How Family Counseling Can Help

Family counseling can help families that as a whole are not seeing eye to eye. Clearly, family counseling needs to be different than individual counseling. In individual counseling, it’s a one-on-one setting. However, family counseling will have multiple people involved in a session.

Finding The Right Counselor

When you reach out to a therapist, you will need to share your story with what is going on in the family. From there, it will be time to determine which counselor is going to fit your best needs. For instance, if anxiety is taking place with your children, it may be necessary to work with a counselor who knows a lot about anxiety. You want to make sure that the counselor will fit within your family system. That way, you will be more likely to achieve the goals that you want to accomplish. 

Family counseling aims to help all the parties that want to engage in counseling. In a typical family counseling session, the counselor will work with the parents and the child in addressing the issues taking place. In an office setting, the counselor will be sitting on a chair. Then, the family will sit on the couch or the other chairs in the room. Let’s say that a family reached out to a counselor because their child is having a hard time testing at school. So, the family wants to see how counseling can help their son and how counseling can help them as parents address the issue. Well, what will a session look like? The counselor will come up with a plan, objectives, and goals. That way, when you move forward, there will be a clear path. 

Various Family Sessions

Overall, we want to help the family and get the support that they need. Moving forward with family counseling will look different depending on the situation. If you have already had a few sessions together as a family, the counselor might get creative and switch it up. For example, a counselor can have a session with just the child. While on the other hand, the counselor may also have a session with just the parents. It will depend on the type of goals that the family is looking to accomplish. 

Santos Counseling

At Santos Counseling, we offer family therapy, a unique and clinically proven approach that focuses on improving family relationships and addressing problems. We believe our counseling practice stands out among others are our counselors and the extensive experience they bring with them. Family therapy focuses directly on the client’s history, story, goals, and presenting concerns while incorporating the family support system. A typical session may include the parent(s) and the child with the focus aimed at understanding, communication, or any other concern impacting the family as a whole. 

If you want to learn more about family counseling, you can check out my YouTube video: How Family Counseling Can Help.

Is your family struggling during the pandemic? We are currently accepting new clients during the Covid-19 pandemic for telehealth and in-office sessions.

Common reasons that families start counseling include:

• Problems with communication.
• Navigating trauma such as divorce.
• Support with moving to a new school.
• Support with balancing therapy with medication.
• Sibling rivalry.
• ADD or ADHD

Ways that family counseling can help

• Learn how to get along
• Learn to develop healthy boundaries
• Understand healthy ways to deal with conflict
• Build coping skills to manage negative symptoms
• Learn why difficulties are taking place and how to address them
• Build happiness

Families reach out for therapy for many reasons. Some families reach out to receive support due to conflict taking place between members of the household. While other families reach out for family counseling due to trauma.

The structure of therapy is to give families a place to share their life story. To find peace and calmness in outlining what is taking place in order to provide the counselor with an understanding of their unique background. As sessions move forward, the counselor works with the family to build goals aimed at addressing the difficulties taking place.

As an example, a family may start therapy due to their child experiencing the life transition that comes after a divorce. The counselor works with the family, in this example, the parents to understand what they have seen take place with their child. Questions focused on behavioral and day-to-day changes that the parent(s) have noticed. The counselor takes time to work with the child, in order to build a relationship with the client. The space provides an opportunity to understand the impact of the divorce and how to move forward in life while focusing on healing and growing.

A key question that families ask when It comes to family counseling, is how many sessions before positive changes take place. The answer is found in the mutual work that takes place. Typically, clients are able to see positive changes during the first sessions and in addition through the work that takes place outside of the session. Santos Counseling PLLC, counselors take time to provide clients with homework and resources that can be utilized outside of the session.