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Family therapy: Healing family conflicts
Family connectedness can be threatened by illness, divorce, and other sources of stress. Family therapy can help families identify and resolve problems.
Your family can be your greatest source of support and love; conversely your family can also be a source of pain and grief. A health crisis, mental illness, work problems or teenage rebellion may threaten to tear your family apart.
Family therapy can help your family weather such storms. Family therapy can help heal strained relationships, teach new coping skills and enhance who your family is together, your family’s ‘us’ness. Whether it's you, your partner, a child or brother or sister, family therapy can help all of you communicate better and find ways to value your family’s ‘us’ness.
What is family therapy?
Family therapy helps families or individuals within a family understand and improve the way family members interact with each other and resolve conflicts.
Family therapy can range from short term to long term, depending on your family’s unique set of concerns. The treatment plan will depend on your family's specific situation.
Who can benefit from family therapy?
In general, anyone who wants to improve troubled relationships can benefit from family therapy. Family therapy can help with such issues as:
- Marital problems
- Divorce
- Substance abuse
- Depression or bipolar disorder
- Chronic health problems, such as asthma or cancer
- Grief, loss and trauma
- Work stress
- Parenting skills
- Emotional abuse or violence
- Financial problems
Your family may do family therapy along with other types of mental health treatment, especially if one of you has a serious mental illness that also requires intense individual therapy. Family therapy isn't a substitute for other necessary treatments. For instance, family therapy can help family members cope if a relative has schizophrenia. But the person with schizophrenia should continue with his or her individualized treatment plan, such as medication and possibly hospitalization.
How does family therapy work?
Family therapy often brings entire families together in therapy sessions. However, family members may also see a family therapist individually. Family therapy can even include nonfamily members, such as teachers, other health care providers or representatives of social services agencies.
Working with a family therapist, you and your family will examine your family's ability to solve problems and express thoughts and emotions. You may explore family roles, rules and behavior patterns in order to spot issues that contribute to conflict. Family therapy may help you identify your family's strengths, such as caring for one another, and weaknesses, such as an inability to confide in one other.
Family therapy can help you pinpoint your specific concerns and assess how your family is handling them. Guided by your therapist, you'll learn new ways to interact and overcome old problems. You'll set individual and family goals and work on ways to achieve them.
Links:
www.familytherapynet.com
www.aamft.org
www.terryhargrave.com
www.smartmarriages.com
Recommended Reading:
Families and Forgiveness
by Terry Hargrave Ph.D.
The Essential Humilty of Marriage
by Terry Hargrave Ph.D.
Family Reconstruction: Long Day’s Journey Into Light
by William F. Nerin
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