According to systemic psychotherapy, very often a problem is nothing more than a repeating series of unsuccessful attempts to solve it.
Most commonly, these are recurring relational patterns with other people that escalate into conflict each time and lead to a dead end. Systemic therapists call these patterns “endless games,” and they are among the first things examined in depth together with clients.
Therapists do this by asking how the person has tried to solve their problems up to now. The answer to this question leads to the discovery of a repeating pattern, which systemic psychotherapy describes as applying the “more of the same” recipe.
Here are a few examples of what this looks like.
If you have difficulty coping with the many tasks at work, you stay late to finish them. If time continues not to be enough, you start working on weekends as well. This continues until you collapse completely and are forced to radically reconsider your priorities and your way of working.
Another typical example of an “endless game” is conflict in couples where, in a tense situation, one partner reacts with silence while the other responds with attack and verbal aggression. The more one withdraws, the more persistent and forceful the other becomes. In this circular pattern of interaction, each partner sees themselves as the victim and believes that nothing can be done, because the one who needs to change is the other. It becomes clear that with this constant passing of the ball of blame, no solution can be reached. Instead, the situation ends in a deadlock—and in some cases, in the psychotherapist’s office.
The application of the “more of the same” recipe leads to so-called endless games, because within the repeating pattern of communication neither party stops to ask what they themselves could do differently in the situation. And in order to do something differently, one must first begin to think differently.
This is why, in such cases, the role of the systemic psychotherapist is to offer a new perspective and propose a “recipe” that is different from those already tried. This idea is also expressed in Einstein’s well-known statement:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
This new way of thinking is of a higher order—a meta-level—because it allows us to view the situation that troubles us from the outside, or from above. It enables a shift from conversation at the level of content to dialogue at the level of the relationship. The more skilled we become at recognizing these two layers of human communication, the easier it will be to talk about any subject, even the most difficult ones.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
