Family Counselling
Strengthening your family unit, through all phases of life.
What is Family Counselling?
Family counselling is a clinical practice that assists family members in building strong relationships through healthier communication and better conflict resolution.
Family counselling can help with a variety of concerns including:
Communication problems
Behavioural or emotional problems in children
Marital problems
Financial conflicts
Mental illness
Putting your and your family’s lives out into the open can be a scary thing. Being vulnerable might feel uncomfortable, and reaching out for help can feel intimidating for many. But, reaching out for support can also be a big step to repairing and building a healthy and happy family environment.
Let us walk you through the process of family counselling and how it can benefit you and your loved ones.
What To Expect During Family Counselling
Family counselling is usually a short-term therapy and involves either all or some family members. Sometimes, individual family members can also be called in for separate sessions. Sessions typically last from 50 minutes to an hour.
Your counsellor will first discuss the main concerns that brought your family to therapy. During this initial session, every family member will have the opportunity to discuss their own challenges and reasons for approaching therapy.
After this, your counsellor will delve deeper into your family history, and gain an understanding of every member’s role within the family, as well as the family’s approach to conflict. Other things that may be explored during family counselling include power dynamics and individual members’ strengths and weaknesses.
Family members can gain deeper insight into their challenges and individual roles and can learn helpful strategies to overcome conflict. Your counsellor may also assign homework, which will allow more room for reflection and understanding.
Benefits of Family Counselling
Family counselling can prove to be extremely effective in helping families improve their communication, building respect for each other, and approaching conflict in a productive manner.
Here are some key benefits of family counselling:
Improved self-esteem
Our family is the first source of our knowledge about social interactions and relationships. We then learn to model these dynamics in other relationships throughout our life. An unhealthy family environment can be damaging to our view of ourselves, other people, and the world. This can affect our self-esteem and future relationships.
Family counselling addresses these unhealthy dynamics and can help people build better self-esteem and relationships with others.
Better problem-solving skills
Repeated conflict, be it about financial problems, marital issues, children, or mental illness, can entangle family members in a vicious cycle where the problem is the center of their focus.
Family counselling can teach families to work together as a team and focus on the solution. It can teach them important problem-solving skills, along with new and better ways to approach conflict. This can make room for healthy interaction.
Emotional regulation skills
It goes without saying that negative circumstances don’t always bring out the best in us. Family members can experience hard-hitting emotions like anger, grief, and blame, which may become unresolved and suppressed.
This is likely to pave the way for more problems and unproductive ways of expressing emotions. Most people may even turn to avoidance behaviours, which only increases the severity of these issues.
Family counselling can help family members make room for each other by cultivating understanding and empathy. By learning anger management skills and better ways to regulate their emotions, family members can foster greater closeness and connection.
Stronger relationships and unity
Impaired or unhealthy communication can create distance and resentment between family members. Family counselling can teach them to develop better listening and communication skills.
This can create a sense of belonging and unity, and build trust and support between family members.
Reach Out To Us
Located in the beautiful Orchard Treatment & Wellness Center at 4012 Perth Rd #107, Shakespeare Ontario, we are local to Stratford, Tavistock, New Hamburg, and the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Our clinicians also offer remote therapy across Ontario so that you can access the support you need - no matter where you are!
Using evidence-based therapeutic approaches, our experienced counsellors can help you begin to reclaim the well-being of your family unit.
To get started you can fill out a contact form, call (226) 215-4244, or book an appointment online with one of our counsellors by clicking below.
We’re looking forward to supporting you and your family!