Family Therapy
Family Therapy and Community Counseling
What is Family Therapy?
The process of family therapy applies not only to our nuclear family, but can expand to include the people who we share our home with, whether they are our immediate family or they are friends or roommates. It can even include our non-human family members such as the animals that we share our home with. In this way another name for family therapy could be community therapy. Family therapy simply put is a process by which the hurts, conflicts, confusions, or unspoken parts get to be voiced, aired out and brought to light in the context of the whole family or communal unit. Through this process, there is an opportunity to gain greater understanding and empathy with other family members and find greater peace and harmony within the family system.
When do we need family therapy?
While individual psychotherapy is integral for one’s own process of growth, sometimes conflicts arise within the context of a specific family group that persist despite the work that we do for ourselves as individuals. In these cases it may be necessary to consider engaging in the process of family therapy. When the conflict between two people spills over from the container of that specific relationship it begins to impact the greater family or community. What starts as a personal conflict between two people can quickly transform into something bigger and more complex and the root of the conflict can easily be lost in the chaos of secondary reactions. Getting to the root of the problem while also working through the intricate web of the subsequent or secondary symptoms is the process of family therapy.
How does it work?
It is my belief that this process works through the involvement and engagement of all members of the family or community. Because of this, it is important for all members of the family to make an effort to be present throughout the process. When conflicts go unaddressed and unresolved for long periods of time, the family has to adjust in some way to accommodate the chronic stress of such a conflict. When this happens, we may know it isn’t working very well, but we cannot figure out how it got this way, let alone how to change it. With the support of a family therapist, the family has a greater capacity to step outside of the “normal” way of functioning together, and create a space for imagining new and creative ways of being together that serve everybody.