The Systemic Way
The Systemic Way Podcast is a therapy and mental health podcast featuring conversations with experts, practitioners, researchers, and people with lived experience from the worlds of systemic psychotherapy, family therapy, psychology, social work, and community practice. Hosted by Sezer and Julie, two systemic and family psychotherapists, the podcast explores mental health, relationships, trauma, resilience, social justice, culture, and change. Through engaging discussions on theory, practice, and real-world experiences, listeners gain a deeper understanding of how systemic and relational approaches can support individuals, families, organisations, and communities.
Artwork by Arai Drake Creative: http://www.araidrake.com/portfolio/thesystemicway
Music by Rena Paid
The Systemic Way
Adolescence: Toxic Masculinity, Online Radicalisation, and Systemic Responsibility. Systemic Lens ep. 4.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, we’re turning our attention to the UK drama Adolescence — a series that begins with a single, shocking event but quickly reveals a much wider web of responsibility.
Rather than focusing solely on the actions of one young person, the drama draws us into the interconnected systems surrounding him: family, school, peer culture, mental health services, and the criminal justice system.
Using a systemic psychotherapy lens, we’ll explore how meaning, behaviour, and risk are produced within relationships — and how patterns of communication, power, silence, and inaction shape what unfolds. We’ll look at not just what happens on screen, but what fails to happen: where systems don’t speak to each other, where responsibility is displaced, and where intervention comes too late. Adolescence invites us to move away from simple narratives of blame and instead ask more complex questions about how distress is held — or missed — across the wider system.
We are joined by the regular Systemic Lens Team of Becky Midlane, Anokh Goodman, Danilen Nursigadoo, Nafeesa Nizami (Naz).