Family Therapy
We have an expert team ready to help you all move forward together
A family therapist understands
There are a number of reasons why people contact our service for family counselling and we have listed some of these below.
How counselling can help?
Having a parent leave the family home, or the parent relationship break down, can be incredibly difficult for everyone involved. Maybe your kids heard you both fighting or noticed that there was tension every time you both were together. In a young person’s mind they may think this is their fault, they have done something wrong or somehow they could have changed things. Kids are switched on and even if you have ‘fought in front of them’ kids do pick up on these things.
How the breakdown in relationship takes place can also be a struggle for everyone if finances prevent one person leaving, if there are control issues around access of the kids and so on destroying civil discussion. Not talking about this stuff is not the answer as we don’t want any family member sitting in this horrible experience alone. So divorce counselling is not so much about the parents, it’s more about the other family members effected.
You can choose to not be in a relationship but you still need to be civil and engaged around parenting your children positively together. Separating can be hard and sometimes we put the kids out of focus and we miss what is important. Safe Place Therapy is here to help everyone talk better and really focus members of the family on respect and open communication.
This might be a new born baby, adoption, or another change in the family unit which impacts everyone’s relationship with each other. Clearly with a new born or new addition older children may feel left out, miss out on quality time and then start to resent the younger sibling. This may change the older child’s behaviours causing disruption for more parent attention. This dynamic shift can be alarming for children especially if they have been an only child for a long period.
Families really know how to fight and this can lead to break down in communication and people not talking to each other over something that has happened. Usually the fight happens at a big event and then it feels like there is no turning back from the toxic words exchanged. Sides are taken if who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’ and this further causes difficulties in re engage any positive talking. Its is clear here that this in fighting helps no one and everyone misses out especially people who wernt involved in the fight in the first place. Family counselling can help calm the waters and slow down what happened so it is less of a blame game and more of an ‘olive branch’ to re connect everyone. Fights can last years but it can take a moment of courage to reach out for help to reconnect.
Being different can be an amazing experience for two partners but this can also negatively affect relationships within a family if someone does not agree. culture and difference can be celebrated but it does mean that effective communication is needed to understand what is needed in the relationship for the different to exist without clashing.
Supporting other family members who are unwell can be a huge toll on the person unwell and everyone else involved. A Caring role also changes communication, how the unwell person is perceived and dynamic changes. Moving from a once healthy person to a sick person can be a real shock and there is constant concerns of ‘not wanting to worry other people’ and struggling at this alone. A sudden death in the family or death of a significant figure is also understandably crushing.
Abuse towards anyone can have lasting on the family system and ability to cope. We can never underestimate the toll this plays on young people especially who struggle to understand why and internalize alot of their anger and sadness as they feel they cant speak up.
As you can see there are many situations where a family therapist can help a family walk through horrible situations. Our team is effective in naming the issues, calming down tensions and supporting each member.
There are different ways that family therapy will occur to ensure safety for everyone and this will be based on the therapist’s ethical discretion based on the situation.
An example of this might be deciding to offer relationship counselling first to the parents to calm fighting down before introducing other members of the family into a group therapy space.
Stuart Cheverton
Therapist and Founding Partner
Stuart has worked in counselling and mental health for a number of years. He is passionate and holistic in how he works, taking in the different perspective and issues at play that effect relationships. He is also very skilled at sitting with the story and include all parties to best shape the work together.
In Family Counselling it is important to work together on common issues that can be agreed on. While there might be different perspective the common goal is for everyone to reconnect and deal with the current issues occurring.
At Safe Place Therapy we are here to help you find better ways of talking and slowing down tensions between family members.
