Introducing The Family Systems Hub
In 2019, I founded Play Therapy Hub, bringing together a collective of play therapists dedicated to healing, growth, and transformation for children affected by adversity and trauma.
By shifting my perceptions of the past and moving beyond victim narratives, I embraced the hidden order in my family dynamics. As a result, I discovered true gratitude. This journey of personal growth led me to explore the physiological and psychological impacts of transgenerational trauma. I also began to understand the unconscious patterns we inherit. I recognized that for children to truly thrive, parents must be actively involved and empowered within the family system.
Because of the deep influence of these inherited, often unconscious, and unresolved patterns, our focus naturally extends to parents. This allows them to reflect on their own childhoods, recover hidden strengths, and heal wounds. In doing so, they can unlock their inner freedom, wisdom, and intuition. By encouraging and supporting this parental self-mastery, we help create an environment where children can reach their fullest potential and flourish in life.
This evolution naturally led to the transformation from Play Therapy Hub to The Family Systems Hub, reflecting our broader mission of providing family-centred therapy focusing on the child, adult and families.
‘The Family Systems Hub was born from my own growth and transformation.’
– Helen Younan Barrett, CEO and Founder, The Family Systems Hub
What is Family Systems Approach?
Put simply, the family systems approach focuses on the entirety of the family unit, their behavioural patterns, and how they are interconnected, rather than on one individual. Systemic work can go back through generations, and the aim is to untangle the past from the present by working through some of the unresolved moments and patterns in a family’s history. At The Family Systems Hub in Melbourne, we utilise a systemic, developmental and integrative approach to support children, parents, and families. Our focus is on identifying and mobilising their strengths while addressing and transforming vulnerabilities within the family system.
The child shows us the symptoms that aren’t integrated in the family system.
Our work with children involved play-based therapy. It is a powerful tool to help little people work through tough feelings, and to aid in their path towards strong emotional intelligence and a secure sense of self. But families come to us exhausted, broken, confused, seeking a resolution… and kind of expecting the entire system to be “fixed” by addressing their child’s present behavioural symptoms. While that may be possible in isolation, when the family system isn’t working to its full potential, the child has little chance of working within it.
So, what if we reframe things by suggesting our child’s symptoms are instead offering up an opportunity to also address unresolved past experiences we haven’t yet integrated? This perspective shift allows us to approach parenting with greater empathy and understanding, recognising that our children’s struggles may mirror our own unfinished emotional work.
Embracing this perspective opens up the possibility of deeper connection and healing for both ourselves and our children.
The Family Systems Hub is a way to introduce complete, holistic healing and growth to families. By offering a pathway for parents and families to support their child’s journey, we’re giving that child a better chance at security, confidence, and happiness. We can’t authentically give children the gift of learning how to be emotionally fulfilled, when we’re still entangled in past unresolved trauma ourselves.
And for you, the parent? We’ve got YOU too.
Parenting can bring up so much pain, disconnection and dysregulation and there are triggers everywhere, every day. But triggers aren’t bad, we rather think of them as an invitation to complete something. To find your own peace within, and ultimately your child’s inner peace, the key is to do something with those triggers–unresolved and unprocessed wounds within us.
Our family therapists are here to help you sort through the web of the past and understand what’s relevant for you and what would be helpful to resolve to transform your relationship to parenting. It’s a chance to remove internal and external noise, remove the chorus of “should”s and unrealistic expectations. The sooner you’re able to take on this deeper work, and release yourself from entanglements, the sooner we can free the little people from our big problems and let them live and learn, and evolve, unencumbered.
Family Systemic work is about allowing children to step into their own journey, rather than taking on the unfinished business within their parent, and their parents before them. It’s about unlocking the doors of healing, one generation at a time…
