Family therapy

This can involve family concerns such as:

• parent-child (and total family) interactions
• siblings not relating well
• support for siblings and parents of special needs children
• parenting issues
• post-adoption issues
• blended family difficulties (eg step-families, foster families, guardian issues)
• multi-generational family concerns.

We live in context and connections – not much in life (or at least in the family) is linear and isolated.

What is the difference between traditional psychology and family therapy? Psychology is much more linear whereas in family therapy we place more importance on the circularity of relationships.

For example, in psychology a child is ADD or depressed and they have a problem and we are here to fix that problem. In family therapy, we look at the child's individual issues such as ADD or depression but also they affect and are affected by everyone who has an impact in their life.

So in this example:

1. The child is not just a problem child, but affects and is affected by time (how they change their conception of themselves as they grow older), space (their connectedness to things within themselves, their family, other people such as their peers, their teachers and their environment) and other specific aspects of themselves (how they relate to their body, the consequences of their actions, their beliefs, how they have come to believe what they believe and their spiritual/religious/non-physical experiences).
   
2. To continue this simplistic example, the mother affects the child, the child reacts to the mother, the mother reacts back to the child. And so it is not just the child and the child's problem, but the mother's problems affect the child and vice versa. So the mother who doesn't know how to deal with ADD or depression, also affects how the child deals with their ADD or depression.
   
3. The mother is affected by the father. The father was affected by his father and is still affected by how his father raised him. The father is affected by his work now and may soon be affected by his own failing health. He also affects the children directly and is affected by them. The father also affects the wife who affects their children.
   
4. The son affects and is affected by his social environment. For example, there could be a bully at school, a teacher who does not understand his learning style, he is given a poor diet, he has fallen in with a bad crowd, he is uncoordinated and has failed at gym so he is out of shape which makes him more lazy which makes him more depressed and unable to cope with his ADD which makes him more dependent on his mother and this causes more difficulties between himself and his mother.
   
5. This all changes depending on which environment the son is in (eg school, home, friends, beach, forest), the past and his reactions to things like dogs, water or riding a bike, or to the future where he might be overweight and working at a job which does not challenge him or in a relationship that he feels trapped in and that he got in because of superficial attractions rather than being in a partnership which would have made him grow.

Life is complicated. Families are complicated. And family therapy can help you to make sense of it.

What should we do next?

Call us to arrange for family counseling in Chicago or Evanston by phoning 847-338-7533 or by emailing info@ardentcenter.com.