Family Counseling

Common Misconceptions

• It is only for people with children
• It is only for married people
• It is not used for the LGBTQ+ community; it is only for heterosexual/straight people
• Someone must have a severe physical, legal, mental, educational, or developmental problem
• People must live together
• There must be real problems and my beliefs will be proven wrong
• There is a lot of crying, blaming, hugging, drama, and forgiving
• It is different from couple’s counseling, marital counseling, marriage and family therapy
• It’s not for divorced, separated, widowed, widowered, people or non-traditional relationships
• The therapist will take sides

All these common misconceptions about family counseling are the reasons that many people do not seek it. However, everyone who has a social relationship with another person can benefit from family counseling.

Defining Family Counseling

Simply, family counseling addresses concerns among people involved in an intimate relationship(s). You do NOT have to be related or ascribe to traditional definitions of “family.” How you define family is all that matters. It works with people who have both real and/or imagined problems between themselves and their closest loved ones. Family counseling addresses obvious and underlying issues between “family members” and it also serves to proactively prevent future problems from occurring (e.g., premarital counseling). Family counseling seeks to discover and address problems in the family stemming from or resulting in cognitive, emotional, psychological, or behavioral issues. At The Truism Center, a variety of different approaches to therapy exist. Some therapists employ cognitive-behavioral techniques, family systems strategies, thematic and narrative tools, and unconditional positive regard. Dr. Ryan Kron utilizes a systems-based approach in his theory of Multisystemic Reciprocal Determinism (MRD). All of these approaches are employed to assist the family in identifying causes to their discord while helping them to establish cooperative goals to help overcome them.

A family counseling therapist works with all the “family members” identified. The therapist acts as an objective listener of family issues and facilitator of family goals without pointing fingers or blame at any of the members. The goal of any good family counseling therapist is to help the family develop and achieve common understandings, mutual interests, and shared goals. Moreover, family counseling seeks to improve family dynamics, communication, the development of healthy boundaries, and to develop and maintain healthy family relationships.

Common Problems

• Communication breakdown and verbal conflict
• Different values/beliefs
• Intimacy/Affection & attachment
• Sex
• Money/Financial
• Autonomy/Independence vs. Dependence
• Household/relationship responsibilities
• Parenting styles/Raising children
• Child behaviors
• Substance use/Dependence/Abuse
• Verbal/Physical aggression
• Absence from the home/Workaholic/Socializing
• Adultery/Infidelity/Cheating/Unfaithfulness/Disloyalty