#Genogram social work symbols alcoholism software
#Genogram social work symbols alcoholism professional
#Genogram social work symbols alcoholism free

This column is just a brief overview of what a genogram can do for you. But this type of family research can benefit you and your family in recovery and be used as a healing tool. Houn! It’s in my head and one day I need to rebuild it for my family. I took so long, it was destroyed for confidentiality.

It sure took a lot of work to build that only to lose it when I handed in to my instructor and I took way too long to ask for it back. Who survived the boarding school era and who died in those schools. Building that genogram had me wondering and seeking answers for such questions as how did my grandma die, as her death was impacting and how did my prominent greatgreat grandfather die, how many family died of alcoholism and why. That meant looking up of what happened in history to my ancestors during the Indian wars, land loss and traumas suffered. The most impacting to me was understanding colonization and what intergenerational behaviors did to my ancestors. Sometimes if you don’t have this option, you can look up obituaries and old news clippings to find out about your ancestors and request death certificates if needed. For me, it took asking to find out who died of, what were their lives were like and what caused issues. Of course, it was by asking aunties, uncles and other elders to find out sometimes how people died or why kind of diseases they had. I went back several generations of my family and was able to see a view of my family history regarding family dying of alcoholism, diabetes, cancer, heart diseases and accidental deaths. It was a bit messy but was understandable.

I spend many evenings, drawing mine out and I did by free hand so it was extra hard. Years ago, in my college days, we had to build a genogram. Building a family genogram can help you see a better picture of your family’s relationship with these issues and guide recovery. Some of the biggest health issues we have in Indian country is diabetes, heart disease and high alcohol and drug use. Sometimes school counselors use genograms to help their students understand behavior and relationships and help set goals and career development.

That is why mental health professional have clients build genograms, it helps them to see patterns and creates understanding of what can be done for healing and identify areas of what needs improvement.Įven couples who are struggling to improve their relationships can use genograms to understand the influences of their families in their relationship. When you get done you can see the extensive history of your family in terms of health like diabetes, heart diseases, alcoholism related death, cancer and other illnesses that has a high risk of being passed down in line or even behavior patterns. It means labeling them to understand helpful patterns. It involves digging up more to add to your ancestors or current family names. So, as you can see, it takes more in just building a family history of names, birthdates and death dates. Also using symbols to mark males, females, divorces, separations and deaths. It is a matter of using different symbols to mark those traits. You use different symbols to key in behavioral patterns, individual traits, historical happenings, health, cause of deaths, what kind of family relationships there were, unhealthy or healthy, alcoholism and drug use. The key is to visualize patterns and psychological factors that affect family relationships. You can go back as far as you can in generations. Of course, you can always freehand it if you are great at drawing but sometimes it can get messy, unless you are a good artist and of course you can always use a computer art program to draw a template.Ī genogram looks like a family tree template, using names, birth and death dates of your family. Some are free and some you had to pay for and some offer a free trial.

And there is software available online that can help you to build a genogram. Counselors, social workers use genograms to help their patients to understand their family relationships and history and how it affects them.Ī genogram is a picture drawing of a person’s family relationships and history. In building family trees, sometimes we want to go further and build a genogram.

#Genogram social work symbols alcoholism free

#Genogram social work symbols alcoholism professional

#Genogram social work symbols alcoholism software