Family Therapy

What is Family Therapy?

No-one lives their life in isolation. Publicly and privately, at work and at home, we all have an impact on the people around us. Each of us is one part of a wider network or ‘system’. Our interactions with other people are how the system works.

Imagine that your family at a meal time is a system. Some family members may be happily chatting to each other, others may sit in silence throughout the meal, resenting being asked anything. Others may argue leading someone else to have to calm the situation and negotiate a peace. And this repeats every meal time because you have all developed different ways of relating to each other. These are what a Family and System Psychotherapist would describe as ‘patterns’.

As time goes by, these systems grow and change as different factors come into play. Perhaps, a child has become a teenager, but the parents still treat them as they would a younger child. The patterns no longer work, and the system becomes stuck.

A Family and Systemic Psychotherapist could help you take on a different position, either by working with individuals or the whole family. They can look at how different factors affect people within the system. They will help emphasise the strengths, resilience and resources available and how everyone helps contribute to the functioning of the system.

The aim is to help everyone understand each other, develop new ways to talk to each other. This can help create an environment in which everyone supports each other promoting health and wellbeing.