What is family therapy?

Family and systemic psychotherapy – also known as family therapy – can help those in close relationships to better understand and support each other. It enables family members to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, understand each other’s experiences and views, appreciate each other’s needs, build on family strengths, and work together to make useful changes in their relationships and their lives.

Families can be very complicated because everyone is unique. Each person thinks and talks about things in a different way, and each person has different ideas, feelings, worries and strengths. All kinds of changes can make family life more stressful, such as an illness, unemployment, moving home, new family members, getting older, divorce, death and trauma. Some families find their own ways to manage these changes, and some families find it much harder, for all kinds of reasons.

Family therapy can help families at all stages of life. It can help when they are feeling overwhelmed or sad and angry. It can useful when families are not sure what to do for the best; or when they feel stuck in repeating patterns of hurtful or harmful behaviour.