What Is Marriage and Family Counseling?

When unique personalities with different perceptions live under one roof, it can often create uncomfortable conflict and communication challenges. This is normal when it comes to couples and families. If you are going through relationship conflicts, then couples and family counseling can help. Marriage and family counseling is often short-term, solution-focused and designed with the end goal top of mind. Since Couples and Family Counseling is intended to be brief and short-lived, they generally last up to 12 sessions. Often, individual counseling will be recommended to supplement couples or family counseling. A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist is trained to work with the relational and interpersonal dynamics between couples and families. This post will cover all the ins and outs of marriage and family counseling, and might be helpful if you’ve been considering hiring a marriage and family therapist

When should you seek family counseling? 

Marriage and Family counseling or Couples Counseling, can help in many life situations that involve a family unit. Through the use of family system theories and therapeutic techniques, they are able to help treat behavioral, emotional, and cognitive challenges within the family unit or couple. Some of the areas that Marriage and Family Counseling can address include:

• Premarital counseling
• Marital distress
• Infertility issues
• Relationship and interpersonal conflict
• Financial distress or disagreements
• Child-parent conflict
• Parenting challenges
• Academic and social problems
• Behavioral problems in children and adolescents
• Divorce
• Conflicts between family members
• Sibling conflicts
• Co-parenting counseling
• Self-esteem and self-confidence
• Substance abuse
• Eating disorders and obesity
• Emotional and mental disorders
• Improve communication skills 

Benefits of Marriage and Family Counseling

When there are problems in a relationship or within a family, all other areas can be affected. It is never a bad idea to seek support from a marriage and family therapist as soon as you feel there are any struggles, as this therapy can serve as a preventative measure from foreseeable issues. Marriage and Family counseling not only helps to dismantle challenges and issues within the family system, but also helps each individual not feel attacked or alone.  

Some of the benefits that you could receive from marriage and family counseling include:   

• Improve communication 
• Develop problem-solving and coping skills 
• Learn healthy ways to work through difficult situations 
• Establish healthy boundaries 
• Enhance connection 
• Improving the way how members react with each other 
• Evaluating and defining the roles of everyone among the system    

In Conclusion: 

When you’re in the midst of everything, it’s often hard to see what the root cause is to the situation or problem, much less how to find a solution. Having a licensed marriage and family counselor can help gain perspective and facilitate change and help target and deal with the issues. We need help sometimes, and that is ok.