Family Therapy
“You see, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”
– Mortimer Brewster in Joseph Kesselring’s play Arsenic and Old Lace
It’s not me; it’s them.
Even if only one member of the family is struggling with something like anxiety or depression, rarely, it doesn’t affect the rest of the family as well. Situations such as a child acting out can be a warning sign that an unhealthy family dynamic needs to be addressed.
Individual therapy can be a great tool, but there are times when you may look around and say to yourself: “This whole family needs a therapist.” And you would be right.
If you know of a family where everyone likes each other, enjoys being around each other, and no one ever fights, you’re probably living in a sitcom from the 1950s. For many families, a day without an explosive argument is considered good.
Now, maybe that’s not where your family is at. But perhaps you have noticed things that worry you. You’ve noticed that you seem to be talking less and withdrawing into your phones more. There have always been arguments, but lately, it seems all you do is fight.
Perhaps your family seems to be lapsing into unhealthy habits to keep things together. Maybe one of you has become the scapegoat, a lightning rod for almost everything that goes wrong. Perhaps you or one of your siblings seem to get dragged into your parents’ every argument. The lines and boundaries seem to have gotten blurred.
It’s ok to acknowledge that these things are happening. Ignoring them or minimizing them hasn’t worked. It’s time to recognize what’s going wrong and explore ways to make it go right.
One at a time.
The most significant difference between individual and family therapy is the number of people in the room. In ideal situations, every family member will be on hand to address the problems and work toward solutions. Since the goal of therapy is to work through troubles in family dynamics, therapy is most effective when everyone involved is there to talk about it and implement change as a unit.
Family therapy is not about getting you all into a room so you can fight with each other. Instead, it’s more about replicating areas where things break down and trying to repair the breaches, so the level of conflict goes down.
Think about individual therapy like a tech support technician troubleshooting a computer. It’s challenging to solve a problem if it can’t be replicated. Once we can trace what’s going on, we can work to prevent it from happening again.
Just one big happy whatever.
There are various approaches to family therapy, but they all have one thing in common: They first work to explain how the family got to where it is, break down the unhealthy patterns that are sustaining the current situation, take them apart, and build new patterns that yield the kind of life you want.
For example, imagine you, your partner, and your children coming to therapy because one of your kids has been skipping school, and it seems to be causing a strain on all of you. You and your partner are arguing, and your children keep getting dragged into those arguments. It escalates no matter how often you try to talk about it calmly.
In family therapy, we don’t just discuss the argument; we reenact it so that, as your therapist, we can see what is happening, why it’s happening, and intervene at that moment. Then, we can learn and practice ways to break these patterns and forge new ones.
Come home again.
It’s time to go home. Not the debacle you’ve been living in, but a natural home with a family that, however flawed, loves and respects one another.
Reach out to us and let us join your family in building the home you’ve always wanted.