Family Therapy enables people to talk together, or individually, in a safe and supportive environment
What happens in a Family Therapy session?
- The family therapist will:
- Ask what each person hopes will be the outcome of their therapy.
- Identify every influence on the family and place the family and their problem in that context.
- Invite the whole family to look at the problem's context and to work towards a common understanding and approach.
- Explore any behaviour patterns that have developed around the problem and whether the family judge them to be problematic.
- Work with the family to create new, more helpful behaviours.
- Work in partnership with families according to their goals.
- Develop a unique therapy that fits the family.
- Use the families' strengths to enable change within the family.
- Be sensitive to diverse family structures, beliefs and cultures.
- Family Therapists aim not to take sides, blame, or provide simple one size fits all' answers. They aim to engage people in sharing understandings and views with each other and exploring ways forward that work for them.
- They will adapt their ways of working according to people's ages, needs, resources and preferences. Sessions involving children, for example, often include play and drawing.
- Some people may wish to talk together from the start of therapy sessions, while others may prefer some individual time with their Family Therapist before deciding if, what and how to share their thoughts and feelings with others.
- Some Family Therapists work individually. Others work in teams.
