Family Therapy

“Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the ways it is. The way you deal with it is what makes the difference.”

-Virginia Satir

What is Family Therapy?

Family Therapy seeks to reduce distress and conflict by improving the systems of interactions between family members. Unlike individual therapy, which focuses on the concerns and well-being of a single person, family therapy recognises the family as the unit of treatment. It focuses on the health of its relationships and dynamics. This therapeutic approach is based on the understanding that an individual’s behaviour and well-being are inextricably linked to their family environment and interactions.

Family therapists employ various strategies and techniques drawn from multiple schools of therapy, such as systemic therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy, and psychodynamic therapy, tailored to the family’s unique needs and patterns. Family therapy aims to facilitate communication, resolve conflicts, enhance understanding and empathy among family members, and foster a healthier and more supportive family system.

This can involve addressing specific issues like marital or financial problems, children’s behavioural issues, miscommunication between the members, struggles to solve effectively conflict in the family, and the effects of dealing with grief and chronic disease, substance abuse, or mental health issues.

Family therapy sessions provide a safe space for all members to express their feelings and thoughts openly, learn new ways to interact and support one another and work together towards resolving their difficulties and strengthening their bonds. By focusing on the family, family therapy aims to create lasting change that can positively affect each member and their relationships with one another, promoting healing and growth within the family unit.

Benefits of Family Therapy

A multitude of benefits from participating in family therapy sessions, including:

• Improved Communication: Family members learn more effective ways to communicate their thoughts, feelings, and needs, leading to more precise understanding and stronger connections.

• Conflict Resolution Skills: Therapy provides tools and strategies for constructively resolving conflicts, reducing tension and promoting harmony within the family unit.

• Enhanced Emotional Support: Family therapy fosters a supportive environment where each member feels heard and valued, enhancing emotional bonds and mutual support.

• Understanding Individual Differences: It helps family members appreciate and respect each other’s unique perspectives, personalities, and coping mechanisms, contributing to a more cohesive family dynamic.

• Problem-Solving Abilities: Families learn to collaboratively identify and address issues, developing problem-solving skills that can be applied to future challenges.

• Strengthened Family Relationships: By working through conflicts and misunderstandings, family therapy can strengthen relationships and foster a sense of unity and belonging.

• Coping with Change: Therapy assists families in navigating life transitions, such as divorce, relocation, or the loss of a loved one, in a way that supports each member’s well-being.

• Support for Mental Health Issues: When individual family members are dealing with mental health issues, family therapy can educate and prepare the family to provide appropriate support and understanding.

• Breaking Unhealthy Patterns: It helps identify and break cycles of negative behaviour, such as blame, criticism, or avoidance, that can harm family relationships.

• Building Trust: Therapy sessions create a safe space for expressing vulnerabilities, leading to deeper trust and openness among family members.

• Empowerment and Autonomy: Families are empowered to take charge of their well-being, with each member feeling more capable and autonomous within the family system.

• Increased Resilience: Families build resilience, learning to adapt to and recover from difficulties as a united and supportive group.

These gains contribute to a healthier, more fulfilling family life, where each member can thrive individually and together.

Process

Family therapy is a systematic and structured framework to understand your problems better. At Emotional Growth we use a strength-based and solution-focused approach process is:

Session 1: INTAKE session: Assessment of the family presenting issues (60 minutes)

Session 2: Individual assessment of each party involved (Person A) (50 minutes )

Session 3: Individual assessment (Person B) (50 minutes)

Session 4: Individual assessment (Person C) (50 minutes)

Session 5: Individual assessment (Person B) (50 minutes)

Session 6: The joint session discusses the strengths and weakness of the family, determines three goals to work on and allows each member the opportunity to offer their point of view (90 minutes)

Session 7: The joint session discusses how they worked on their family goal from the last session and allows each member the opportunity for reflection, offer a tailored strategy and set a new goal (90 minutes)

Session 8: The joint session discusses how they worked on their family goal from the last session and allows each member the opportunity for reflection, offer a tailored strategy and set a new goal (90 minutes)

After a month

Session 9: The joint session reviews how they have used their newfound strength and strategies and reflects if changes have occurred and, if not, what has been on the way and what can be done. Foster accountability and commitment (90 minutes)

After three weeks

Session 10: The joint session reviews how they have used their newfound strength and strategies and reflects if changes have occurred and, if not, what has been on the way and what can be done. Foster accountability and commitment (90 minutes)

After two weeks

Session 11: Assess progress, check where the initial problem is and what has helped, do some written reflection exercises for connection, and provide a strengths-based lens of the members and a mindfulness compassion family exercise for healing (90 minutes)

After two weeks, the CLOSING SESSION