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Every family faces a range of different challenges throughout life.
After all, you’re a group of people made up of individuals who each have their own unique issues, personalities, and challenges. Plus, as children grow up, that dynamic is constantly changing.
Going through tough times is a perfectly normal part of being a family. Of course, that doesn’t mean that working through those times is easy. Sometimes it can feel like your whole family is about to be ripped apart.
There Are Many Relationships Within a Family
One of the reasons that families deal with so many different issues is because there are many different relationships in the family. There is the family unit, which consists of the entire family and all of your history, culture and traditions.
A family also includes separate relationships, like the partnership relationship between parents.
Each parent has a relationship with the children as a whole as well as with each individual child. For example, you may be “mom” to all of them but have a particularly challenging relationship with your oldest daughter.
The siblings all have a relationship together. They also each have their one-on-one relationships. In other words, they are all “the kids” but there’s also the older-younger dynamic, the boy-girl dynamic, etc.
Even within this very simple family structure, there are so many different complex relationships.
In the 21st century, you may also have other types of relationships:
- Co-parenting as separated parents
- Grandparent-parent-child relationships in a multigenerational household
- Extended family relationships with close aunts, uncles, etc.
- Step-parent/step-child relationships
- Blended family dynamics including step and half siblings
- Foster and adoptive child relationships with each family member
Take a moment to think about how challenging it is to communicate effectively and treat each other well in a single relationship between just two people. Recognize that a family includes all of these different relationships. It’s no wonder that families have times of strife!
Common Reasons People Come to Family Therapy
I am happy to help your family work through any issues that you’re currently dealing with. No matter what brings you to therapy, I will treat your family with respect and without judgment. Some of the most common reasons that people come to family therapy include:
- Anger, resentment, and fighting in the family
- Challenges with a child’s behavioral problems
- Concerns about a child’s school performance including refusal to go to school
- Conflict around parenting styles and decisions
- Coping with separation or divorce
- Co-parenting and blended family issues, working together as your family changes
- Impact of chronic health issues faced by anyone in the family
- Mental health issues of one of more family members including depression and anxiety
- Parenting concerns around social issues such as technology use and bullying
- Processing grief and loss after a death in the family
- Substance abuse by anyone in the family
- Trauma including intergenerational trauma from the past
- Unique challenges facing families with foster/adoptive children
- Worries about a child’s emotional health
Families frequently come to therapy during times of change.
For example, therapy helps during and after an adoption, birth, divorce, marriage, or when a child moves out. Children experience change when entering new stages of development. Parents may change due to employment issues, health concerns, or issues relating to their own aging parents.
Change affects everyone in the family. Therapy helps you get back to equilibrium.
Does My Family Need Therapy?
Because of the complicated nature of families, most families benefit from some type of therapy. However, families do typically come to therapy when they are in crisis. Therapy can help your family deal with a variety of different issues.
Family therapy can help you stop fighting, communicate better
Therapy Can Help Your Family Thrive
Your family is already strong. During a challenging time, it may not feel like it. In fact, you may feel like you are doing everything wrong. However, I can see your strengths.
As a therapist, I can help your family identify your strengths and use them to create a happier family dynamic.
First and foremost, family therapy can help each of you to understand one another better. It can also provide you with support and resources to help with specific issues. Therapy also teaches you new skills, improves upon them, and allows you to practice them. Those skills include:
- Strengthen each of the individual and collective relationships in the family
- Learn new parenting techniques that are effective in your family
- Improve the ability to cope with mental health issues and learning challenges
- Work through grief, loss, and trauma
- Enhance coping skills for all types of stressful situations
- See ways in which your family is “stuck” and get “unstuck”
Family therapy can provide the support that you need to get your family to the place where you wish to be together.