The Beginner’s Guide to Family Therapy

Family therapy is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on addressing challenges within a family system, helping to identify problematic behaviors and improve relationships amongst members. Family therapy provides applicable and effective tools to enhance communication, conflict management, and awareness of one another.

What is a family?

The word family is highly adaptable and subjective. Traditionally defined, a family is a group of people that live together under one roof. Modern views understand it as multi-dimensional, consisting of several different groups of people who may or may not share ancestry and genetics.

Family therapy adopts a holistic, modern and progressive approach to understanding families in both traditional and non-traditional dynamics. Family theorists believe that the functioning of a family system has a greater impact on individual well-being than that of individual concerns.

What is family therapy?

Family therapy is a branch of psychotherapy that focuses primarily on the interactions, structure, and patterns within relationships that influence both individual and familial functioning. The aim is to develop awareness, understanding, and increased empathy among members of a family with the hope of facilitating lasting change.

The family is viewed as a system, meaning that the concerns presented within therapy will be looked at through a relational lens rather than an individual lens.

Benefits of family therapy

Family therapy can bridge the gap for family members by providing a safe, empathetic, and supported space. Main outcomes you can expect:

• Communication skills development
• Boundary setting
• Increase in problem solving abilities
• Expressing feelings in a thoughtful and productive way
• Conflict and anger management
• Identifying family strengths and weaknesses
• Increased empathy for one another
• Improved relationships among members

Family therapy isn’t a magic solution — but most families leave with better tools for communication, conflict, and mutual understanding.

Common reasons families attend therapy

When a family reaches out for therapeutic support, it is often in regard to a particular presenting concern. Family therapy looks at the presenting concern as a symptom of the greater problem.

• Marital problems
• Parent-child conflict
• Sibling conflict
• Illness
• External stressors (pandemics, world events, natural disasters)
• Parenting skills
• Psychoeducation
• Emotional awareness and understanding
• School issues
• Behavioral issues

What to expect in family therapy sessions

During the first few sessions you can expect your therapist to ask you a lot of questions. The therapist will be looking to understand background, history, and identifying information that can provide detail to the current level of functioning within the family system. The therapist will observe the dynamics among family members, along with body language and tone, to gather an understanding of where the stress and strain may be present.

After initially assessing the family dynamics, the therapist will formulate some key strategies and effective tools to address the concerns specific to your family. Family Therapy is traditionally somewhat brief in nature, consisting of typically 10–12 sessions before your family may begin to experience noticeable change.

Understanding the family structure is key

Salvador Minuchin, the founder of Structural Family Therapy, believed that understanding the family structure was key to successful family therapy. In the first one or two sessions your therapist may draw out a genogram — structurally similar to a family tree, but including information about relationships and interactions between family members.

Genograms can help therapists understand patterns, generational impact of functioning, and the impact of specific relationships on the family system.

How to get the most out of family therapy

To get the most out of your sessions, your therapist might ask you and your family to identify several goals or outcomes you would like to achieve during your time in therapy. It can be helpful to think about these prior to the initial session.

If you are attending therapy with children, preface family therapy to your children and explain what they can expect during the sessions. As with any therapy, it’s most effective when all members are active and willing participants.

Focus on your strengths

Although our weaknesses can be a driver for seeking therapy, it can be incredibly valuable to highlight and focus on strengths to re-establish connection and increase positive regard among family members.

If you think your family might benefit, read about our family therapy or book a free 20-minute consult — we’ll talk through how the first sessions might work for your family.