We are all born into an ongoing family story.
Our early experiences shape who we are. They also shape our adult relationships, and how we parent our children.
The good news is that family stories are never static, and can continue to grow and change.
Families can be a source of immense joy … and great frustration. Family therapy can help you move through some of those relationship challenges.
Who is Family Therapy For?
Families are deeply connected. When one person is struggling, everyone feels the effects. In the same way, when one person begins to heal or grow, positive changes can ripple through the whole family.
Family therapy is relevant for all ages and stages in life, and offers support for the whole family. Some areas we can help with include:
- Parenting – children’s challenging behaviours, ADHD, dyslexia and other learning difficulties
- Caring for elderly parents
- In-laws – becoming an in-law, living with in-laws, family conflict
- Life Transitions – becoming parents, children starting school, living with teenagers, children leaving home, becoming grandparents
- Siblings – ongoing conflict, past hurts
All of these life experiences can affect your relationships, and can be difficult to work through on your own. There’s no harm in asking for help, and addressing niggling issues early on can help to prevent major family breakdowns.
The Family as a System
Families are deeply connected. When one person is struggling, everyone feels the effects. In the same way, when one person begins to heal or grow, positive changes often ripple through the whole family.
It’s often the child’s struggles that bring a family to counselling, even though the support is for the parent.
Sometimes a child’s behaviour can reflect stresses, changes or patterns within family life. Looking at the bigger picture can help us understand what might be happening.
Looking at your child’s behaviour within the context of family life can often reveal patterns that hadn’t been obvious before. As understanding grows, relationships often begin to change too.
Benefits of Family Therapy Include:
- Closer family connections
- Healing strained relationships
- Addressing children’s challenging behaviours and learning difficulties
- Learning how safely manage conflict
- Improved family emotional balance
- Improved communication, removal of blockages to closer connection
- Greater understanding and awareness
Generational Family Stories
The relationship patterns we experience in infancy and early childhood come with us throughout life, and we take them into our adult relationships. As a result, we often find ourselves unconsciously repeating old family patterns of behaviour.
We all bring experiences from our own childhood into the way we parent. Some of these patterns are supportive. Others may no longer fit the kind of family life we’re hoping to create. Becoming aware of these patterns gives us the opportunity to make different choices.
Without realising it, we can find ourselves passing these relationship patterns from one generation to the next.
Healing family relationships starts with just one person willing to take the steps to break the family cycle.
Benefits for Children
Secure family relationships are the key to a child’s later wellbeing. They build a sense of safety and belonging, helping children find their place in the world.
Children learn as much from what we do as from what we say. They watch how we respond to stress, how we repair relationships after conflict, and how we care for ourselves and each other.
We can also change their behaviours by consciously role modelling the behaviours we would like them to learn.
Creating Change
You don’t need your whole family to come to counselling for positive change to begin. Sometimes one person choosing to do things differently can have a positive influence on the whole family.
Note: You don’t need a referral or diagnosis to see a Counsellor or Psychotherapist in Australia.
Related Articles
You might enjoy some of our other articles on parenting and child behaviour.
Counselling Support for Parents
