Facing the Threats That No One Could Face on Their Own: Imagining the Family as a Superhero Team

In the counseling literature, families pose unique strengths and challenges. We know families can inform worldviews, model relationship dynamics, and provide anchoring support systems that help weather the dynamic currents of life. However, families can also produce conflict and stuckness that may reflect a negative mirror image of the benefits. Family counselors have used techniques like reframes, family sculpts, and enactments to help them root out and disrupt patterns of behavior that dysregulate the system. These interventions are time tested and effective. But, what about a new image of family counseling interventions that might make the approach more palatable while retaining effectiveness? This article explores an intervention that uses structural family therapy, narrative therapy, and resilience theory to help families imagine their change process through the lens of superhero teams. We propose a theoretical framework, explore practical steps to structure the intervention, and examine this through a case study example.