Principles Of Family Counseling

While family counseling can look different depending on the counseling therapist in Manasquan NJ or where you are that you see, at the core it is all about communication. It is necessarily about finding solutions or fixes but rather helping families to learn to communicate better, listening as well as speaking, and to help shorten communication gaps and resolve communication conflict. Here is a little exploration of some of the more commonly used techniques by therapists that offer family counseling.

1. Reframing - This is when you take a statement out of the context it is usually used in and consider what other theories might relate to the statement or what other causes or meanings there might be. For example, a teen daughter might take the question from her father about whether she is dating as him meddling, when in fact he is concerned.
2. Family floor plans - This is when parents are asked to draw a family tree as much as they can and give information about relatives. Sometimes facts about family members can be relevant to problems that are happening in the family unit. If a family is dealing with a teen who is abusing drugs and there is addiction in the family that is useful to know.
3. Changing statements to I - Rather than the usual blaming people in a family do, a counseling therapist in Shrewsbury NJ has you start a sentence with I rather than he or they or she. So rather than saying He makes me angry.. you start with I am angry… It is a way people can take control and ownership of their emotions.
4. Play therapy - When children are involved a good method to take with therapy is to use play. The therapist might ask them to draw something or use dolls, figures or soft toys to act something out or to show how they feel or what they saw. It is especially useful when children do not have the vocabulary to express themselves or when they feel unable to do so.
5. Using family photos - A counseling therapist in Manasquan NJ might have you bring different family photos and get responses, emotions or such from those in therapy. It is a way to get an overview of how people feel about each other and what the current situation is like.
6. Learning communication techniques - People think communication is all about talking but it is not. Listening is a vital part of communication, and there are ways you can say things that are less confrontational or charged. Learning to be more effective at communicating with each other can help families with current issues. Those lessons learned can help in the future too.

Summary

When you see a counseling therapist in Shrewsbury NJ it can take time and patience before things start to change for the better. It is important to listen to each other, to be prepared to open up and to want to understand where the other family members are coming from. Things will get better if you are open to learning how to do things in a more healthy way.