Double-Bind Situation Analysis

99. Double-bind messages occur with varying frequencies in everyday life. Can you give an example of such a transaction from home, school, or work where you were double bound? What did you do? What was the accompanying affect? What would have happened had you tried to interrupt the sequence?

As described by Goldberg, I., and Goldberg, H. (2013), a double-bind situation occurs when an individual receives repeated conflicting injunctions from the same person with whom the individual has an important ongoing relationship (p.111). Everyone experiences this at some point. Personally, I remember a particular episode during my teenage years when I was double bound. It occurred when my parents were getting divorced. I remember having several issues with my mom and stepdad. One day, I remember telling my mom I wanted to live with my dad. She immediately told me to leave, that it was my decision, and that she didn’t want to deal with “our horrible relationship” anymore. However, a few days after she came back to me crying telling me to do not leave her, that I was not going to be able to survive living with my dad all by myself, and not having her next me. It was a constant back and forth battle with my mom, until I decided to leave. Our mother-daughter
A clear trend emerged toward integration of family therapy models into a comprehensive approach. Therapists began adopting a not-knowing, exploratory, collaborative, turning to families as co-experts in solving their problems (p.129). Based on this, and considering the meaning of context and diversity between families, postmodernists believe that it is difficult for mental health professionals to be able to determine what should be considered to be “psychologically healthy”, since all families and individuals are different, and should only be understood within their own personal experiences and sociocultural