Family is one of the most powerful and, at the same time, vulnerable institutes of our society. Our family determines the biggest part of our personality, whether we want it or not. There are traditional nuclear families and single-parent families. Families run by heterosexual parents with homosexual children and vice versa. They all require special approach when a family faces a major problem, like the death or the serious disease of one of the family members.
Family therapy is a branch of psychotherapy, the goal of which is to get family members closer to each other in order to solve the existing problems. The family therapists believe that a family is the only one, the most influential and mighty source of strength for a person who is fighting to cope with significant physical or psychological issues, sometimes even caused by society. Traditionally, a person works individually to settle the problem. While during family therapy, the family members are welcome to cooperate to cope with the issues. Such collaboration has proven to be of great help to every member of the family, involved in the therapy, as it allows inventing solutions to grace problems together, which is especially important in major life stress situations.
Therapy booksare available nowadays at every bookstore, so the psychology of family relationships has been open to the mass reader. And these books do sell very quickly. Why? Although it may seem sad, statistics show repeatedly that the divorce rate has been growing, not only for the first marriage, but also for the following ones. Even in families which last, only half of the members describe their relationship as happy. One more unsettling conclusion of the researchers is that the communication skills within the couple have dropped dramatically. Whereas the quality of communication the couple has is the only factor which fits best to distinguish a happy and an unhappy family. Qualitative communication indicates that the relationships in the couple will be steady in time. Individual peculiarities, the amount of today's problem or different points of view are much less important than the ability of the couple to talk and discuss their problems. Communication is the key issue, and it is possible to learn how to communicate.
The only real support one can get is in the family. During the family therapy, every member of the family is working to find, reconnect and unite all the resources to achieve harmonious relationships with each other. They appeal to their creativity to learn how to use them in various conflict situations. The therapy can be done only for the spouses, for parents and their children, for siblings. All interrelations need to be secured to guarantee the well-functioning happy family.
