“Why family therapy… because it deals with family pain.”
– Virginia Satir
Family Pain
You can’t forget about feelings. When your family has been through something difficult, everyone feels it. Your children feel it. You feel it. What is amazing about feelings is that everyone absorbs the same energy. When it is joyful, it is amazing. If it is negative, it can be a struggle. If you are angry or depressed, your children feel it. When they are upset, you feel it. It’s important for your family to learn how to validate and have compassion and empathy for everyone’s emotions – even your teenager with BIG feelings. Family therapy can help you to increase your capacity for shared emotion and how to support and tolerate your children’s BIG emotions even when you don’t understand or agree with them.
What is family therapy?
Family therapists view an individuals problems/ struggles within the context of the system he/ she is in, not in isolation. Problems can not be successfully addressed if they are not address within the dynamics of the family system. The way your family operates determines how individuals within your family respond. Often times parents want their children to be different. Children can’t change without parents changing. It takes the entire family system to work together to create change.
Family therapy with adult children
Any time is a good time for family therapy. If you find your family of adult children in pain, struggling through a difficult stage, or wanting to work through wounds that happened a long time ago, family therapy can be very helpful.
Life-stages and transitions
Families go through many life stages and transitions, and can have difficulty navigating smoothly. Therapy can help you and your family identify where you are missing each other and how to heal, understand one another, and work together through your challenges. Together, we will look at how each member of your family processes and works through emotions and develop a shared language all of you can understand. Often times families just need to validate one another’s concerns and complaints, and work together to make necessary changes.
Some examples of transitional struggles are:
- middle school years and highschool – its a BIG developmental time in your child’s brain
- healing after a loss
- readjusting after a divorce or separation
- living as a newly formed stepfamily
- adjusting to changing economic circumstances or parents re-entering the workforce after being home full time
- dealing with a chronic illness or substance addiction
A spirit of compromise
When families are struggling and one or both parents aren’t sure how to solve problems relationally, they can default to rigid patterns that don’t hold the needs of everyone. It is very difficult as a parent to hear and support your children’s opinions and needs when they differ from what you think ‘they should be’. We are in a cultural shift when it comes to parenting, trying to figure out what to do, when the model you had wasn’t something you want to follow. Therapy can help you create what feels right.
Anger
Often times families come to therapy when one partner’s reactions to the child (children) are often filled with anger and negative energy. Where the response to the child doesn’t match what he/ she did in the first place. Chronic anger can be very traumatizing for children. Children who have to face the anger of a mother or father may grow up scared, hold shame, feel like something is inherently wrong with them, and be prone to experiencing their own anger and depression. In this situation, we may ask the ‘angry’ parent to move through the anger in individual sessions.
Treating children individually
Systemic family therapy can look different each session. There will be sessions where the whole family participates, sessions with only parents, and there may be sessions when we meet with a child individually. This will be assessed by the therapist, based on the family situation. If we feel that your child is in need of a primary therapist and private weekly sessions, we will refer you to a individual therapist who works specifically with children.
Do our children need to come?
Not all the time. We can still work on your family system by working with you – the parents. If you are concerned about your children and/ or your family dynamics, come in. We can assess where you are and identify where change can be made.