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Call or Text: 910.777.5575

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IT ALL BEGINS WITH FAMILY

Family Therapy

Family therapy is specifically designed for the family as a unit, to help its members learn how specific issues affect the dynamic and functioning of the family as a whole and how to navigate situations that bring imbalance to the relationship between members of that family. The family becomes our patient, the family as a larger unit.


Benefits:
  • Improved communication
  • Reduction of tension and stress within the family
  • Conflict resolution skills
  • Anger management
  • Development of healthy boundaries
  • Enhanced problem-solving skills
  • Greater empathy between family members
  • Cohesion during and after crisis
  • Promotion of honesty and trust
  • Supportive family environment
  • Learning to forgive
  • Reunification
A blurred family walking along the beach with tall grass in the foreground, symbolizing togetherness, relaxation, and connection in nature.

Common issues:
  • Unexpected sudden changes
  • Financial distress
  • Disagreement about money
  • Experience of traumatic events
  • Grief and loss
  • Substance abuse or addiction
  • Behavioral problems
  • Academic concerns
  • Mental health concerns
  • Chronic illness
  • Infidelity or loss of trust
  • Divorce or separation
  • Blended families experiencing conflict
  • Adjustments
  • Family
  • Emotional distress
  • Siblings rivalry
  • Death of a family member
  • Family member has special needs
  • Infidelity

Family therapy teaches you skills to address conflict with other members of the family. It also serves as a mediation tool when communication between the parties involved has become impossible. This is achieved by exploring underlying concerns that exist within the family and creating and establishing a plan that meets the needs of each and every family member.


Key strategies:
  • Use “I” statements
  • Focus on the problem, not the person
  • Give others the benefit of the doubt.
  • Be approachable, friendly and pleasant.
  • Practice real time conversations
  • Keep the conversation going
  • See family interactions as an opportunity for dialogue
  • Acknowledge and listen rather than obey
  • Focus on being happy rather than being right.

Common concepts:
  • Differentiation of self
  • Emotional triangle
  • Family projection process
  • Multigenerational transmission process
  • Emotional cutoff
  • Sibling position
  • Societal emotional process
  • Nuclear family emotional process

Family System
Problem resolution is a collective approach - what happens to one member of a family happens to everyone in the family. Each family member must learn to better understand other members of the family and see how their own actions affect the family unit.

FAMILY PROBLEMS
Perspectives
Transgenerational
Communication, practices, behaviors, and beliefs between generations explain current problems within the family.
Structural
Problems within the family are dysfunctional patterns that need to be change by reorganizing the family system.

Bowenian
There are two counterbalancing forces driving all human interactions: “individuality vs companionship” and “togetherness vs independence”

Systemic
Family belief systems influence the existing complex relationship patterns between its members and between its members and others.
Strategic
Specific patterns of interaction that present during therapy are addressed by using creative solutions specific to those problems.