The Long Road into Multigenerational Family Therapy

Meeting My Mentor

I first met Maurizio in 2015 at the IFTA conference held at the Marriott Hotel in Kuala Lumpur; it was my very first encounter with a Master Family Therapist. He carried a presence that was calm yet deeply engaging—something about him immediately stood out.

During this time, I was invited to attend his workshop in Petaling Jaya where I witnessed, for the first time in my career, a live family therapy session conducted in front of an audience. It was a Chinese family and Maurizio, an Italian therapist unfamiliar with Asian cultural nuances, navigated the session with such elegance, presence, and deep empathy that I was completely taken aback. There was a finesse in the way he held the space—tender, curious, and unassuming. He didn’t need to know the culture to feel the family. This was a master at work!

 It was during that workshop that Maurizio invited me to join a training he will be conducting in Perth, ‘The Tools of Family Therapist’. Without hesitation, two of my students and I took a leap of faith - we travelled to William Street that same year. 

That workshop shifted something fundamental in me. I had never seen someone use the room itself as a co-therapist—chairs, tables, people, even a broom—everything became part of the process! Maurizio invited us not just to learn therapy, but to embody it. At one point, I found myself lying on the floor, role-playing a dead mother as another participant worked through her family history using a genogram. It was raw, vulnerable, and deeply humane.

This experience taught me what it truly meant to be present in the room—not just as a therapist, but as a human being. Maurizio modeled something I hadn’t known I was searching for - how to center myself while holding space for others, how to ground deeply into my own story as I help others navigate theirs and in helping another therapist work through her story, I found myself uncovering layers of my own.

That was the moment I knew I had found my mentor. And in that instant, my real journey into family therapy began.

Becoming: Lessons from the Long Road to Family Therapy

I officially embarked on my journey to become a family therapist in 2017. For two consecutive years, I travelled to Sydney to study under Professor Maurizio Andolfi and his team.  But the training wasn’t easy - it took nearly a decade of consistent supervision, deep personal work, and immersive learning before I was finally certified as a Multigenerational family therapist by the Accademia di Psicoterapia della Famiglia in Rome, Italy. Along the way, I realized something: becoming a family therapist is not just about learning techniques. It’s about transformation. It’s about unraveling and confronting your own story before you can hope to understand someone else’s.

With Maurizio, we did not just learn about theory—we lived the work. Twice, I underwent personal work with fellow clinicians under his guidance. We dove into our own impasses, our personal blockages, and our emotional inheritances. We explored our genograms not just as maps, but as living narratives that shaped how we connect, how we listen, and how we hurt so that we could work to be more authentic in our journey as therapists.

Through this work, I didn’t just learn how to be a therapist—I gained a deeper understanding of the human condition. Because at its core, multi-generational family therapy revisits a family’s developmental history, repairs open wounds to heal the broken emotional bonds, attempts to restore connection by introducing new narratives and helping one carry their legacies with clarity and compassion whilst discovering their own resources. The presenting issue is a privileged guide for therapists to enter the relational context of the family without judgement, because in the end, family is the best medicine!

This journey, of course, is far from over. It’s not a certificate you earn and shelve. It’s a lifelong unfolding. And so, the journey continues—not yet what I hoped it would be, but everything it needs to be, one step, one story, one family at one time.

Witnessing the recent work – A Master Steps In

In April of 2025, we had the privilege of welcoming Maurizio back to Malaysia when Andolfi Family Therapy Centre, which bears his name, organized a two-day live consultation and lecture held at Hospital Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah, UPM. This time, it felt different - it was a moment of convergence : a master returning to teach, a center growing into its identity and a community of practitioners uniting in search of deeper understanding of family therapy.

On the first day, we listened to Maurizio’s lecture and watched him work with a Malay family through a live consult. The child at the center of the session was heavily medicated, angry, and emotionally closed off—yet, in the room with Maurizio, something began to soften. Losses—relational, emotional, generational—surfaced gently. Sitting beside Maurizio as his translator was more than a task; it was a privilege. I was not just conveying language but witnessing the nuance of connection. His questions were never rushed & his presence never overwhelming. He sat with the family—not above them, not outside them, but with them.

He often reminds us: “Enter the family through the child.” It was clear why - children carry truths unfiltered and hold the emotional memory of the home in their body language, their silence, their stories. Adults may protect, conceal, or intellectualize. In this session, Maurizio invited us to see the family’s pain through the child’s eyes.

On the second day, the consultation work shifted toward couple therapy—particularly, viewing it through the multi-generational lens.  This couple’s struggles had intensified after the birth of their child. The therapeutic impasse was clear and humour helped diffuse the intensity.  He traced the roots, listened intently, and reminded us that no couple stands alone—they are shaped by stories that go far beyond their own timelines.

What we gained over those two days was more than techniques or insights. It was the felt understanding that family therapy is a living process, not a method. It’s a process that needs heart, developmental history, culture, presence, connection, trust, curiosity, creativity, humour and above all humility to experience the family as we meet.

The workshop also became a place of deep connection. Colleagues from Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Shanghai and Singapore all gathered not only to learn but to bond. Conversations flowed well beyond the sessions, over meals and quiet reflections, forming a network of people committed to growing the work in our regions.

Maurizio visited the Andolfi Family Therapy Centre in person—for the very first time. Watching him step into the space named after him felt like a full circle. There was no ceremony, no grand speech—just a quiet moment of grace, of recognition, of homecoming.

In that moment, I saw what we were building. Not just a center. Not just a practice. But a family of therapists—guided by a man who now has set out to create his legacy here in Malaysia. As I reflect on this journey—of learning, unlearning, becoming and being—I’m reminded that family therapy is not just a profession. It is a calling. One that invites us to heal not only others, but ourselves.