Family Counseling Approach

Counseling Family Counseling Approach It is rightly said that 'my paradise is where my family lives." Family is such a blessing that after all the day's long effort and struggle, people find that their energy is regained when they meet the family at night. In societies where the family bonds are tighter, the psychological problems are low. Even the families not living idealistically happily are better than those living alone.

However, it has been a desire of people to make their family bonds stronger and to be able to share and love more. Family counseling or family therapy is an effort to erase the tensions between family members and to help them grow their family bond stronger. Many family approaches are presented and applied after research and observation. These family counseling approaches develop understanding among family members particularly spouses so that they can handle stress and strain of family life better.

Family counseling approaches guide how to get as well as give support, praise and love and to eliminate the feeling of isolation (Family and Marriage Counseling, 2012). Family counseling can be particularly helpful while forming families i.e. marriage. Hence it is suggested to understand as well as apply the family counseling techniques in the personal lives to improve the quality of family life and understanding. The family counseling topics can cover issues like behavior while unemployment, eating disorder, sleep patterns, spending habits etc. (What is family counseling for? n.d).

Discussion The family counseling can be conducted using structural family therapy. This approach helps treat a family's problems using systems theory developed by Salvador Minuchin after his decades of research. The theory focuses on step-by-step change which is the basic aim of counseling. The counselor is the agent of change who evaluates the performance of family members over time and decided different intervention activities (Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983).

The structural approach to family counseling became a necessity as the family members started to spend their majority time out and had less time to understand each other. In 1960's, Salvador Minuchin was conducting experiments on the families from the newly established state Israel. It is found that the environment of people and families have a strong impact on how they behave and interact inside home (McMahon, Patton, & Watson, 2004). It was observed that changing the culture and environment of Jew kids had great impact on their behavior.

The approach is based on the idea that a person can improve the quality of family life by adopting different perspectives. Hence it is vital to work on the family perspective and life perspective of people. Minuchin found and established in "Structural Family Therapy" that the transitional event is very important and it helps families enter new stage of life that can be used for good. The change can be inculcated for conflict identification as well as resolution (Bertalanffy, 1972).

The structural approach of family counseling or therapy deals with the way family, problem and change process are interrelated and can be used. The three segments of this approach can be separately studied to find what they are and how they can play role in making family lives happier. Family is still considered the basic unit of society. It is an institution composed of family members that are unique yet interdependent functionally. A family has culture, norms and rules of its own. There are routines for sleep, appetite and work.

The family is vulnerable to the external environment that is not only source of jobs, work and study but also learning and socialization (McMahon, Patton, & Watson, 2004). The family often re-accomodates and adopts various living systems that satisfy the developmental needs. Major events affecting families can be marriage, pregnancy, birth, job, promotion, firing, retirement, migration, divorce etc. The counselor studies the problems of the families and the time these problems arrived so that the specific nature of problem can be understood that helps understanding families.

Some problems do and other don't involve children that changer the counseling goals and strategies. Understanding how the families were before the conflict is very important. It tells about the potential rate of progress. Very happy and satisfied families and couples before the conflict can achieve the happier state once again relatively more easily. It is necessary to understand the point at which the family achieves homeostasis. Every family needs a different level of change, balance and homeostasis which should be clear in the mind of counselor.

The counselor should try that the families should only adopt change process that is necessary and should avoid change for the sake of change (Liddle, & Halpin, 1978). Many a time's families have problems that grow to a size where they are hard to solve. At these times, an external help is needed. The counselor who is using structural family therapy understands the nature and intensity of the problem behavior and finds how it will affect the family relationships in future (Finding a Therapist Who Can Help You Heal, 2013).

The counselor must know the level and role of the conflict or problem and the source and target of it. A wife may be doing a night job for example hence she might be the source of problem, incomfort, for the affectees (husband and the children). The counselor gets the opinion of source as well as affectees on the issue separately as well as in group (Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983). The family counselor knows that the presented problems might not always be the actual problem.

He should therefore dig the roots of the problem. Sometimes the family members complain about some behavior but they are actually irritated by another behavior. It is hard to directly point out the main issue (MacDougall, 2002). So often it is the job of counselor to tell 'right problem' from the 'wrong problem'. The problems in the families that are not easily solved indicate family struc-ture dysfunctions. This requires changing the model or the structure on which the family works.

This change process supports the members of family to come out of the stere-otypical family roles and to be more understanding. It teaches that more emphasis should be put on family well-being not to accommodate with the so called social compliance rules. The structure and change process tells that there should be limit to following the norms of society and the members should spend more time together than on the low productive tasks.

The family behaviors tell about its priorities, perceptions, attitudes, af-finities, and expectations that play a vital role in bringing the change. The family's change only when they are isolated from the normal and routine practices and are helped realize the need for change to attain a better and happier family stage. The structural approach offers consistent method of thoughtful problem solving through counseling. It helps understand each family member individually and family as a whole. The approach is applicable to families that are in need of change.

There are family issues that cannot be solved without changing family structure and dynamics. These problems if solved superficially reoccur sooner or later at some time in future. The approach is normally considered more applicable when the family enters the stage where they have kids and a son or daughter causes problems for the family. In such cases, the role of parents is more vital since their behavior affects their as well as children's lives. The child therapy involves parent counseling as well.

Most of children's problems and lack of confidence is found to be due to conflict among parents. The structural approach needs the parents and the other family members to be motivated and committed to solve family issues. The parents should be more patient and understanding if the family issue is the wrong company of child, drug abuse, mental retardation, early age sexual activity or en-copresis. The counselor needs to tell the families that these issues are critical yet can be solved in collaboration (Ma, 1997).

Main objective of structural family counseling is to restructure system of the family rules and to break the counterproductive stereotypes. The role of structured counseling approach is to release parents and children from the stereotyped roles and functions in the family that helps families activate its potential resources for improving its capacity to deal with pressure and conflict. The family is encouraged to develop new and effective roles and to set family goals.

It also helps families achieve independence in nourishing changes even after the counselor has done his job (Czaja, Eisdorfer, & Schulz, 2006). It should be noted that the family goals are not as objective or ambitious as are the work goals. However, the family goals are more compassionately designed. These goals are supported by heartily made efforts and sincerity. The counselor facilitates the family structuralize and he is like a midwife supporting the wife during the critical time of delivery. The job of counselor ends after giving birth to the change.

It is role and responsibility of the counselor to end the support at some time so that the family achieves self-reliance. The counselor has a key role in facilitating families to achieve change hence he is the 'hero' of the change story. Having said that, this hero requires a suitable entry as well as exit point. The counselor needs to motivate change at one point and to motivate stability at the other. It is much more difficult to motivate and help bring change than saying this.

The counselor's first job is to listen to the family members and their problems and then to study the family system. Often unsaid facts are more critical as well as true than the stated facts. The conflicts can only be solved by proper counseling that is based on true facts. The counselor finds how much attached are the family members or the current system, which system is better for the family and how to change the family's existing system (Colapinto, 1991).

The counselor sets attainable goals for family with the support of family. There is always a room left for the adjustment in the approach so that as the things proceed, more productive techniques can be used. Hence the role of counselor in family change process is dynamic and he needs to move around in the system for the purpose of understanding, breaking stereotypes, and nurturing the development of productive norms and beliefs. Conclusion The structural family counseling approach aims to understand and resolve family conflicts.

This approach is effective among spouses as well as children and siblings. The approach revolves around restructuring of family systems so that the stereotypes are broken and the family can live according to supportive rules and lives in a healthy happier environment. The role of counselor is critical in this approach and he needs to help the family become self-relying in conflict resolution and prevention.

The key is to ask the family about the details of the conflict in private and in front of other members and also to observe them closely to find the root cause of the problem (Bertalanffy, 1972). Part 2: A Personal Integration Of Counseling Approach Often it takes long to recognize the need for counseling. I personally feel that a man is equipped with mind and heart to be able to think, feel and decide him in the situations he faces.

However, there are times when our experience or knowledge is not enough to support effective decision making. Although no one can understand us and the situation we are in better than us yet the situations can often be generalized. The experienced researchers and counselors have devised counseling theories thus that can be used in variety of situations. I am a fan of using scientific approaches in daily life operations and decision making. Thus the structural and scientific approaches seem logical and workable to me.

The structural approach to family counseling is not a blind shot (Colapinto, 1991). It is a step-by-step process of knowing and solving issues. I have often observed that people look for solutions that would logically not suit them. For example, often people see that there are families that get settled as they become more settled economically. Hence they blindly seek to become wealthy because they believe if money works for one family, probably it is also the solution for them.

But the reality is that every family is different from other just like individuals are different. Thus, money or anything else can bring happiness for one family and conflicts for the other. It is the understanding, love and care behind the relationship that makes things easy for them. Hence, I believe that it is very important as well as necessary to identify the actual conflict and the roots of it. The counselor should make sure that he is looking in the right direction.

He is like a surgeon who cannot take the risk of operating the wrong organ since it can make the situation even worse (Finding a Therapist Who Can Help You Heal, 2013). Need for Change Being a researcher and interested to become a consultant at some point in my life, I see my family issues with a counselor's eye too. I also believe that the structural approach to family counseling is comparatively more productive. This is because, as time passes, things change both within the family and in the environment.

New family members join and the old ones get experienced and aged too. With this changing family dynamics, one cannot rely on the old set rules of not watching TV at all, avoiding some kids in the street and playing with others, not letting girls go out late etc. Rather, with time it needs to update the family rules and allow more autonomy to the growing kids and to share the responsibility of the elders of family. This restructuring is not easy in my view due to two main reasons.

The elders resist sharing their responsibilities because they feel power and control in doing things hence they won't easily let share their burden of responsibilities. Secondly, the elders also do not easily like to allow youth do what they want. The ice can be broken using few structured steps. First, the family head should be made to realize that with time, it has become impossible to live in a cage without interaction with almost every kind of people.

Therefore, while it cannot be avoided to meet people, the youth can be equipped with the values and principles so that they know how to behave and to remain unspoiled while moving in the society. I believe that with their wisdom and life experiences, the elders finally know that empowering youth and trusting them is necessary hence they will comply with the idea of destructuralization of the family system. Challenges In my observation, besides the elders of family, the society and people around may also dislike seeing us change.

In my personal counseling career, I will help people realize that they should give due consideration to society but should not abstain from a positive growth just because the society is not ready or does not approve of the change process. My focus will be in telling families that there is always the first family adopting positive behaviors and then the society follows.