Mending Family Relationships Through Family Counseling
“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” – Jane Howard
The most important unit of a person’s life is his family. It is his or her entire support system and first social interaction in life, and it is important to keep family relationships healthy.
The Loving Support Of Family Is Important At Every Stage Of Life
Be it infancy, when you need your mother to cuddle you, or adolescence, when you need your father to tell you about the birds and the bees or your sibling to share playground stories with; you always need someone to talk your heart out to. But there are times of crises that you or your family members may face at each stage. It could be mental health, burnout, health trouble, trauma of some sort that you would want to deal with. In these times, a family can face a lot of strain and may shatter as a result.
Eventually, it my come to a point where you decide to either isolate from each other, or make a conscious effort to work at staying together. This is where family therapy can help.
How Can Family Therapy Help?
Family therapy works in the following ways to help a family come out of conflict:
Understanding Family Dynamics – A counselor observes common problem patterns in the family’s behavior. This helps them identify the issues and concerns leading to strained family relationships. He or she then works toward intervention and therapy. Making the family aware of the faulty patterns is one of the ways to help them realize the involvement of every member in the conflict and help people to stop playing the blame game with other family members.
Healthy Interaction – Family therapy enables family members to communicate effectively where every member learns to listen without reacting impulsively.
Problem Solving – The counselor may suggest direct, constructive ways of resolving issues and conflicts. Relationships may improve dramatically as the problems are resolved, and the tensions get reduced.
Family Pacts – It may sound childish but a contract stating the ways of interaction works extremely well in bringing a family together. It mends relationships by providing a platform for a healthy interaction as the members can remind each other of the ‘clauses’ in the contract whenever there is an argument or a disagreement.
Effective family therapy not only improves family relationships by involving a family or an individual in counseling, it also involves interaction with friends, teachers, colleagues, and other people involved with the family to improve the overall dynamics of the family’s interactions within the family as well as outside it.
If you believe you or your family may benefit from family relationships counseling, we invite you to contact us to set an appointment today. Please contact us, and one of our trained counselors will be in touch with you shortly. A sliding scale is offered to those in need.
