5 Ways Family Counseling Can Ease Trouble At Home
When life’s challenges get to be too much, a licensed therapist specifically experienced in a family therapy setting may provide the perfect support you need in order to come out of this situation on top.
If you’ve identified that your home life is at least one of your main sources of negative emotion, a therapist can still be a huge help when you’re having trouble at home, but a therapist trained and experienced in the family counseling format can be even more effective in this case! Why the difference? Here are 5 ways that family therapy’s unique methodology can help ease the tension in your family and help get everyone back on track.
Bring Underlying Tensions To Light
Even though family members may all live under one roof, the distance between some or all can seem infinite. Whether it’s between parents, siblings, or extended family if they live in the home such as grandparents, an aunt or uncle, etc. One person may hurt another without even realizing it, and the person feeling offended may bottle it up and push it down. Just because the problem’s no longer bubbling at the surface, however, doesn’t mean it’s not subtly undermining your relationship
Helps Enhance Communication Within The Family
It’s no secret that therapy can drastically help you improve your ability to communicate with others. However in a family therapy setting, not only is each family member improving their own ability to communicate effectively, but also heal the dynamics between them as they will be communicating with each other in front of a therapist who can mediate and help them adjust in real time. This results in a result greater than the sum of its parts (meaning more effective for the family to attend therapy together, than each to go to therapy individually.)
Family Members In A Counseling Setting Can Feel Safe To Open Up
Even if a member of the family develops the communication skills necessary to open up to the rest, they may not feel inclined to do so as they might be met with a cold shoulder, angry defensiveness, or simply stiffness as the existing dynamic might not be conducive to that type of vulnerability.
Joining therapy together can provide family members a safe space to open up about what troubles them about others, or even just about their relationship rather than the person themselves. Having a supportive space to voice your issues within the context of the family can help develop a pattern of transparency that helps family members resolve conflicts as they come instead of letting them build up and end in resentment.
Counseling Helps Family Members Develop Skills For Life
When attending family therapy, people coming in with an open mind learn to regulate their emotions, communicate effectively, and set personal boundaries. The thing to note is that these are all skills. As you go through therapy, these skills help you in all aspects of your life that require working with people. This is something you carry with you to your communities and careers, not to mention having strong and healthy bonds reinforces all these skills to help any family member go back out into the world with confidence.
Attending Together Strengthens The Family Unit
Nothing in our history as humans has brought us together more than working together towards a common goal. It’s well known that doing activities together can strengthen bonds between people. Well if members of a family are attending therapy together with the common goal of personal growth as well as the relationships between them, the family as a whole will at some point grow closer as they achieve milestones and notice improvement.
There’s also a momentum effect. What does this mean? Well if in a hypothetical family unit, one person goes to individual therapy and makes progress, but the others in the household are not addressing their dysfunction, they can start to drag down the person’s healing, slowing their process. On the contrary, if all members of the family are growing together, not only will they not drag one another down, but actually support each other from regressing and accelerate each other’s growth. Whether they realize the support they provide each other at this point can further help them feel like a team and grow even closer.
Final Thoughts
If you or someone in your family is struggling and it’s causing tension in the family (even with those not directly involved), seeking out a family therapist may be the best choice as these problems never resolve themselves. Jessica Harrison is a licensed therapist serving the Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter areas. She is experienced in managing the family therapy format and keeping blame out of the conversation to provide a safe space for all family members to feel heard and supported.
If you are in Jupiter or Palm Beach Gardens, don’t wait for family problems to run deeper. Call Jessica Harrison at (954) 600-6695 for any situation your family is facing, and let’s tackle it together.