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Family Therapy in New Jersey, in Morris County

Most of us did not grow up in a perfect family if such a thing existed. Indeed, most of us may have experienced growth in a dysfunctional family. Are you familiar with parents fighting, not being the favorite child, with double standards, and unreasonable and abusive house rules?

According to Murray Bowen, the most complete theoretical approach to families still in the field, these dysfunctions become transgenerational. What can you do to stop the cycle of negativity? You can start family therapy with your children, your parents and/or your blended family and learn efficient ways of navigating the complex systems of your unique family.

Your First Session

Family Therapists have specific knowledge of how to convey this exceptional mode of therapy, and they integrate theoretical approaches that can go from systems or a psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral to a post-modern collaborationist orientation, according to what best serves the specific context of an actual family.

Family therapy is relationally oriented, i.e., there will be more than one person as a client who are bonded by a family bond. These two or more people come to therapy primarily for conflict resolution. Typically, there is a building up of harmful, abusive, and destructive interactions that cause discomfort in most of the family elements.

And, a day late and a dollar short, the family or some elements of the family come to therapy (e.g., the parents and one of the children). They may not even believe that the treatment is going to change anything, but as the sessions progress, yes, change occurs. Positive, constructive change occurs. Why? Because we all want to live better.

The therapist, in collaboration with the diverse elements of the family, will identify the family's weaknesses and strengths to pull up its resources and use them to heal the identity and purpose of the family, conveying respect, peace, and trust, among its elements.

Each family element is equally relevant in its role among the others. The understanding that a family continues transitioning from one developmental stage to the next according to the family cycle of life is critical.

The word crisis in ancient Greece meant change, a profound turning point. The word was not necessarily associated with any negative connotation. Changes like the natural and social expected stressors of infidelity, separation, divorce, reconciliation, substance abuse, eating disorders, loss, problematic children, mental health issues, aging parents, and financial changes are frequently the immediate stage of family therapy. The therapist collaboratively working with the family will facilitate the resources the family may not even recognize having. And the initially painful problem may, in the end, become a solution of more integration, health, wealth, hope, and happiness.

A family is a living system growing from the developmental changes of its elements with their specific thinking, emotional, and behavioral patterns that need to be adjusted within the family culture and outside of the cultural and social more expansive systems. A competent family therapist from Ocean Emotion Therapy is specially trained to convey to your family a safe pathway to this continuous adventure of family life.