Is Lack Of Connection Within Your Family Causing Pain?

Are unhealthy habits driving your family apart? Is it difficult for you to communicate without getting into an argument? Do you wish you could connect in a way where each of you feels loved and cared for?

Family therapy can help repair and develop secure bonds so children and teens are able to grow and successfully launch into the world. Family therapy helps families change negative interactions that create pain and distance, and shows families how to create positive moments of reaching and responding that lead to more connection and cohesion.

When certain family members don’t feel seen, valued, accepted, and loved in a family, feelings get hurt. If one of you is hurting, your attempts to get your needs met may show up as anger, criticism, or protest. Or when that pain becomes too much to handle, the one suffering may shut down emotionally, showing emotional distance or denying that any problem exists. When this happens, communication breaks down and the dynamics within the family begin to feel unsafe. 

Oftentimes, there are two people within the family—usually a parent and a child—who struggle the most to relate to each other. Seeking an easy explanation for their issues, the parent may label the child as the one to blame for the family’s problems. Labeling them this way decreases the parent’s ability to provide responsive, emotionally engaged caregiving to their child and makes the child feels unseen and rejected. 

The vicious cycle repeats over and over—the child protests because of the need to feel seen or loved, the parent reacts negatively to the child, the hurt child acts out and/or shuts down, and the child’s behavior validates the parent’s assessment that the child is the problem.

Thankfully, cycles like these do not have to go on forever. Family therapy can give each of you a sense of what it feels like to be heard, understood, and valued for who you are. 

Families Adopt Patterns Of Relating To Each Other That Aren’t Always Healthy 

Families come in all shapes, sizes, cultural backgrounds, and orientations. Whether it’s a traditional, multi-cultural, or blended family—and regardless of whether the family has young, adolescent, or adult children—each and every one of them is susceptible to communication issues. If we are being honest, all families unintentionally hurt one another from time to time. And many families develop patterns of relating to each other that prolong this hurt and perpetuate unhealthy patterns of interaction. 

The dysfunction that shows up in families is often passed down from one generation to the next. Because our own parents weren’t perfect role models, when we become parents ourselves, many of us bring along the emotional wounds we experienced as children. Our unhealed pain affects how we view ourselves and our children and how we parent. In this way, our backgrounds and upbringings can cause hurtful patterns to continue without us always knowing it. 

In addition to what is passed down in families generationally, cultural differences can also affect how a family functions. Certain customs that are acceptable in some cultures are not acceptable in others, which can lead to discord.  For instance, when adult children marry someone from another culture, it may be important to hear each other and work out differences. Moreover, parenting styles that don’t evolve and change as children mature can strain family dynamics. Serious illness or developmental issues in a child can do so as well. 

Fortunately, family therapy can help. By identifying how emotions and feelings perpetuate negative behavior, you and your loved ones can hear and process and heal those feelings to create positive changes in the way you relate to each other.

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy Can Help Parents Learn To Support Each Other And Their Children 

When working with families, my goal as a certified Emotionally Focused Family therapist is to help parents learn to support each other and their children by uncovering the patterns that leave one or more family members feeling unheard, unloved, or unvalued. In family therapy, we will work on helping you and your family talk and listen in a way that helps each of you feel safe enough to open your heart and share what you are missing or feeling and need from your family. 

Oftentimes, I begin our first session by asking each family member to use 1 or 2 words to describe the whole family. The goal is to hear what everyone thinks and encourage you all to figure the issues out as a family. I am careful to build a positive alliance with each family member so that you all know that what you say matters equally. I strive to be curious and empathic so that everyone feels secure enough to share. 

In ongoing sessions, we will focus on the indispensable role that each parent plays in the family and the ways that children may be acting out in an attempt to get their needs met. I will help normalize the parent’s struggle and build empathy for their parenting dilemma. The goal is to help parents become more accepting of a child’s reactive response and increase their ability to give them support. I also help children recognize and experience their parents’ positive intent to care or protect. 

In some cases, it will be helpful to have one or more individual sessions with the “identified child”—the child who is perceived by one or both parents to exhibit problematic behavior—to help them feel heard and valued. When a child is viewed negatively, everything they do is perceived through a negative filter.  Their siblings, on the other hand, can exhibit the same behavior but elicit a neutral or positive reaction from their parents. This dynamic can cause low self-esteem and feelings of guilt and shame in the negatively perceived child.  Family counseling shifts the focus from a “problem child” to “a problem within the family system,” acknowledging that it’s the interactional pattern, not the child, that needs to be fixed.

As a certified EFT therapist in Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, I will work to help family members hear each others’ worlds, be seen and heard, and talk, share and be present to each other in a facilitated, safe supportive space. The goal is to create more emotional intimacy between family members.  We can all bear more, when we can share more and be heard.

My expertise is in helping families build healthier, more supportive relationships. When relationships in your family feel more loving and secure, you will be able to correct negative patterns of communication with each other and instead experience healthy, loving connections.

But you may still be wondering whether family therapy is right for you…

The problem is our child’s behavior—they need individual therapy.

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy helps parents identify the block in their parenting style and shift the focus away from blaming the child. Parents who have a supportive partner are better able to positively shift their parenting style, which is why some sessions may involve just the parents. If one child has been identified as the “problem,” some sessions may be devoted to giving the parent and child a chance to talk about what is creating the pain between them and keeping them stuck. In this way, the parent and child will understand that underlying patterns of disconnection are the reason for the family’s issues—not the child alone. 

I’m embarrassed to discuss my family’s problems with a stranger. 

As a certified EFT family counselor, I reflect and validate what each of you has to say, help you organize what is going on emotionally, and affirm your good parental instincts. I reinforce your irreplaceability as a parent and your intimate knowledge of your children. It is vital to have a neutral, unbiased source of support in your lives. My goal is to help your family have as positive and meaningful a connection as possible. 

We don’t have the financial means to pay for family therapy and aren’t sure that it is a worthwhile use of money.

Family counseling helps children heal so that when they grow up, they can create their own family where each member feels cared for and valued. Preventing the cycle of dysfunction from being passed on to future generations is a financial investment worth making. 

Your Family Can Share Close Connection Again

Seeking therapy to improve your family’s communication will bring you closer than you can imagine. By helping each member feel safe enough to open their heart and share what they are missing, healing is possible. For a free complimentary 15-minute consultation, please contact me or call me at 561-866-6607.