ABSTRACT
A client said it best: “This crisis just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit with any way that I understand the world. It’s as though my brain has taken leave from my body and I can’t make things fit anymore. I feel so stupid and incompetent. My world has been turned upside down.” This gentleman speaks to the existential nature of crisis and its ability to take us out of a grounded, predictable life. While all humans understand that change is natural and developmental, most are less flexible to the nature of change than may be believed. At a bone level, Western culture is based on the dualism of science-that things are either “this” or “that,” and what is to be believed must be what can be seen and proven. The dominant culture looks to believe those things that are rational, black and white, and easy to categorize. In order to integrate crisis, dualistic investigations in the world eventually have to be put aside, with all prejudice and assumption, in order to meet the world through intuition. The application of the systemic treatment model allows for this process to unfold. Rather than explaining and analyzing the crisis, the individual is encouraged to describe and understand it.
