “setback.”You thought you had moved beyond something and then suddenly you find yourself doing it again. You thought you had learned not to take everything personally. Then somebody sends a three-word text—“We need to talk”—and your nervous system immediately begins preparing for the apocalypse. Welcome to being human! A setback does not erase progress, in fact, sometimes the difference between then and now is not that the old pattern never happens again. The difference is that you recognize it sooner. This means you might recover more quickly, apologize more easily, or ask for help as you need it. Very simply, that is progress. Is it glamorous? No. But eventually you realize the road may look familiar, but you are not the same person walking it. “I Will Make a Way in the Wilderness” There is a beautiful image in the prophet Isaiah: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” —Isaiah 43:19 I have always liked the fact that God does not promise that there will be no wilderness. However, He does promise to make a way through it. And this distinction is so important. We can assume that healing means God will remove every difficult thing from our lives. If we pray hard enough, understand enough, or finally get our lives organized enough, the wilderness will disappear. Reading Scripture tells a different story; that there is a road through the wilderness. Faith does not necessarily eliminate the hard road but faith can give us the courage to keep walking it. As a Catholic therapist, this is where psychology and faith can sit together quite comfortably. Therapy helps us understand our wounds, relationships, patterns, emotions, and behaviors. Faith reminds us that our wounds are not the entirety of our identity; we are not simply the sum of our trauma, our mistakes, our diagnoses, our family history, our regrets, or our worst moments. There is more to the story and sometimes healing is learning to live from that larger story. Pay Attention to the Small Milestones When people are trudging, they need markers otherwise, the road can feel endless. So pay attention to small changes: maybe you handled a difficult conversation differently, maybe you noticed your anxiety before it became overwhelming, or maybe you recognized that your anger was covering sadness. We tend to measure healing by asking, “Am I completely better?” and that is often the wrong question. A better question is: “Am I different than I was?” And then: “What is different?” Progress becomes easier to see when we stop looking only for dramatic transformation. Pilgrims count milestones and we should too. There is something else worth counting along the way: the days themselves. In an earlier reflection, Teach Us to Number Our Days, I wrote about Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” The prayer is not simply about counting how many days we have left. It is an invitation to pay attention to the days we actually have. When we are hurting, we can become so focused on the destination that we miss the day we are standing in. We spend so much energy asking, “When will I finally be better?” that we forget to ask, “What is this day asking of me?” Maybe today is a day for courage….rest…or an honest conversation. Not every day has to be a breakthrough. Some days are simply mile markers. And if we learn to number those days—to notice them rather than rush past them—we may discover that healing has been happening in places we were too busy looking for it to see. Learn to Travel Light There is another lesson pilgrims understand: you cannot carry everything. At some point, the backpack becomes too heavy. Healing often involves discovering what we have been carrying that no longer belongs to us: old shame, other people's expectations, the need to be liked by everyone. This list could be endless because we all have our things that we carry, even I do. Sometimes things need to be confronted, forgiven, grieved, or accepted. And some things need to be put down. This does not mean pretending the past did not happen, it means refusing to make the past carry your backpack forever. Healing is not always about becoming someone entirely new. It can be about becoming the person you were created to be underneath everything you have been carrying. Do Not Trudge Alone There is a reason pilgrimage has traditionally been a communal experience. People walk together and share food and stories, they encourage one another, and complain about their feet hurting. They offer direction when others are lost. Healing works better this way too, when we share it with others. A good therapist can walk with you for part of the road. Friends and family can walk with you. A spouse can walk with you. A faith community can walk with you. And every now and then, you need someone who can simply say, “Yes, this is hard. Keep going.” Not every problem needs immediate advice. Sometimes the most healing thing another person can offer is presence. Discovering that you are not the only person who has struggled with this particular stretch of road brings a lot of comfort, and power. What Do You Do When the Road Gets Long? If healing feels like trudging right now, a few simple practices can help. Keep your expectations realistic.
 Healing is not a race. Give yourself permission to grow slowly. Measure progress differently.
 Instead of asking whether the problem has disappeared, ask whether you are responding to it differently. Take the next step.
 You do not need to figure out the next fifty miles. What is the next healthy thing you can do today? Rest without quitting. 
 A Sabbath is not a failure of productivity. Sometimes rest is part of the journey. Notice the scenery. 
 Do not become so focused on reaching the destination that you miss the life happening along the way. Accept help. 
 Therapy, friendship, community, prayer, spiritual direction, medical care, or other forms of support can all be part of the journey. Remember your story is still being written. 
 A difficult chapter is not the same thing as a difficult ending. And perhaps most importantly: Do not confuse slow progress with no progress. The Road of Happy Destiny There is a phrase used in Anonymous groups that I find beautiful: “We will trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.” The phrase comes from the Twelve-Step tradition, where recovery is described not as arriving at some perfect endpoint but as continuing to walk the road of recovery, one day at a time. There is something almost comical about putting the words trudging and happy destiny together. Trudging sounds miserable. Happy destiny sounds like a Disney movie. But when we put them together you get something much closer to real life. The road can be difficult and still be good. You can be frustrated and still be healing. You can even occasionally sit down on the side of the road, question every life decision that brought you there, eat a snack, and eventually get back up….I’ve been there. Perhaps this is part of what we miss when we imagine healing as a destination because healing is not simply the place where we finally arrive. It is the person we become while walking. The patience we develop, the humility we learn, the courage we practice. So if today feels like one of those days when you are not exactly flourishing, thriving, conquering, or becoming your best self, perhaps there is another word for it. Maybe you are trudging and this is okay. Put one foot in front of the other and take the next step. Rest when you need to, let someone walk beside you, and look up occasionally. The road you walked is behind you, and when you take the time to see where you came from, things can look a lot better. And trust that the road does not have to be easy to be meaningful. The wilderness can still contain a path. The person who keeps walking, even slowly, even imperfectly, even with a few complaints along the way, may discover that trudging was not merely a sign that life was difficult. It was evidence that they had not given up. That is the strange gift of the long road that we are, perhaps, trudging towards a happy destiny. Thoughts from the Couch From the couch, I have come to appreciate just how rarely healing looks the way we imagine it will. We tend to think healing means arriving somewhere: I used to struggle with this, but now I don't. And while those moments certainly happen, much of the work is quieter. It is learning to recognize an old pattern a little sooner. It is responding differently the next time. It is becoming more comfortable with discomfort. It is realizing that the thing that once knocked you flat now only makes you stumble. That may not feel particularly impressive. But it is. I sometimes tell clients that therapy is less like taking an elevator and more like walking a trail. Unfortunately, there is no express elevator to emotional health. There are switchbacks, rest stops, wrong turns, steep inclines, and occasionally a spectacular view that makes you realize why you started walking in the first place. Also, there is often mud. Lots of mud. The goal isn't to avoid every difficult part of the journey. The goal is to become someone who can walk through those difficult places with greater wisdom, resilience, connection, and hope. That is one of the reasons I appreciate the image of pilgrimage. A pilgrim doesn't expect the road to be easy. The pilgrim understands that the road itself is part of the journey. If you find yourself trudging right now, you don't necessarily need to have the entire road figured out. You may simply need to determine the next step. Next steps look like having hard conversations, creating boundaries, forgiving those that have harmed us, and sometimes it is making an appointment with a therapist and admitting, “I'm tired of walking this part of the road by myself.” At Holy Family Counseling Center, we believe therapy is not about fixing people who are broken. It is about accompanying people as they grow, heal, and become more fully themselves. For those who want it, faith can be part of that journey as well—not as a substitute for sound psychological care, but as another source of meaning, hope, and perspective. You don't have to know exactly where the road ends. You just have to be willing to take the next step. And if the next step feels more like a trudge than a triumphant march, that's okay. Most worthwhile journeys probably do.

Cultivating a Healthy Marriage in the Busyness of Life

By Peter Attridge, Ph.D., LMFT • July 30, 2026
Discover how to stay connected, intentional, and emotionally close in marriage despite busy schedules. Practical wisdom with gentle faith-based insight.

Working In Your Life vs. Working On Your Life: The Secret to Lasting Mental and Spiritual Growth

By Peter Attridge, Ph.D., LMFT • July 17, 2026
Learn the difference between working in your life and working on your life. Discover how balancing daily habits with long-term reflection can improve your mental health, relationships, and spiritual life.