This paper offers a case study of individual family‐focused work with a non‐binary identified person who is working on identity formation, ongoing suicidality, and difficulties with intimate relationships. Using a combination of psychoanalytic and systemic models, issues of power, control and attachment are addressed as important to understanding intergenerational trauma. While M has always had difficulty identifying as female, the many layers of their struggle for control of a life separate from their family have impacted M’s development and current life circumstances. Much of our work has to do with separating out what they carry that is theirs from what they are carrying for prior generations of their family.
Practitioner points
Individual family‐focused work is a treatment of choice with certain clients, particularly when there has been a history of trauma
Psychoanalytic and systemic models of treatment can be combined to deliver what is helpful to the client/client system
Trauma is said to be transmitted intergenerationally through nature and/or nurture
Power, control, narrative and attachment are significant elements of trauma.