Who can benefit from Family Counseling?
Journey to Joy Counseling provides Family Counseling in Carmel, IN. We love being a part of the Arts and Design District in the Carmel community. It’s very important that we provide the best-personalized care and treatment to those who entrust us with their family counseling and mental health care needs. We strive to provide professional and individualized family counseling in Carmel, IN and to the surrounding suburbs of Indianapolis.
We are often asked who can benefit from family counseling? It’s true that ANY family can benefit from family therapy. Family therapy can help a newly blended family learn to navigate the transitions they are going through. Family counseling can help families work through conflict, improve communication, and learn to be constructive during disagreements. It can help a family who has recently suffered a difficult loss and need help processing the grief. Family counseling can help families process unexpected change, or issues like mental health and addictions. Family counseling can help families process past issues of abuse, abandonment, and neglect. All of this to say, family counseling can be beneficial to many different types of families, for many different reasons.
We often get asked how family counseling can help. Our answer is that life can be hard, but you don’t have to navigate it alone. Family counseling can help address familial issues, whether current or in the past. Relationships within a family are complicated, and sometimes it’s beneficial to have an unbiased third party help you process and work through issues.
The therapeutic relationship with your therapist is extremely important in family counseling. We strive to be unbiased, kind, and compassionate people in our work with our families. You can trust that we will always have your and your family’s best interest at heart. We want you to feel acceptance, peace, and comfort when you enter Journey to Joy’s doors.
What is Family Counseling?
Family counseling is offered at Journey to Joy Counseling to address the following issues: Divorce, infidelity, family of origin issues, adoption, boundaries, codependency, addictions, abuse, perfectionism, shame, life stage adjustments, transitions, grief and loss, depression, anxiety, anger management, spirituality, parenthood challenges, break-up and divorce recovery, stress management, ADHD, work-life balance, conflict resolution, infertility and pregnancy loss, relationship issues, and abandonment. This is not an all-inclusive list, but rather a list to show just the variety of topics addressed in family therapy.
Sometimes individuals who are involved in family therapy can also benefit from participating in some individual counseling sessions. It’s important to process what you individually may be contributing to the family. This is something you and your therapist can discuss further.
Why should you pursue Family Counseling?
Family counseling provides a safe space for family members to explore their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It allows families to constructively work through challenging topics, identify aspects of their individual lives they would like to work on, learn to understand themselves and their family members, set goals individually and as a family unit, and work towards the desired change.
Family counseling creates a place for you to receive support and to process the issues impacting your particular family. It allows you all to receive support, and time to process and heal wounds. Family counseling allows each family member time to explore feelings, beliefs, and behaviors in a supportive and private environment. Family counseling can also allow you to view your thoughts and feelings from a fresh, new perspective so that you can challenge yourself and your family to grow.
When should you start Family Counseling?
Sometimes families come to therapy after a particular event or situation. Others come years later to address past issues and salvage relationships. Whatever place you are at, it’s important to note that family therapy can also be proactive, meaning you can come when things start to get a little hard, before they become bigger problems. Family counseling can be pursued when life feels out of control, or even when life seems stable. Family therapy can help you all process, gain and develop insight and awareness, and learn more about yourself and your family.
How does Family Counseling work?
At this point, you may be wondering how does family counseling work? The first session is an initial assessment to determine what is going on and how we can best help. During the first meeting, your therapist will gather information and ask questions about what brought you to therapy. You may be asked questions like, “What happened recently in your family?”, “How was your family when you were a child?”, and “What are you all looking to get out of family therapy?”. Together we will help set goals for your family in order to help you all move forward. At times we may assign homework to help you reflect on what is going on in your family, and how to work towards better cohesiveness and growth. For more information about the initial appointment, click here.
After the first initial therapy session, we will work to help understand your needs, desires, and feelings, and how we can best help. It’s important to discuss and process what the roadmap looks like moving forward with family therapy so that you all can work towards positive change and healing. We will identify positive problem-solving skills and teach appropriate coping skills. We will look at unhealthy patterns of behavior that are holding you and your family back. It’s important to develop measures to help you reach your goals both individually and within your family. We will help provide support, guidance, and accountability along the way. We will help you change old maladaptive patterns of behavior into healthier, productive ways of relating to others. Our goal is to provide consistent encouragement and support as you and your family continue on the journey to becoming healthier.
We believe that family counseling takes an investment from each person in the family. Family therapy requires active participation from you as the client. This means that you may be asked to do homework outside of the therapy time. Your therapist may ask that you work on things outside of the session time; such as setting appropriate boundaries, journaling, practicing improving communication with others and increasing your conversations with family members. While these tasks are ultimately not required, they will help your family achieve your goals quicker and more efficiently. You truly do get out of counseling what you all put in.
It’s not unusual for your therapist to identify problem areas that you may not realize exist. Your therapist has been trained and educated to identify other causes of trauma, hurt, dysfunction, poor communication, and unfair fighting. It’s important that your therapist is able to bring these things to your family’s attention so that the particular issue can be addressed and worked through. It’s also okay if you aren’t sure why you’re coming to therapy. Sometimes you know things are not working, but maybe can’t pinpoint why. Your therapist can help you and your family work towards the many layers to discover exactly what is going on and how to work through it.
It is very gratifying when we see our clients make huge steps in therapy, especially during family therapy. We are so passionate about what we do! We love to see families work through past hurts, find forgiveness and healing, set healthy boundaries with one another, and strengthen relationships. It’s important to us that you and your family are the healthiest you can be!
Family therapy is most productive when all members attend consistently. If you stop family therapy too soon, many issues can be left unaddressed, and complete healing may not take place. It’s not unusual for therapy to take a while to be helpful, but we ask that you stick with it for as long as long as your therapist requests. Your family is truly worth it!
