Families can be a source of support, safety, and belonging. However, they can sometimes develop destructive patterns in which individuals feel stuck in predictable and frustrating roles. As a result, conflicts, poor communication and lack of understanding occurs.
Family therapy can offer a place where these patterns are identified, individual voices heard, conflicts understood and new ways of relating learned. It is a unique opportunity to bring together the entire family. Group sessions allow children, adolescents, parents, grandparents, and blended families to explore developmental changes, create boundaries and limits, negotiate house rules, and define family member roles. When families come together they can experience connectedness in a forum where everyone has a voice. Families have a pattern of interaction that impacts each person as well as the common good. A family system can be a powerful place to draw confidence and assurance as easily as it can be a place to feel powerless and uncertain. If we learn how to support one another while also setting limits, and follow through with what we say, we can have a new strength within.
What to expect from Family Therapy ?
With the therapist's help, and in an atmosphere free of blame, families come to understand how - usually unknowingly - they have maintained the problem, and then learn how to support individuals effectively. Family Therapy can help when family members are overwhelmed by either the predictable events in the life cycle and developmental stages, or the unpredictable events (sudden illness, loss, trauma, death, redundancy, disability, etc) that disturb lives. More often than not it is a combination of predictable and unpredictable events that precipitates family relationship breakdown and an acceptance of the need for some professional support. Anxiety and stress in families can manifest in one individual child or adult becoming symptomatic or in a particular relationship breaking down.
