Every family is a group of unique personalities with distinctive ways of communicating with each other. There’s no one right way to bond as a family, but there are many things that can strain family relationships. Grief, divorce, career transitions, substance use, and mental health disorders can all negatively affect the family system. Call Imagine Spokane today for more information at 888.384.3143 if your family could benefit from professional counseling.
What Is Family Counseling?
Also known as family therapy, family counseling is a therapeutic method used to build or maintain healthy family relationships. The first goal of counseling is to identify the problems faced by the family. When families have a single member with behavioral or substance use issues, they often think that member is the problem. In most cases, that belief is wrong.
A history of trauma, untreated mental health conditions, poor coping skills, or a lack of communication are common reasons behind family dysfunction. Family therapy doesn’t focus on or blame a single person. Instead, it helps to uncover the roots from which dysfunction sprouts and offers new methods for changing family interactions.
Family Counseling Is Effective
Family counseling is an evidence-based method found to be effective in a variety of situations. Studies show family counseling is effective in helping adolescents to face a variety of mental health conditions.
Your therapist may use different types of family therapy in an overall treatment program. These include:
- Functional family therapy – This option focuses on families that have one or more children with complex behavioral or emotional problems.
- Multisystemic therapy – This therapeutic option may seek to improve a child’s interactions with schools, neighborhoods, or other social systems.
- Transgenerational therapy – This treatment examines interactions between parents and children and grandparents if they are closely involved.
Whatever approach your family therapist takes, you can expect three major stages to occur – identification, examination, and exploration.
After the issues that brought the family to therapy are identified, the therapist will assist family members in examining their various roles and how they contribute to the patterns of the family. After that, the therapist will help the family form a plan for moving forward. By exploring different behaviors and applying new problem-solving techniques, the family can become stronger together.
Rebuilding Relationships through Family Counseling
While in therapy together, families will be given homework assignments to work on together. These assignments can help members incorporate the skills they learn during therapy into their everyday lives. Some of the benefits your family could experience by attending counseling include:
- Learning healthy coping skills to deal with family transitions
- Processing grief or loss
- Improved communication
- Stronger relationships
- Learning how to support one another
- Managing mental health concerns
- Support for substance use treatment
- Ending dysfunctional cycles
When one member of a family is struggling, everyone is affected. Family therapy treats the whole unit. In some cases, meaningful solutions are only possible when the whole family is involved. Family counseling can help your family stop blaming one another and start rebuilding relationships built on trust and mutual understanding.
The skills learned in therapy also benefit each individual. Better communication skills, coping skills, and learning to be a supportive person can benefit every aspect of life, including academics, work, and romantic relationships.
Seek Family Counseling at Imagine Spokane
Deciding to participate in family therapy doesn’t mean your family is failing. It means you all want the best for each other and are committed to improving the family unit. If your family is struggling due to mental health concerns or substance use and could benefit from family counseling, call Imagine Spokane today at 888.384.3143 and learn how we can help.
