Family life can be a source of comfort, love, and security. Being part of a stable family and happy family provides us with a sense of belonging and helps form part of the building blocks of who we are.
Family is the first small circle in a community. Healthy family relationships promote in each family member a purposeful outlook on life, a sense of wellbeing and helps to build resilience. Family life can also be challenging. A family is made up of a group of individuals with different personalities, ideas and attitudes and conflicts can often arise.
Family interactions can involve sharing great joy but also sorrow, pain, and misunderstandings. Families can struggle to communicate and support each other and sometimes find themselves entrenched in patterns of destructive behaviour or negative interactions and it may be difficult to see how to change things or are at loss to see potential for positive change could even be possible.
Families are resilient and can change.
Counselling can offer hope to families who might be buckling under pressure. Counsellors work with families to build interpersonal trust, openness, and mutual respect for all members. Family units can be made up of traditionally parents and children but can also be a blended family, include extended family, be separated families, single parent families, defacto relationships or stepfamilies.
Whatever is your unique family configuration counselling can help families back to balance. Families may be adversely affected by many different major life transitions and events. Some issues that families might find themselves struggling might include:
Family counselling does not need to involve all family members sometimes it may begin with just a couple of members and other times all members participate.
The objective is to identify ways to communicate more effectively and unpack conflicts in a proactive way where all members feel heard and understood. I feel every family is unique and strive to work with them to facilitate their family back to a happy thriving family unit.
