Are you experiencing challenges within your family?
Whether it’s to do with communication, intimacy, personal issues, family violence, or more – there’s no shame in acknowledging the need for professional support.
Family counselling is a form of psychotherapy that aims to address a range of issues that could affect your communication and interactions with family members. It focuses on the interactions and dynamics within a family unit and can help those involved overcome their challenges and understand one another differently.
Signs your family could benefit from counselling
Shifts in family dynamics present themselves differently for many families. Here are some common ones that we see when supporting our clients.
- Increase in arguments between family members
- Issues with communication
- Emotional distancing between family members
- Major life transitions (i.e., divorce, separation, blending of families, family crisis and grief)
- Behavioural issues (particularly with children and young people)
- Substance abuse issues
- Mental health issues and trauma
What constitutes a family?
Families come in all shapes and sizes. At Anglicare, our Family Counselling Service works with individuals, couples, groups and young children who are experiencing challenges in their family dynamics or relating to a family matter.
Find out more about the specific programs available at Anglicare, here.
How to approach your family about counselling
Preparing for the conversation
When preparing to talk to your loved ones about counselling, you might want to:
- List/ identify specific issues that you want to address or use as examples to support your discussion
- Choose the right time to have a conversation. Preferably when they’re calm
- Think about other things you might want to say.
When talking to your family about participating in counselling, you should be mindful and respectful of them and the situation. It’s also very important to prepare yourself in case the conversation doesn’t go to plan. Examples of your conversation not going to plan might include your loved ones denying or not believing that the issues you’re raising even exist. Another possibility is that they could become defensive and react negatively to your proposal for counselling.
Having the conversation
To approach your initial discussion, in a mindful and respectful way, you should explain your concerns gently. You should avoid criticising them or pointing blame. Doing so could result in further hostility on their end.
Another strategy to help you talk to them about counselling is to focus on something positive. Before bringing up your concerns, you might say something positive about them.
Some other tips include:
- Expressing your care for your loved ones and discussing why you want to improve things
- Sharing your feelings without pointing blame
- Suggesting counselling as a step towards improving the issue(s) at hand
- Mentioning how it could benefit you all in the long run
- Stopping and listening to the other person’s perspective on the matter.
Preparing for the worst
If your family (or certain family members) object to your request about attending family counselling, don’t pressure them to change their decision. You should try to be understanding and respect their decision. It may have nothing to do with how you presented the conversation to them, but to do with their core beliefs or underlying issues.
If this is the case, it’s important to remember that you can still attend family counselling by yourself or with any other loved ones that would like to attend. You don’t necessarily need to attend with those who object to it. You might even find that you could see matters differently without them present.
Preparing for family counselling: the next steps
Whether you’re attending alone, or not, the next steps to booking a family counselling session are listed below.
- Research some counsellors (if you haven’t already) and look for a licensed counsellor who specialises in your area of concern. Make sure to take the time to read their reviews to help you determine if they’re going to be the right fit for you.
- Check their availability. This could include locational availability (do they service near you, or do they offer online services?), and their available booking times.
- Look at their fees. Most family counselling services incur a fee-for-service.
Anglicare’s Family Counselling services
Anglicare’s Family Counselling Service respects you and your family’s individual strengths, challenges and circumstances. We’re determined to support you in working towards a brighter future and achieving your goals.
We make quality counselling accessible to families across Moreton Bay, Brisbane and Ipswich. We offer free or nominal co-payment counselling for families. Please ask our team for more details.
You can learn more about the specific programs we offer as part of our Family Counselling Service, here. Alternatively, to chat with a member of our team about your options, please call us on 1300 114 397.