The Genogram: A Psychographic Map Of Your World

Because of my desire to help people preserve and document their family history in a vital and lasting way, the key component of the program Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring your Family Tree to Life and Leave a Lasting Legacy is a genogram, or a psychological family tree.

A genogram is a graphic representation—a diagram—of family members and their relationships over 3 to 5 generations. It can look very much like a family tree or a genealogy chart. (Examples are below.) However, it’s much more than standard genealogical information and can paint a more vivid picture of your family members–their personalities, passions, vulnerabilities and strengths, as well as the ways family members relate to one another.

With your genogram, you will gain a deeper understanding of what kind of family you come from, why your family functions the way it does, and why the individual members of your family, including yourself, have come to be the way they are.

A genogram adds another dimension to your family history. It is a type of genealogy, but a geneology that is up close and personal. While standard genealogical charts show an entire forest, genograms focus on a smaller, more intimate grove of trees. Specifically, your grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, children and even grandchildren and great grandchildren.

A genogram is also a gift to your descendants. It will help those you love understand their roots and their emotional inheritance, with all its vulnerabilities, passions, talents and strengths. A genogram is a key component of The Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring your Family Tree to Life and Leave a Lasting Legacy and is explored in depth in that program.

A genogram can also be a gift to yourself. As a family therapist for many years and now a private consultant, I’ve done hundreds of genograms and have yet to have someone come away from this service without significant insights and “aha’s” into their own behavior and the behaviors of their family. Below is a sample genogram of a mythical family:

Here is the computer version of the genogram:

With a genogram, the key concepts we look at in order to explore and understand your family’s history are:

• Beliefs and values in a family
• Ways of relating to one another
• Relationship patterns when dealing with anxiety, change and crisis
• Sibling position, birth order, and roles
• Quality and kind of parent and marital relationship
• “Scripts” and “actors” in a family performing “family roles”
• Themes and mottos of a family
• Triangles
• Relationship patterns and emotional responses to deaths, births, divorces, accidents,
  losses, etc.
• Patterns of illness or wellness in a family
• Gender beliefs
• Family secrets

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The Family Time Capsule will show you how to:

  Collect, record, organize and preserve family stories so they are not lost to history.
  Generate powerful letters to future generations that will help them feel they spent quality time with you in person.

  Identify the impacts of birth order, family roles, strengths and even family secrets.

  Build a genogram – a graphic, psychological map that brings your family tree to life.

  Complete a life review so descendants can learn from your example.

  Discover the personal and family benefits of a written, illustrated family chronology.

  Create a living legacy – a gift to future generations and build a powerful family history that will inform and inspire you and your descendants.

  Use fascinating and easily understandable examples of genograms based upon the lives of celebrities including Oprah & Princess Di.

  Discover who family members are, what their lives were like, their values, details of their relationships, and more.

  Organize your family history in a meaningful way and preserve the memories of your parents and grandparents as well as of your children and grandchildren.

  Preserve the stories that make your family unique . . . . . and the detailed information       on what family members were like, including strengths, interests, passions, gifts and even struggles.

  Create a comprehensive picture of grandparents, parents, siblings, children grandchildren and other family members who have played a significant role in your life and the life of your family.

  Put together the ultimate family scrapbook.

Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring Your Family Tree to Life & Leave A Lasting Legacy

ebook .pdf delivered instantly via email, $9.99

110 pages, 8-1/2″ x 11″ format