Breaking Patterns: The Healing Force of Family Therapy

I’m a strong advocate for family therapy. It provides a space where families can listen to each other without falling into familiar patterns. It's useful not just during major crises or transitions, but also when one member’s distress might reflect a deeper, systemic issue.

I’ve personally benefited from family therapy, offered it to clients, and written about it in my book, Every Family Has A Story.

In the book, I write:

“Family therapy is often more intense than one-to-one. Every experience in the group is magnified by the number of people. For the parent, who holds responsibility (even if they don’t wish to) for the place they’re in, it can be particularly hard. Listening to the criticisms or pain of one’s children requires forbearance. It takes courage and commitment to sit with those feelings. Painful revelations cut deep but unexpected positives may arise. Yet I believe that those families daring to embrace the force of their feelings, letting them run through them, and shift their connection with each other, was in some cases transformative, and in others extremely helpful…Pain is unfortunately the agent of change. Avoiding it blocks change. Families' new willingness to name, experience and process their obstacles will form their new family pattern.”

If you want to learn more about how transformative family therapy can be, tune into this week’s episode of Therapy Works, where James Middleton talks about his experience of it.