Family Therapy
Family Therapy focuses on family issues that affect the balance of your family unit
What is Family Therapy?
Are you part of a family who are in conflict, prone to frequent arguments, have a daily battle with repeating patterns of bad behaviour, are struggling to deal with a recent bereavement, or want to find your voice and express your feelings?
If you’ve experienced a complete breakdown in communications, or have clashed with your family during lockdown, it’s time to seek the professional help. Talking with someone who is none-judgemental, empathetic, objective and a trained family therapist can make a big difference.
Family Therapy Benefits
Family counselling therapy can help you to talk about the challenges you are facing as a family, whether that’s because of a change in circumstances, or a change in behaviours.
My approach is supportive, compassionate and honest. No matter how bad things may seem, I can help you to identify and change counter-productive patterns of behaviour and find solutions that will make problems easier to deal with.
How does it work?
Sessions may be with you on your own to start, or with either your partner or children, or as a complete family unit. One of the therapeutic approaches I use is family constellations, which helps to reveal the hidden dynamics in your family.
Once we have had initial discussions about your concerns and undercurrents of the issues you would like to address, we will begin work immediately. We will try out a few exercises to give you an opportunity to think and reflect on the current situation before we move onto talking about the future and any changes that may need to be made i.e. creating boundaries or agreeing responsibilities. Working on your relationship doesn’t stop once your therapy session ends. In fact, a major part of family therapy is what happens in between your sessions. In short, you will have homework. It’s essential that you try out the exercises and complete the tasks set. Remember the more you practice, the more you’ll learn strategies to help you get through difficult situations
Family Therapy Sessions
In terms of the number of sessions needed, that very much depends on the nature of your family issues, your commitment levels and how much you, your partner and your children do between sessions.
Appointments can start with only one parent or the couple, the children or any combination that would most suit your situation.
What issues can it help with?
Teenage Behaviour Patterns
One of the reasons families struggle, is when dealing with teenage behavioural difficulties, which can manifest as either aggressive, disruptive or defiant behaviour. As a result, your daily family life is filled with arguments, confrontations and high stress levels. However, worse than this can be limited social interaction, whereby you are unable to engage them in any form of effective communication. This may put relationships under huge amounts of strain and can push the family unit to breaking point.
Blended Families
Sometimes when two separate households come together there can be difficulties until everyone can understand the differences between the new and old family and accept their roles. As the family dynamic changes, it may give rise to negative patterns of behaviour, as well as an increase in disagreements and arguments. In addition, there may be issues around parenting, discipline, finances and boundaries. In this situation, it’s important to unpack the issues together, to ensure that everyone has a voice and can say what they feel, before introducing different strategies to help all family members.
Divorce, Separation and Relationship Breakdown
Divorce, separation or a relationship break up impacts upon the whole family. It can be a time of blame, anger, resentment, conflict, uncertainty and sadness, as families face disputes over contact and living arrangements, child maintenance, property and money. Often it is children who are caught in the middle of a war zone and find themselves used by both parents as a weapon. This can result in unwelcome cycles of behaviour, which have a negative effect on mental health and wellbeing, as children find themselves unable to express and manage their feelings.
What can you expect?
There are many benefits to family counselling therapy. When you have completed your sessions, you can expect to:
- Appreciate a better functioning home environment
- Feel like you have a voice and are listened to and understood.
- Experience more positive patterns of behaviour
- Have a better understanding of boundaries, safe space, responsibilities and dynamics
- Benefit from a more supportive family environment
- Enhance communication
- Resolve practical day-to-day issues
- Have increased levels of trust and honesty
- Reduce conflict, stress and anger
- Improve problem solving
- Find better skills and strategies for dealing with family issues
- Enjoy happier relationships and a healthier way of living