Amidst shadows and silences: a faded memory of “us”.

Abstract

The clinical process described in this article begins with a request for an individual, home-based intervention, initially focused on Daniele’s psychological distress. However, the intervention soon expanded to include the couple’s relational dynamics. This shift was facilitated by several factors that collectively influenced the clinical process.

The systemic relational theoretical framework enabled the exploration of transactional patterns, boundaries, roles and couple dynamics. The home-based setting proved to be a privileged and highly enriching viewpoint, allowing direct observation of their relational context and of how the domestic environment reflected, each time, the relational atmosphere characterizing their system. Furthermore, clinical supervision was a crucial factor and a powerful driver of change, fostering new insights and meanings, that led to new intervention strategies.

The couple’s narrative soon gave more space to the recognition of a shared suffering and, alongside it, to the opportunity to express such experiences freely, gradually abandoning previous relational patterns of conflict avoidance and moving toward a clearer definition of themselves, both individually and as a couple.

Together, these elements enabled a broader and more relationally oriented exploration of the couple’s world, their interactional patterns, their family history, within a trigenerational framework, thereby opening up previously unconsidered possibilities.