Resolving family conflict is crucial to healing relationships. Undergoing family therapy and relationship improvement as a result can be one of the best things someone can do. Positive and effective communication skills can help families better communicate thoughts and feelings. It can accomplish this without causing more damage or trauma within the relationships.
Learning these useful skills can be beneficial for families that are struggling with effective communication. Understanding what family therapy is and the potential positive results can help those who need it to make a decision to try to better their family relationships.
The Role of Family Therapy
Interpersonal conflicts, communication breakdowns, and emotional challenges are all things that can affect the dynamics in a family unit. Maladaptive behaviors and coping skills within the family unit can severely impact an individual.
Family therapy plays a crucial role in addressing and resolving these issues. A safe space to identify patterns of interaction, express feelings and thoughts, and understand each other’s perspectives is provided by family therapy and relationships can begin to heal and grow as a result.
What Does Family Therapy Help With?
Family therapy plays a role in healing from many different things. Facing resentments, misunderstandings and issues resulting in estrangement can be done during family therapy and relationships. As a result, relationships can begin to heal and flourish. In terms of addiction, enabling can harm a loved one. Undergoing family therapy and relationships healing can help the family learn how to support and help their loved one without enabling them.
Other things family therapy can help with include:
- Marital problems
- Trauma
- Grief
- Infidelity
- Communication problems
- Mental health
- Financial problems
- Family dynamics
- Alcohol addiction
The goal of family therapy is to foster growth and healing within the family dynamic. Those who take part in this form of therapy often benefit from it by learning new skills and healing seemingly shattered relationships within the family unit.
Types and Methods of Family Therapy
Beginning family therapy and relationships healing may seem overwhelming for someone just looking into getting this beneficial help. Knowing what family therapy entails, and the forms of family therapy can help the decision making process a little easier. There are different forms of family therapy that can benefit different people and their struggles. These forms can include group sessions with other families, private sessions with their family and a therapist and family educational groups. Others are 12-Step groups that help family members of those who are addicted to drugs and alcohol.
Having an array of therapy options allows people to take advantage of all aspects of family therapy. With this, they have more options that can help them along their healing journey. The different models of family therapy available can also help shed some light on how family therapy can help. Multidimensional family therapy is geared to help adolescents seeking recovery develop their identity. It also helps parents and family members to learn communication, how to set healthy boundaries, and building parent-child relationships.
Cognitive-behavioral family therapy helps by using the principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy to teach families how negative thoughts and behavioral patterns affect them. It then teaches them positive ways of supporting and helping each other. Finally, structural family therapy helps to identify dynamics and rules that may be unhelpful to family dynamics. The emphasis in this model of family therapy is placed on setting boundaries and improving communication.
Communication
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to family dynamics deteriorating is communication. Using family therapy to fix communication skills can help to foster positive growth within the family dynamic.
Communication skills are vital to family relationships. They can begin to heal and grow when addiction and other struggles have caused a rift. This helps to teach ways of talking and communicating that are healthy and respectful. When families effectively communicate, there is room for healing and growth within the family unit.
Setting Goals and Accountability
Families dealing with struggles like addiction are often stressed. Thus, emotions tend to run high leading to conflict between members of the family unit. This causes the family as a whole to lose sight of the main issue—substance abuse. However, this is just a symptom of a deeper-rooted issue.
Having a clean goal for an outcome of family therapy is crucial. It aids in accountability to achieve the goals that are set. Accountability is also a pivotal part of family therapy. Everyone involved should hold themselves accountable for being open-minded. They can gain the necessary tools to help repair and mend the relationships in question.
Repair Relationships With Empowered
When someone struggles with mental health or addiction, it can cause damage to family relationships. It can lead to fractures in relationships that can be seemingly irreparable. Here at Empowered, we offer family therapy as a means of assisting during the beginning of the healing process. Family therapy can help people learn how to communicate and heal. It provides a buffer as families begin to learn to navigate productive communication,
Call us today and begin your journey of healing.
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