What Are The Goals of Family Therapy?
Different reasons motivate families to seek treatment together. Your family’s purpose for therapy is likely specific to your unique situation and desires.
Two ways you might understand the goals of family therapy are to consider:
1) the goals of your family
2) the goals of the family therapist you hire
This article aims to enhance your understanding of family therapy and inspire you to consider realistic goals for your family dynamic. I’ll discuss what family therapy is, common goals, and how you can work with your therapist to set appropriate goals for your unique family.
What is Family Therapy?
Family therapy is a process by which relatives seek to improve the quality of their relationships with each other. The primary focus of family therapy is to improve communication and deepen understanding of self and others.
During family therapy sessions, your therapist seeks to fully understand each person’s perspective. You’ll explore where and how family members are aligned, as well as your differences. From there, the therapist assists in diagnosing communication breakdowns that may prevent your family from feeling better in whatever ways are important to each of you.
Goals of Family Therapy
Family therapy goals are specific to each family, so they are often uniquely tailored to each family unit.
In most family therapy sessions, the clients and therapist set goals together. The ongoing process of goal development incorporates significant input from everyone involved.
Below, we’ll explore three common goals of family therapy.
Improved Communication
Communication is almost always cited as part of the problem that brings two or more family members to therapy. Family therapists, in particular, are trained to analyze interactions, identify the strengths and weaknesses of each person’s approach, and offer nuanced, strategic recommendations for improving communication styles.
Emotional Support
Family dynamics can feel extremely sensitive for some or all members of a family system. Conflicts can be challenging to talk about without the emotional support of a third party to help create a sense of safety and hope.
Family therapists are especially skilled at facilitating the emotional support necessary to access the vulnerability that effective family therapy demands. With emotional support, members of a family system learn how to better identify what their emotions are, how their emotions are being communicated, and the emotional impact their communication is having on others.
Creating Healthy Boundaries
Boundaries have become a bit of a buzzword in the last several years but are often a deeply misunderstood concept. Boundaries describe how family members manage the verbal and nonverbal communication between them.
When family members struggle with hard-to-change conflict, we often find that boundaries are either too rigid (i.e., not enough communication flow) or too diffuse (i.e., too much communication flow). Family therapy sessions have the power to help you better understand the boundaries in your family dynamic and make adjustments that feel good and are functional — for everyone.
Goal Setting in Family Therapy
Goal setting in family therapy is best approached with a family therapist who is willing to listen closely to each family member’s experience of the family and its challenges.
While family members often disagree about what the problems are, family therapy isn’t about figuring out who is “right or wrong.”
Rather, family therapy sessions embrace each person’s unique understanding to develop mutually agreed-upon goals that benefit everyone involved.
Think of it as everybody wins.
Here are 10 general examples of family therapy goals:
Increasing openness to feedback
Developing or enhancing healthy ways to offer feedback
Being able to identify one’s own feelings without attacking another
Establishing a greater capacity for self-compassion
Engaging in an authentic experience of empathy for others’ experiences
Acknowledging and taking responsibility for one’s part in the difficulty
Exchanging sincere, meaningful apologies where and when necessary
Gaining a stronger understanding of where problem areas originated
Accepting aspects of self and others that will likely not change
Improving the mental health and well-being of future generations of your family
My Goals as a Family Therapist
My most important goal as a family therapist is to build a trusting relationship with each family member individually and with the family unit as a whole. This allows me to learn what is truly important to each person and understand what’s blocking them from accessing a greater sense of harmony in their family system.
Here are additional goals I have as a family therapist to help my clients succeed:
Enhance each family member’s ability to think critically about their individual mental patterns, feelings, and behaviors, ultimately giving them all the tools to do this on their own
Offer useful, well-informed observations about your current communication patterns
Support your ability to integrate everyone’s perspectives on the challenges arising within your family relationships
Build psychological and emotional connections that enable you to understand and validate one another
Co-construct a language for discussing relevant dynamics that leaves everyone feeling acknowledged, understood, and optimistic about the future
Goals of Family Therapy: Conclusion
I hope this article has taught you that the goals for family therapy sessions often depend on the particular dynamics of each family and that the process of family therapy itself is used to learn more about what each member of the family needs and wants from family therapy sessions.
Both your family and family therapist will have goals in mind. As you and your family therapist work together, these goals will likely be integrated into a realistic set of expectations for what’s possible from therapy and for your family.
It’s important to keep in mind that while many therapists practice family therapy, not all family therapists are trained in family systems theories. I almost always recommend that families choose a family therapist who is specially trained in this dynamic and nuanced work.
If you’re interested in exploring family therapy with me, please feel free to schedule your free 15-minute consultation. I’d love to connect and see how I can support your family.
