Family counselling: Transform your life

When you and your loved ones undergo family therapy in Australia, you tap into psychological counselling to help household members enhance communication and resolve conflicts. Typically, this counselling is short-term and can involve all members or only those who can and wish to participate.

A personalised therapy plan will be tailored to you for your unique situation. As part of this counselling journey, you will learn skills that will help you strengthen household bonds and get through stressful situations.

Counselling with Family Systems Therapy or Gottman Methods can help with:

  • Enhance household members’ ability to express their desires

  • Foster transparent interaction at home

  • Establish new interaction methods among the members

  • Eliminate harmful intra-household stereotypes

  • Increase awareness of individual roles and facilitate their consolidation

  • Prop up the understanding of your unity and interdependence

  • Enable your family to express a wide range of emotions and process them effectively

Family counselling puts your family first

Family therapy can assist in improving relationships with your partner, children or other household members in challenging times. It can also help address specific issues, such as financial stress or disagreements between parents and children.

Stages of family counselling therapy online

At Mindcare Neuroscience, our family therapist focuses on interactions among household members within their relationship system and will try to understand your family history, relationship dynamics and characteristics of each member while identifying previous and current issues. Your therapist will also set individual goals and agree on them with all participants.

Your therapist will analyse the dynamics and distinguish factors that have caused or may cause issues. Specific goals for IFS therapy online (internal family systems) or other approaches are developed based on each person’s expectations to understand the desired changes. Your therapist then examines the roles of each household member and their interactions. Based on the aspects of the assessed dynamics, strategies for improvement are devised.

The next stage of your therapy will involve practical methods of improving family communication. This skill is vital for better-functioning families and conflict resolution. Your therapist can identify and utilise household resources to help you develop this skill and overcome challenges.

As you move on, our family counsellor will assess the changes and progress in solving concerns throughout your journey. They will also develop a future action plan and discuss the possibility of further support.


Family therapy approaches

Different therapy modalities may be implemented by different therapists, depending on your family’s situation. The most common of them are:

Structural therapy

This approach is centred around the idea that every household must maintain a fixed hierarchy to ensure its well-being. If your therapist adopts structural therapy, your sessions will include a structural map that all family members should follow to differentiate their boundaries and roles. Presenting this visual tool allows your therapist to guide partners and children towards adjustments that promote a healthier family structure and more positive interactions.

Bowenian therapy

This approach prioritises family relationship counselling on individual and emotional levels. This modality is governed by the importance of self-differentiation and an individual’s ability to distinguish their thoughts and feelings from those of other household members. Bowenian therapy often involves psychoeducation and uses tools such as genograms to trace intergenerational patterns to help you understand relationship dynamics.

Strategic therapy

This modality focuses on repetitive, maladaptive interactions among family members. Therapists encourage households to change their behaviour patterns through various strategies. They may involve assigning homework, experimenting with new behaviours, employing paradoxical intentions and engaging in activities outside of counselling sessions.

Family systemic therapy

Family systems therapists consider mental health problems and internal disputes as responses to the behaviours of partners or children. The therapist maintains a neutral stance so that household members can reassess their perceptions of the system. This reassessment is necessary to reduce distressing behaviours.

Solution-focused brief therapy

Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) in family therapy is a therapeutic approach that focuses on identifying and building upon a family’s existing strengths and positive behaviours to create solutions for their problems. It emphasises a future-oriented perspective, encouraging families to envision and work towards a desired outcome where the problem is minimised or absent, actively looking for “exceptions” or times when the problem isn’t occurring to understand what might be contributing to positive change.

How to begin your therapy

At Mindcare Neuroscience, we have qualified and experienced psychologists or mental health social workers who can help you with your unique situation. If you are unsure if telehealth family therapy is right for your situation, or if you are unsure about how to approach your family members about participating in therapy, you can always contact us. Our Client Success Partner will address your concerns and provide you with the guidance you need to get started. We will also recommend the therapist who best fits your family.