The reasons for seeking out individual counselling might strike you as obvious. Therapy in
general, has become much more mainstream as people recognise the broad benefits for
personal growth, recovery and enhancing one’s quality of life. But have you ever considered
family therapy?
Family therapy might consist of parents with younger children as they learn to navigate
developmental stages, challenging events, or changes to family structures and roles.
Interestingly, I’m increasingly seeing families that include adult children and their parents,
siblings or extended family members, with the desire to address ruptures to familial
relationships or to shift old patterns so they can improve their relationships inside the family
system. I find this development so encouraging as a therapist. In these situations, an
experienced therapist can be a neutral party that helps families both identify what’s not
working, and what would be required to make positive changes – this can offer families a
second (or fifth) chance at moving forward in a closer, safer, and more respectful way.
You might wonder what’s so different about the benefits of coming into the counselling room
together as a family rather than individually.
Here are 10 benefits to consider:
- Increased emotional safety for having hard or tender conversations
- Increased availability of clarifying the perspectives or experiences of the people we
want to repair with, grow closer to, or set boundaries with - Improve communication skills in real time
- Having a third party to pace conversations that hold conflict or tension
- More opportunity to check your assumptions about what the barriers are between
family members - The ability to shift dynamics together, collaboratively
- An opportunity to facilitate forgiveness
- Increased empathy for one another
- Learn to work together towards an improved connection
- Improvements to individual family members’ mental health, awareness and coping
strategies
You might find yourself picturing the family members you’d invite into the counselling room
with you. What conversations would you appreciate having? What barriers can you name
that get in the way of you having closer and healthier relationships with your family
members? What hopes do you have for the dynamics between you?
Answers to the above questions could be standing out quite readily to you, but then you land
on the follow up consideration of how to raise this idea with them, and find yourself stumped,
anxious and too afraid to take the next step.
Here are a few invitations you could explore when it comes to bringing up the idea of therapy
with your family:
“I’ve been thinking about how our relationship has changed over the years and you really
matter to me. I was wondering if we could talk with someone about where we’re at now and
where we’d like our relationship to go.”
“I would really love us to figure out better ways to communicate with each other. How do you
feel about how we communicate? Do you think we would benefit from getting some help
around this?”
“I have a feeling we could feel a lot more connected if we talked through some things in the
way. Any chance you’d come with me to see a counsellor who could help us out with this?”
“I feel like we’ve been arguing way more often lately. Our relationship really matters to me,
and I’m hoping you might work on this with me in therapy”
“I really want us to move out of our old family patterns. I don’t think they are working well for
us anymore. Would you be interested in changing this too?”
“I’m still really hurting from when…, and I think it would really help our relationship if we
could talk about this in counselling together.”
When you are ready to search for a family therapist, make sure to prioritise choosing
someone who is experienced, someone all participating family members will feel comfortable
with, and who is Registered with a governing body to ensure the therapist is held to ethical
standards of practice. BCACC’s counsellor search page is a great place to start in British
Columbia.
About the Author
