Marriage and family counseling is a type of therapy that examines the behavior patterns of families and how these affect your marriage and family. The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy describes marriage and family counseling as brief and solution-oriented. Couples and families seek out counseling to help build their relationships with the involvement of an unbiased third party.
Features
Marriage and family counseling normally consists of 12 sessions on average. These sessions focus on developing solutions to your marriage- and family-related problems instead of focusing on the problems themselves. Marriage and family counseling involves a counselor who helps your family create realistic, obtainable goals for maintaining familial harmony.
Identification
Counseling treatment sessions for this type of therapy can involve the husband and wife, the whole family or just one family member. A marriage and family counselor may meet with your whole family for just one session and then meet only one member of your family for the next one. Marriage and family counselors are licensed mental health professionals trained in family systems and psychotherapy. These counselors are capable of treating and diagnosing mental health disorders including anxiety and depression.
Techniques that might be used in marriage and family counseling include family floor plans or genograms. Family floor plans enable counselors to see which of your family members have close relationships or what other kinds of subsystems exist in your family. Genograms empower your family to build a family tree that illustrates significant relationship or divorce patterns.
History
Marriage counseling first came about in the 1930s in America, when it was recognized that working with both the husband and wife together was more effective than only dealing with one person's marriage-related problems. Treating whole families through counseling was something that was not started until the 1950s.
Types
Marriage and family counseling can help with many different types of problems. Marital problems that counseling can help resolve include financial issues, infidelity, sexual relations, illness and anger problems. Family counseling provides parents and children (and when applicable, extended family members such as grandparents, uncles and aunts) with tools to communicate more effectively and resolve problems related to divorce, finances, children's behavior or illness.
Considerations
You should consider signing up for marriage and family counseling when you feel like you are struggling in your family relationships, feeling disconnected from children or need help with effective communication. Marriage and family counseling is also a good option to consider for children or teenagers who need therapy for mental health issues like substance abuse, depression or anxiety because it involves you in their healing process.
