Family Therapy

What are the Benefits of Family Therapy?

Every family is essentially a system with interconnected individuals. Because of this, if one person in the family is suffering in some way, such as with a mental health problem, or engages in disruptive and unhealthy behavior patterns, then the whole family suffers to some extent. When problems like these go unaddressed or are kept secret, it can make matters worse for everyone.

Each person, including young children, will try to develop coping skills that help them manage their thoughts and emotional reactions to the family dysfunction. Unfortunately, this can lead to even greater problems and discord, or have long-term adverse effects on them, especially those with developing brains.

When a family attends therapy together, each person benefits by learning healthier ways to communicate, relate, and behave with one another as well as by developing better coping skills for facing challenges.

Who Can Benefit from Family Therapy?

This type of therapy can be helpful for many common problems that lead to family dysfunction or distress, including, but not limited to:

• “Acting out” or behavioral issues in children and teens
• Adjusting to big changes, such as moving, parental unemployment, the onset of a serious medical problem, or becoming a blended family
• Changes in the family structure, (i.e. divorce or remarriage)
• Communication problems
• Death of a parent, caregiver, or child
• Discipline practices
• Family disengagement
• Ineffective parenting strategies or role modeling
• Marital/partner discord
• Mental health conditions in one or more family members
• Parent-child conflicts
• Power struggles
• Serious medical problems
• Sibling conflicts
• Traumatic events
• Unhealthy boundaries

Brain Types and Family Dysfunction

By looking at the brains of the entire family, it can shed light on the underlying causes of dysfunctional families. To provide a sense of how challenging it can be for some family members to get along, understand, or listen to one another, here is a brief description of the 5 Primary Brain Types (the other 11 are combination types):

1. Balanced Brains tend to be conscientious, flexible, focused, resilient, emotionally stable, and positive. They dislike risk-taking and others being unreliable, irresponsible, or behaving impulsively.
2. Spontaneous Brains enjoy spur-of-the-moment activities, are curious, think out-of-the-box, love surprises, and take risks. They also are impulsive, restless, often late, and have difficulty with focus and follow-through.
3. Persistent Brains like routine, have a strong will, and tend to be very focused. However, they also hold grudges, can be very rigid, judgmental, and critical, and get “stuck” on negative thoughts or behaviors.
4. Sensitive Brains are very empathic and feel things deeply, but they also tend to be moody, pessimistic, have lots of ANTs (automatic negative thoughts), and may struggle with depression.
5. Cautious Brains are prepared, motivated, reserved, have busy minds, and are risk-averse. They can also be anxious, temperamental, and have difficulty relaxing.

Knowing each person’s brain type allows the therapist to develop specific strategies for helping family members understand each other better and alter behavior patterns to reduce conflict, improve interpersonal relating, and other needs the family might have.

At Amen Clinics, we have also found that when we perform brain scans on entire families, we often discover that one or more family members has a diagnosable mental health condition that has previously gone undetected. This knowledge helps us create individualized treatment plans to address the specific mental health issues, so that family therapy can be more effective. Without having the information revealed on the brain scans, the family would likely continue to struggle.