Family Therapy Approach

The first meeting with a client(s) is incredibly important it’s the time that the counsellor can start to decide on the best treatment approach for a client(s). This is referred to as the initial assessment and should be focused on engagement and active listening in order to understand how the client sees their problems and to gain a time line of existing issues also the clients thoughts, feelings and identify what triggers these thoughts, feelings and behaviors. The initial assessment is also important not only to gain information from the client but for the counsellor to develop a professional relationship by being non-judgmental, build on trust have an empathetic attitude.
When initially assessing a family the therapist should have in mind that the primary goal of family therapy is to produce a visible change in behavior, even though family members may not be totally aware that this is happening. Insight, helpful for the therapist, is not considered important for the family; getting them to be aware of the interactions is. The initial assessment may reveal some very significant family relationship problems by which case various
Rather than transforming the actual person, narrative therapy aims to transform the effects of the problem so the person and problems are separated. Externalising or separating problems can create positive interactions between family members as the problem is not the person but separated outside of the person so the family group can see and tackle the problems objectively. The key is to tackle the problems in a non-judgmental, positive way therefore, like CBT, it’s focused on creating more positive interactions between family