Elaine Carney Gibson - Your Family Revealed: A Guide to Decoding the Patterns, Stories, and Belief Systems in Your Family

Praise for Your Family Revealed

A clear, easy-to-read guide on how families workfor anyone who wants to understand themselves better.

Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT

couple therapist, founder of the PACT Institute, and author of Wired for Love

A fascinating, warm-hearted guide to understanding how our families shape our personalities, relationships, and emotions. Elaine Gibsons book teaches us how to explore the most important dynamics in our lives, giving us powerful insights into our own everyday patterns and habits. Your Family Revealed is an invaluable resource that offers readers the gift of self-awarenessas well as a few hundred aha moments.

Jackson MacKenzie

author of Whole Again and Psychopath Free

It is rare to find a self-help book that takes difficult psychological concepts and puts them in a form that is helpful to everyones daily living. By providing workbook exercises, this book is an excellent resource for anyone who is doing their own therapeutic work, anyone who wants to know more about how to understand their family dynamics, and clinicians who want a succinct review of fundamental psychological theories. It offers helpful hints on how to handle family emotional triangles, family secrets, and dysfunctional family patterns while using wonderful real-life case examples. It is a must read!

Michael L. Chafin, MDiv, MEd, LMFT

former president of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

It was my honor to read Elaine Carney Gibsons Your Family Revealed. Gibsons knowledge of family systems theory, years of clinical experience and wisdom, and generous sharing of personal stories and insight are woven together with her warm and gently guiding voice. Your Family Revealed uniquely combines clinical theory in an accessible format with opportunities to apply and explore the readers own family experiences. This work is a gift to the counseling professional and beyond to anyone wishing to grow through insight about the family.

Erika Pluhar, PhD, EdS, LMFT, LPC, CST-S

This book is packed with key issues, explained from both personal and professional perspectives, related to understanding ones family system. Garnering wisdom distilled from her 50 years of clinical work and over 35 years of training family therapists, Elaine Carney Gibson has written an engaging, intelligent, accessible book for both the lay and professional reader. It is an important book for our time, and I highly recommend it.

Catherine McCall

author of the international bestselling memoir Never Tell, retired family therapist, and contributing writer for Psychology Today magazine

In her book, Your Family Revealed, Elaine Carney Gibson has managed to synthesize numerous concepts from the history of marriage and family therapy into a highly readable and applicable volume. Each thematic chapter offers theoretical perspectives gleaned from years of experience that is supported by intriguing and often entertaining examples. This is a truly helpful book for anyone who could benefit from a more enlightened understanding of the systems that we grow up in and those we create. It provides meaningful insights into the dynamics of human relationship and helps reveal the motivations and origins guiding many familial and relational challenges. Whether the reader is a therapist, an educator, or simply someone who wants a better understanding of the intricate relationship between ourselves and the systems we inhabit (as well as those that inhabit us), this accessible and informative book has much to offer.

Stuart D. Smith, LPC

As a recently retired family law attorney, I regret that I did not have access to the caring insights into couples and families presented so beautifully by Elaine Gibson. The relationships she describes in Your Family Revealed clearly illuminate familial struggles, helping to give direction to solutions for ways forward, even in conflict, whether in divorce or child custody cases. This superb book should definitely be in the library of every domestic relations attorney.

Carol B. Powell

attorney-at-law, Atlanta, Georgia

Ive finally found the book that I would wish for every person exploring their path of self-discovery. Elaine Gibsons book, Your Family Revealed, provides us with nuggets of wisdom that help us understand ourselves and our families. If one book can widen your mind, deepen your heart, and inspire your spirit, this is it!

Rev. Cameron Trimble

CEO of Convergence, author of Searching for the Sacred

Elaine has created an illuminating work that is truly a reflection of her five decades as a psychotherapist and educator. At a time when peoples curiosity about their ancestors is growing, this book can help individuals, couples, and families decipher their relationships with greater clarity and understanding. This book explains powerful concepts usually reserved for textbooks in user friendly language that results in an inspired guide for ones own life.

Janet Mainor, MS, LPC, NBCC, CPCS

executive director of The Link Counseling Center

Elaine Carney Gibson, LMFT, LPC

Sounds True

Boulder, CO 80306

2022 Elaine Carney Gibson

Sounds True is a trademark of Sounds True, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author(s) and publisher.

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical recommendations of physicians, mental health professionals, or other health-care providers. Rather, it is intended to offer information to help the reader cooperate with physicians, mental health professionals, and health-care providers in a mutual quest for optimum well-being. We advise readers to carefully review and understand the ideas presented and to seek the advice of a qualified professional before attempting to use them.

All names used throughout the book have been changed to protect patients privacy. In all case studies, circumstances have been changed or are a composite rendering.

Published 2022

Cover design by Jennifer Miles

Book design by Meredith Jarrett

Naomi Replansky, excerpt from An Inheritance from Collected Poems. Copyright 2012 by Naomi Replansky. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Black Sparrow / David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., godine.com.

S. H. Payer, Live Each Day to the Fullest. Reproduced by permission of American Greetings Corporation, @AGC, LLC.

BK06540

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gibson, Elaine Carney, author.

Title: Your family revealed : a guide to decoding the patterns, stories, and belief systems in your family / Elaine Carney Gibson, LMFT, LPC.

Description: Boulder, CO : Sounds True, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022005508 (print) | LCCN 2022005509 (ebook) | ISBN 9781649630049 (paperback) | ISBN 9781649630056 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Families--Psychological aspects. | Self-realization.

Classification: LCC HQ519 .G53 2022 (print) | LCC HQ519 (ebook) | DDC 646.7/8--dc23/eng/20220608

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005508

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005509