HHC Centre Family Therapy: Forget The Blame Game And Solve Co | Page 4

How does Family Therapy work?
Because Family Therapy addresses communication and promotes understanding at the family level rather than focusing on the
behaviour of a particular individual it is effective in resolving conflicts arising from a multitude of causes. For example, Family
Therapy is successful in providing the skills to enable a family to deal with the stress, anger and conflict that arises from conflicts
parents have with their children or conflict between siblings. Many of these common troubles may arise from parent separation,
divorce, financial troubles or alcohol or substance abuse. But often Family Therapy is needed to provide the support and skills in
dealing with issues such as mental health issues within the family or relationship. In these cases the individual would receive
specialist one-on-one therapy or rehabilitation treatment but the family members could undergo family therapy session to provide
them with the skills to manage the crisis.
A crucial part of Family Therapy is that it strives to avoid the blame-game so avoids pointing the finger at any one individual.
Instead, the therapist will typically interview all the family members individually to find out their particular point of view of the
problem, how the problem arose and what they have been doing so far to resolve it. The goal after all is to assist families by
giving them the skills to resolve issues and work through conflicts in a more open and healthy way. As a result Family Therapy
treatment plan are typically short term with only around a dozen sessions. Though some families may wish to continue the therapy
to strengthen the skills they have learned and the family bonds.
However, as there are so many potential root causes for conflict within any family there is also the need for many types of therapy
treatment. As a result there are many approaches to Family Therapy counselling and we will consider some of the more common
ones used by therapists.