Family therapy focuses on how a group of people who are invested in each other's well-being function as a system, rather than as individuals.
Unlike general group therapy, which provides validation and learning by allowing each person to speak in a moderated setting, family therapy specifically focuses on a family's interactions and communication styles.
Common goals of family therapy include:
1. Identifying hurtful behaviors and distorted communication styles
2. Exploring how these behaviors and communication styles are impairing relationships
3. Therapist-guided exploration of a family's history, so that together members can learn where these behaviors and communication styles developed. The goal usually is to prevent harmful patterns from being passed on to younger generations.
It's important to remember that with family therapy, the therapist is treating the entire family at the same time. There is no increased partiality or allegiance to any particular family member. For this reason, it is usually recommended that the family therapist focus on working with the family unit. If individual members require individual therapy, it's usually recommended that they seek a separate individual therapist.
However, sometimes with large family units or complex challenges, a family therapist may meet with individual members or subgroups for 1-2 sessions, before bringing the entire family back together for continued work. The sessions with fewer family members allow the therapist to collect more detailed information from fewer people at a time, when needed. When looking for a family therapist, it's important to try to include the entire core family that interacts on a regular basis. For many families, navigating how to balance the scheduling needs of all the required family members may occupy the first several therapy sessions. And that's okay! Learning more about how a family navigates this challenge can be incredibly helpful for the family therapist, as it provides an opportunity to complete a family assessment and learn about everyone's communication and problem-solving styles. In the end, building a schedule that balances the needs of all family members increases the likelihood that the entire family will be able to stay in treatment and eventually make progress.
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