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Like Marriages, Successful Families Are Made—They Don't Just Happen
Family therapy and family counseling are great opportunities to learn how to make your family thrive. Your family may right now be under a lot of pressure and trying to figure out how to deal with painful problems. Family therapy will give you the eyes to see what's going on and the tools and strategies to stop the pain.
I work with families who want the knowledge, tools and support they need to solve problems and to become more successful, more healthy and more happy.
Latest research shows that problems can develop in a family for many reasons, including especially stress.
Here's why: Stress can cause as well as result from any of the following:
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Financial and work problems,
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Marriage problems,
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Parent-child difficulties and/or
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A psychological or medical problem affecting either parent or one or more children
A family can get worn down and seriously damaged is a vicious cycle of family stress in which stress drives family problems that create more stress that create more family problems that create more stress and so on and on and on....
There’s good reason the World Health Organization identified STRESS as the # 1 health and quality of life problem in America. The more stressed the two individuals in a marriage, the more troubled the relationship. And the more stressed and troubled the marriage, the greater the dysfunction and the problems in a family and the greater the stress and the personal problems in the children.
Stress is not just about feeling tense; it’s also about the release of toxic stress hormones that harm both mind and body.
Stress wreaks havoc in families because, like the flu, it’s contagious and so everyone in the family suffers as a consequence. Studies show that increased levels of stress can lead to three problems that damage family life:
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family dysfunction--e.g. chronic anger, hostility, fighting, silence, withdrawal, abuse
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serious marital problems and divorce
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psychological problems in children, including anxiety, depression, school failure and substance
abuse
One important focus of my work with a family is to improve and support a marriage, because, in general, the less stressed and the stronger and healthier the parent’s marriage, the stronger and healthier the family and the less stressed and the better off the children.
I help a family dramatically lower its stress levels so that stress-driven problems—including fear, anger, resentment and loneliness—calm down and then subside. Family problems are typically a sign that a stressed out family doesn’t know how to create and maintain a good communication system.
And so I also help a family create and use an effective communication system, one that’s built from a map with clear-cut cues and well-defined signals as to
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who is in charge,
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who makes decisions and how
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the roles, rules, expectations and consequences that govern family life
Don’t hesitate to improve the well-being and the quality of your family life.
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