Family life can be a source of comfort, love and security.
Being part of a stable and happy family can foster a fulfilling sense of belonging in adults, adolescents and children.
The Australian Bureau of Statistic’s 2010 survey of overall life satisfaction showed that people who had regular contact with family members reported the greatest level of life satisfaction (78%) compared to those who had little to no recent contact (33%). Research shows that healthy family relationships can improve our general outlook on life, sense of wellbeing and physiological resilience.
Yet family life can also be challenging. A family is a group of individuals with different personalities, opinions and attitudes, and conflicts often arise. Family interactions can cause pain and misunderstanding if family members are struggling to communicate and support each other effectively. Families frequently find themselves in entrenched patterns of destructive behaviour or negative interaction, and may have difficulty identifying how to make changes – or even lose faith that the potential for positive change exists.
Families Can Change
The Counselling, Mediation & Relationship Centre is here to offer hope when it feels like your family is falling apart under pressure. Family counselling is designed to help your family members build a sense of interpersonal trust, openness and mutual respect. Family counselling is a complex area of therapy, yet research evidence shows that family counselling, in all its variations, is one of the most effective forms of therapeutic intervention available today. Traditionally, a family usually consisted of parents and children. These days, a family can take many forms, including:
- Blended family
- Extended family
- Families tied by blood, marriage, and defacto relationships
- Foster and adoptive families
- Same-sex parented family
- Separated parent family
- Single parent family
- Step family
Family Counselling Goals
The family counselling process usually involves two or more family members working to better understand each other’s viewpoint and concerns. Family counselling acknowledges that each person contributes to the family group from their own set of values and perspectives, using their unique personality and interactional style. As such, there are always multiple experiences of reality at play within the family system. The goal of family counselling is to reconcile all those versions of events and relationships in a way that creates trustful co-operation, whilst minimising conflict.
We Can Help Family Members To...
- Gain meaningful insight into each other’s perspectives
- Effectively and respectfully negotiate relationship needs
- Learn to take responsibility for their own actions and reactions within the family context
- Genuinely hear each other
- Identifying ways to communicate more effectively and deal with conflict proactively are at the core of family counselling. These interpersonal tools are essential to creating and maintaining a healthy, harmonious family unit.
Family Counselling Helps Families To...
- Clearly identify issues affecting each family member
- Foster inclusiveness and consideration of every family member’s needs
- Develop clear family goals (e.g. reducing the frequency of conflict)
- Practice safe, effective ways to address family challenges and grievances
- Cease engaging in blaming behaviour, by taking responsibility for the family’s welfare as a group
- Use effective, respectful communication when discussing distressing or challenging issues
- Break the cycle of family conflict by encouraging new ways of relating
- Recognise setbacks as opportunities for growth and learning
- Focus on and celebrate the family’s unique strengths
- Review progress and maintain improvements
Our Counselling Services
Couples and Family Counselling
At The Counselling, Mediation & Relationship Centre, we recognize and know exactly how to deal with pain in a relationship and we have the professional tools to do it. We can help you regain closeness, passion, fun and get back that feeling of being ‘in love’.
Counselling can help a couple to:
- Understand the relationship they currently share and how they feel about each other
- Rediscover why they were attracted in the first place
- Find out what they want from their relationship and from each other
- Consider how both parties contribute to the current relationship
- Identify what they are prepared to do to make the relationship work.
Counsellors don’t make judgements on who is right or wrong; they don’t tell clients what to do; and they don’t try to persuade people to stay together or to separate.
You’ll get tools and strategies to break destructive patterns, deal with old resentments and move towards a more supportive and intimate relationship. You will discover new ways to communicate and that will help you communicate more effectively with your partner, children, friends and colleagues.
Through couples relationship training we will work with you in a safe and constructive manner, so you both get to say what’s really going on for you.
If breaking up is what you need, we can help you identify and manage the process to minimise damage and help you heal and move on.
Family Counselling Helps Families To...
Family Dispute Resolution (FDR) offers MEDIATION services that help couples affected by separation and divorce to resolve their parenting and property dispute.
Mediation is a structured problem solving process designed to assist parties to make independent decisions.
With the assistance of the mediator, parties identify the relevant issues in dispute, and explore options with a view to negotiating a mutually agreed outcome.
FDR is not only about resolving conflict it can help prevent conflict. If you know you will need to negotiate arrangements, especially as children grow and routines change, you can arrange to discuss this at FDR.
FDR is available not only for parents but also for grandparents or other family members who wish to make arrangements to have contact in the family.
We can help you identify what’s causing your unhappiness- so you feel at can understand it. Then we can give you strategies to deal with it. Practical, realistic strategies that give you some control.
We’ll provide feedback and insights on anything that might be holding you back, such as patterns or influences you no longer need.