The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration defines a family as a group of separate parts that equal a whole system when put together. When one person or part struggles with a mental health or substance use disorder, the entire family is affected. Unhealthy family dynamics become more apparent when that person seeks treatment and enters recovery.
Attending family counseling can help the whole family heal simultaneously, together.
It will be up to you to decide who attends family counseling. Your first thoughts may turn toward your immediate family or those you live with within the same house. However, not everyone you consider family is related to you by blood. In counseling, family refers to any person with whom you have a deep bond, whether through blood, marriage, or friendship.
Family members can be spouses, in-laws, coworkers, friends, extended family, blended family members, foster kids or parents, godparents, mentors, or anyone who can benefit from the process.
Why Go to Family Counseling?
Family counseling goals include improving how your family functions as a group, resolving family problems and creating a better home environment. Also, a family therapist can teach you and your family the skills necessary to continue functioning well after therapy is complete. Examples of improved skill areas include communication, conflict resolution, setting boundaries, roles, parenting, and coping.
When to Start Family Counseling?
You don’t have to wait for something terrible to happen to attend family counseling. Anytime is a good time to learn new skills to improve your relationships. Here are some examples of why people seek help from a therapist. If you recognize any of these family issues, then counseling may be a good idea.
Someone in your family has a mental health disorder
Someone in your family has a substance use disorder
Death of a loved one
Divorce or marriage problems
Traumatic events
Significant life changes like moving or changing jobs
Parenting issues
Problems at school or work
Domestic violence
Financial problems
Time spent in family counseling varies for everyone. Some meet every week, and some meet once a month. Family counseling should start once the individual in recovery has made progress and is committed to making changes. Your therapist can help you decide how often to meet as a group.
Benefits of Family Therapy
Working with a licensed therapist, you will start to see benefits soon after counseling begins. Fewer conflicts at home, increased trust, shared responsibilities, and a lot more fun. Each member of your family can get the necessary tools to improve their mental and physical health. Then you learn tools to help the entire group.
Family counseling is about healing your entire family by first healing each member.
How Does Family Therapy Work?
Family therapy starts with individual counseling between the therapist and the family member entering recovery for mental health or substance use disorders. When it is time for a family therapy session, you will meet with the therapist, explain what happens in counseling, expectations, and answer questions you may have.
The family therapist will then work with you to create a treatment plan with short and long-term goals so you can measure progress. Counselors have many tools and techniques to help you reach your goals. They may assign homework to complete as a family between sessions, implementing what you learned in counseling in the home environment.
What Are Common Counseling Techniques?
Since relationships are what you’re working on, it makes sense that relationship counseling is a technique used by therapists. Couples experiencing difficulties in their relationship, parent-child conflicts, and premarital guidance are a few reasons people seek this type of counseling.
Psychoeducation may seem more like a classroom than a counseling session, but it is imperative to healing families. In a psychoeducation session, you learn more about the biological, psychological, and social factors contributing to your problems. For example, if someone has a substance use disorder, your therapist can teach you about the disease of addiction, a brain disorder.
Communication therapy improves communication skills within your family, individually and as a whole. Communication problems arise in families when members do not adequately express their feelings, have poor listening skills, cultural differences, and more.
Structural family therapy is based on principles such as focusing on the interactions between people, a person’s identity within the family, social interactions, family responses to family needs, growing and strengthening as a family.
Strategic therapy works in five stages: social, problem, interactional, goal setting, and task-setting.
Narrative therapy helps individuals get to know who they are, use their talents and strengths to give less value to the minor problems that can arise daily, and focus on the more essential things. It teaches you to feel confident in overcoming issues using the skills you already possess.
Transgenerational therapy allows the therapist to observe family interactions with members of all ages and generations. This technique helps therapists see thoughts and feelings passed down from generations before leading to unhealthy behaviors. Therapists can figure out how to introduce the importance of change and teach you how to do it.
Family systems therapy is crucial to rebuilding families. It is a technique that teaches the family how to solve problems together by expressing their thoughts and offering feedback on the problem. Family system therapy is based on eight concepts that involve emotions and their role in connecting family members. The concepts are triangles, differentiation of self, nuclear family projection, multigenerational transmission process, emotional cutoff, sibling position, and societal emotional process.
Start looking for a licensed counselor today if you think your family could benefit from family counseling. Don’t be afraid to ask the therapist questions before making a final decision. Questions to ask include:
Are you licensed?
What is your definition of family therapy?
Which techniques do you use in family therapy?
Which issues are you most comfortable treating?
What if my family doesn’t want to participate?
The right counselor will be happy to answer your questions and share even more information about the benefits of family counseling.