Why Family Therapy
Family therapy is all about the connections that family members have with the each other and the group as a whole. Simple relational therapy or marriage therapy cannot cover the complex dynamics of a family, especially a family that is working in crisis mode and needs assistance. Many people wonder why a group counseling session or a marriage counseling session isn’t appropriate for addressing family needs, but there are some very real differences between the session types.
Family therapy has to take into account numerous personalities, like group therapy, but in families these personalities have extensive bonds and histories that lay much deeper. Marriage counseling sessions are meant to focus on a couple and their interaction and communication and, while family therapy takes that into account, the sessions are about communication within the entire family and how their relational structure can be made healthier.
As an example, in one family therapy case:
A child who is helpful and empathetic to one family member is cruel and antagonistic to the others in the family. Obviously the child’s base personality is not the true issue, but the complex relationships the child is experiencing with other family members. In this situation, the cause of those behaviors was not the person the child was antagonistic to. The child was jealous of the attention that one family member was giving the others, and so courted that family member while violently pushing away the others. The result of these behaviors had thrown the entire family into crisis and altered their whole dynamic.
Working out the dynamics of a group that lives together and experiences strong bonds and disassociations all at the same time can be difficult. A family therapist has the experience to help.
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