Bowen Family Systems
Family Systems Therapy for Women and Families in Colorado
You’ve had the same conversation with your mother for fifteen years and you can predict both halves of it. This approach looks at the pattern the two of you are running instead of at who is right this time.
Boulder • Denver • Fort Collins • Broomfield • Longmont • Online
Schedule a Therapist Match CallClinically reviewed by Amy Lowe, MSW, LCSW, LAC, Director of Clinical Teams • Last reviewed August 24, 2026
The Method
What is Family Systems Therapy?
Family systems therapy treats a family as one connected unit instead of a set of separate people with separate problems. What looks like one person’s issue is often a role the family has organized itself around, and the same exchanges keep repeating because the pattern holds them in place. Murray Bowen developed the core of it in the 1950s. Other schools have built on it since.
This is one of the approaches you’ll find among our therapy methods. You can do it with nobody else in the room. Changing how one person responds changes what everyone else has to respond to, so the work usually gets started by whoever is most willing. Colorado Women’s Center runs it at five offices and over secure video, so a family spread across three households can still sit in one session.
One person changing her part can move the whole pattern.
Our Promise to You
We Guarantee Our Therapist Matching
A family therapist ends up in the middle of relationships decades older than she is. It only holds up if you trust her not to pick a side, including on the days when you are the only one in the room. If the first match isn’t right, tell us and we’ll match you with another at no additional cost.
Request a Free ConsultationWhat This Works On
What Family Systems Therapy Helps With
This approach gets used wherever the pattern matters more than the particular incident. None of it has to reach a crisis before it’s worth bringing in. These are what women bring to it at Colorado Women’s Center, sometimes with family in the room and sometimes on their own.
The Argument You Can Predict
The trigger changes and the sequence never does, right down to the ending. When a conflict runs on rails, the question worth asking is not who was right. It is what keeps putting you both back on them.
Communication That Goes Nowhere
Everyone talks and nobody feels heard, so people stop bothering. Family therapy using this approach works on who interrupts whom and who has stopped speaking, instead of on communication tips.
Parenting Disagreements
Two parents pulling in different directions puts a child in the middle of something that was never about them. Parenting therapy works on the arrangement between the adults first.
Patterns You Learned Early
How closeness and distance worked in the family you grew up in tends to set what you expect now. Attachment therapy takes up that piece directly, and it pairs closely with this work.
Boundaries With Family
Saying no to a parent or a sibling asks more of you than saying no to anyone else, because obligation and love arrive in the same envelope. Sessions work on holding a limit without going to war over it.
Being the One Who Holds It Together
Somebody in most families absorbs everyone else’s stress, and it is often a woman. That role is worth looking at directly, including what happens to the family when you stop filling it.
Life Transitions
A divorce, a death, a diagnosis, or a child leaving home all reassign everybody’s part at once. The family usually has to work out a new arrangement before anyone feels settled.
Old Hurts Nobody Named
Some families run for years around something that never got said out loud. It still shapes who talks to whom at holidays. This work makes it discussable without turning it into a trial.
Room to Be Your Own Person
Staying close to your family and having your own life are not supposed to be a trade. Much of this approach is working out how to have both, which is where most of the tension sits.
Our Approach
How This Work Runs at Colorado Women’s Center
The work starts with the shape of the family, not the argument you had last week.
Start With a Match Call
You begin with a Wellness Coordinator. She asks what you’re looking for and who is likely to be involved, whether that is your whole family, part of it, or only you. Then she matches you on that, on which office suits you, and on therapist specialty.
Map the Family
Early sessions build a picture of who does what and when. You look at who gets called first with bad news, who goes quiet, and who ends up managing everybody else’s reaction. Therapists often draw this out. Seeing it on paper tends to be the point where it stops feeling like a personal failing.
Change Your Own Position
The part you control is what you do, so that is where the work goes. Your therapist works with you on responding differently to a move you can already see coming. When one person stops playing her usual part, the pattern has to reorganize around it.
Who Comes, and Where
Sessions can include your whole family, part of it, or just you, and that mix can change as the work goes. It runs in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Broomfield, and Longmont, or over secure video anywhere in Colorado. Sessions run seven days a week, 8am to 8pm.
Methods We Offer
- Family Systems Therapy
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Gottman Method
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- EMDR
- Somatic Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
Common Questions
Questions Women Ask Us About Family Work
Does my whole family have to come?
No, and a great deal of this work is done by one person. The approach holds that a pattern is maintained by everybody in it, which means changing your own part of it changes the pattern. Sessions with more of your family can be useful when people are willing. They are not a requirement for starting.
Is this the same as family therapy?
They overlap and they are not the same thing. Family therapy describes who is in the room. Family systems therapy describes how your therapist is thinking about what happens in it. The family is treated as one unit instead of as a set of individuals who happen to be related.
Will the therapist take sides?
No. A family systems therapist is watching the pattern instead of deciding who started it, and that holds when only one of you is in the room. If you come on your own, your therapist is not building a case against anybody. The people who are not there get described rather than prosecuted.
Can teenagers be part of this?
Often, yes. Family sessions can include a teenager where it is useful, and whether they attend and which parts they attend is worked out with you and your therapist. Which ages a therapist sees varies, so mention who is in your household on the Match Call and you’ll get a straight answer before you book.
Does family work run online?
Yes, and for families it is often easier. People in different households can join the same session from wherever they are, which removes the scheduling problem that stops a lot of family work before it starts. Colorado Women’s Center runs sessions over secure video anywhere in the state. Our online therapy page has the details.
How long does it take?
That’s decided between you and your therapist rather than set in advance. It depends on what you’re working on and on how many people are involved in it. Your therapist builds a plan with you early on and revisits it with you as things change.
How soon can we start?
Match Calls are usually available within 48 hours, often within 24. Most clients are with a therapist within about a week, depending on availability, which for family sessions can mean several calendars. Colorado Women’s Center offices are open seven days a week, 8am to 8pm, and online runs the same hours. Call 720.810.2355 or use the form on this page.
Related Methods
Approaches That Sit Close to This Work
Family work rarely runs on one model alone. These two come up alongside it most often.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
Works on the emotional bond sitting under the pattern, and has a family form as well as the better-known couples one.
Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) →
The Gottman Method
Focused on the couple at the center of a family, which is frequently where the wider pattern is anchored.
The Gottman Method →
