About Family Therapy:
Family therapy is a form of therapy that can help family members improve communication and conflict-management skills. Sessions may include every member of the family or just those who are able to participate. Collectively, we will discuss your family’s therapeutic goals, and I will create a treatment plan that is tailored to best fit your family’s needs.
Family therapy provides families with a safe and neutral space to express their feelings. You may address specific issues such as conflict between parents and children, difficulty getting along with sibling(s), school troubles, or the impact of a drug or alcohol addiction on the family as a whole. Family therapy can be useful in any situation that causes stress, grief, anger or conflict. As a systemic therapist, I carefully examine the relational dynamics between members of the family. My goal is to help you and your family members understand one another better while reaching a compromise on the issues that bring you to therapy.
How long are family counseling sessions?
Family therapy sessions often last 50-80 minutes.
What you can expect:
How often you meet and the number of sessions your family may need will depend on your family's therapeutic goals.
During family therapy, you can:
Examine your family's ability to solve problems and express thoughts and emotions in a productive manner
Explore family roles, rules and behavior patterns to identify issues that contribute to conflict — and ways to work through these issues
Identify and foster your family's strengths, such as caring for one another
Increase trust
Family Therapy in Atlanta
Family therapy is a viable way to address various kinds of difficulties that confront members of a family. This includes the parents and children, but it can also include extended family members as well. There are many different types of conflicts that family members might face. Therapy is intended to create a safe and supportive environment that allows each person to learn how to address issues by using new tools and skills, which are learned in the counseling sessions.
Overview of Family Therapy
Family members are often poorly equipped with the skills necessary to communicate in a healthy manner with other members of the household. Conflicts often arise when the gap between the skills needed and the actual abilities of the people involved is large. This is often referred to as a communication barrier or a skills gap, and family therapy is one way to address it. The treatment plan is ideally designed to enable family members to bridge the specific gap faced in the household. This means that each therapy session is designed to address the unique needs of each person in the family.
Managing Conflicts, Family Therapy
Conflicts are a normal part of family life, but many families don’t have the skills necessary to get through these conflicts in a healthy manner. Family members can come to therapy sessions to learn new ways to deal with the conflicts that are happening within the home. The actual plan might be adjusted to suit the needs of the particular family members. The therapist may take various family dynamics into account before creating a treatment plan that will help the family to reach the desired outcome.
Atlanta Family Counselor
The therapy sessions allow each member of the family to engage in a therapeutic space that is neutral towards each participant. This is an environment where each family member can express difficult emotions in a safe and therapeutic atmosphere. Conflicts can be mediated, or underlying patterns of behavior can be addressed in this setting.
Common issues with family members include the following:
Difficulty expressing emotions in a healthy manner
Conflicts between siblings or parents
Addiction or substance abuse
Traumas that haven’t healed; cycle of abuse
Trouble at school or with the law
Unresolved stress, grief, pain and anger
Therapists are professionals who have been trained to deal with these difficult dynamics that occur in many families. The process includes listening carefully to each person as they express thoughts and feelings about the family’s problems. The therapist takes in each person’s point of view while remaining committed to enabling each member to fully engage with the therapeutic process. This can require several sessions to determine the best way to chart a plan forward. The outcomes can be very promising when each member is open to learning about each other and deepening their own understanding and self-knowledge. These are also skills that each person can take with them into the future and apply to other situations.
LAUREN ENDER
