Family Counselling
Family Counselor, Roshan Manuskhani offers Family counseling to deal with issues, such as divorce, metal health concerns, substance abuse or any other issue concerning the whole family.
What is Family Counselling?
Families are a great source of support, encouragement, love and guidance but sometimes relationships within families are put under strenuous conditions, due to various factors, leaving family members isolated or overlooked.
Family counselling can help in situations, when siblings aren’t able to get along, or when parents are going through a divorce or separation.
How can Family Counselling help?
If you are facing any issues as a family, for whatever reasons, family counselling can help. It can help the whole family to communicate better, and to understand and resolve different points-of-view.
Let’s explore few situations in which family counselling may be helpful:
Example 1: When families go through change, it can become difficult, for few or all members at times to adapt to the changing environment. Counselling can help family members, support each other through these difficult times, to reduce conflict and arguments and bond well as a result.
Example 2: It is sometimes surprising to watch parents realise to the extent their own child has bottled up his/her feelings. Children speak openly when they feel safe. Counselling can help creative conducive surroundings for a child to speak up. Children really want their parent’s undivided attention and they pick up on a conflict, if they do not get another outlet. This kind of situation may really harm the child at a psychological level.
What can I expect in Family Counselling?
Your counsellor will provide discreet and non-judgemental support to each family member who comes for counselling. Each person who comes will have a say and would get to share their feelings in an open environment.
At the first appointment, the therapist may ask you to talk through what’s happening on the family front, and what you’d like to change. You will then work with the counsellor to decide what happens in the next session or sessions.
Counselling is a personalized experience and how the sessions shape-up truly depends on your own mind-set, what are your hopes and expectations, and the unique needs of your family.
As an outcome of the Family Counselling, you can expect to develop better bond between all the members of the family and strengthen the relationships. It can help the whole family work together as a team.
Treatment for Families
Family therapists usually work with families to identify issues and focus on their resolutions after delving into the origins of the problems. This can help members reflect and increase their understanding levels of a given situation. The issues might be related to one incident or maybe a repetitive pattern.
They can include efforts to explore and understand:
the problem in hand
how different family members see the problems differently
effective ways of dealing with past problems
issues related to parenting
characters of each member
communication between members
collaborations and resentment among the members
how the groups within the family function at an emotional level
who is more expressive and who bottles up feelings
While exploring family issues the therapist should remain neutral and provide an atmosphere free from any kind of prejudice. Each family is special in its own way, even within its own ethnicity and neutral treatment by the therapist, is what is required to develop a healthy atmosphere within the family.
Sometimes, family counselling also help deal with more deep-rooted issues within the family and the problems might include more severe situations, such as:
separation or divorce impacting children and other members
eating disorders
mental health issues
self-harming attitude of one or more members
drug or substance abuse among teenagers in the family
inappropriate sexual behaviour of some members
Family counselling and therapy usually work using cognitive behavioural therapy, systemic and solution-focussed therapy and will work both with individuals and the whole family on specific or generic issues.