Family Counseling

Family relationships are some of the most defining and significant relationships in our lives. It’s not surprising that they would sometimes be fraught with difficulty, confusion, and frustration. Whether it’s between spouses, parents and children, siblings, or extended family, there’s both closeness and complexity completely unlike relationships between non-relatives.

If you’re going through a hard time, whether due to outside circumstances and pressures on your family, or to troubles coming from within, you may be considering family counseling as a helpful way to resolve difficulties.

Keep reading to learn more about why families seek counseling, what happens in Christian family counseling in Flower Mound, Texas, and how to get started if you decide family counseling is right for you.

We all have ideas about how we would like our family to coexist and thrive. When confronted with real life and deep human struggles, our ideals can seem out of reach. If you’re a believer in Christ, the truth and encouragement of Scripture can support you as you seek to build a loving and healthy family structure.

At Flower Mound Christian Counseling, the Bible is the core of our work, and the resources God has provided in the form of therapeutic treatments are tools we can use to help your family heal and grow.

Sometimes people are hesitant to seek counseling, but rest assured that Christian-integrated counseling provides a rock-solid biblical foundation for everything else that happens in the counseling process.

Whether or not every individual in your family is a believer in Christ, or whether you are seeking counseling to help you parent a young child or adolescent of whose faith you’re not sure, each individual will be treated with care and respect in the context of faith-based treatment.

As years and even decades go by, many family concerns can remain unresolved and turn into deep-rooted problems. Whether you’ve been facing challenges for months or years, it’s never too early—or too late—to seek help.

Here are some of the most common reasons families seek Christian family counseling in Flower Mound:

• Whether between adult parents and children, involving younger children or adolescents, between siblings, etc., having a neutral third party involved can help families resolve conflict in a structured and healthy way, along with equipping them to handle it better in the future.
• Relocation, career changes, separation, divorce, adoption, the birth of a child, and other big life changes can introduce new dynamics into the family structure and make counseling a helpful tool in adjusting.
• Any type of illness or special needs. Whether it’s chronic illness, mental illness, special physical or mental needs, etc., families often need support as they navigate unexpected, long-term challenges.
• Substance abuse. When one family member is struggling with alcoholism or any other kind of substance use disorder, the dynamics of the whole family can center around that struggle. Counseling can help manage these dynamics, in conjunction with the individual getting treatment for any active addiction(s).
• Blending families. Divorce, remarriage, step-parenting, step-siblings, etc., all add complexity to the family structure. Blending families in a healthy way can be encouraged by Christian family counseling.
• Encountering parenting challenges, difficulties, and differences can test even the strongest of marriages and families. Family counseling can lead to working together on setting goals, managing behavior problems, and being proactive.
• If your family has encountered the loss of a family member or other loved one, family counseling for grief and loss can help you move through the grieving process and grow closer instead of farther apart.
• Any other type of struggle that affects the family. This can range from traumatic experiences to changes in faith, financial difficulties, job changes, mental health struggles, and more.

Individual vs. Family Counseling: How Do I Choose?

In order for the family unit to be healthy, each individual has to be moving toward health as well. If you’re not sure whether to seek individual or family counseling, feel free to set up an initial individual session and talk things through with one of the experienced counselors at Flower Mound Christian Counseling. We’re here to help you navigate each situation and decide when individual counseling is indicated vs. family counseling.

What are some situations that may call for individual counseling instead of family? Active addiction, abuse, serious/untreated mental health or behavioral issues, and recent/unresolved trauma, are just to name a few. Depending on the situation, you may be able to do individual and couples or family counseling in conjunction with one another.

What role does faith play in Christian family counseling in Flower Mound? We believe that God created family and that it is his will for families to thrive and be healthy. We also believe that it is his power and strength that can enable families to heal and grow. Every step of the counseling process is taken in reliance on God’s help. The level to which faith and Scripture are overtly incorporated in the counseling process depends on the comfort level of all involved.

Goals of Family Counseling in Flower Mound

Here are some of the most common goals of the family counseling process:

1. Improved relationships and communication. If family members feel that their relationships are stronger and healthier, and that they’re better able to communicate their own needs and respond to others’ needs, then counseling has been a success.
2. Better coping mechanisms for difficult situations. Learning individual and family coping mechanisms is so important for being able to navigate the ups and downs of family life going forward.
3. Healthy interdependence and boundaries. Families who have elements of enmeshment or codependence, where they are overly involved and/or dependent on one another, cannot thrive as well as those who are interdependent—which means having a healthy level of reliance on one another, along with a healthy sense of self and the ability to set and respect boundaries.
4. Holistic approach to faith and love. When faith is lived out and not just discussed or used to enforce rules, families can thrive.

How does this happen? By talking to all family members, depending on ages and situations, and formulating a treatment plan and approach.

Some of the most common types of family counseling approaches include:

1. Functional family therapy—helping a child with complex behavioral or emotional problems.
2. Multisystemic therapy—also focused on the child’s problems, as well as larger issues like school or the social setting.
3. Transgenerational—incorporating different generations in the counseling process.
4. Brief strategic—meeting for 12-16 sessions aiming to help with problematic adolescent struggles.
5. Structural—focuses on family structures instead of behavior, helping to create a healthier hierarchy with appropriate boundaries.

Your counselor may implement one or more of these strategies throughout your sessions. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask more about the approach used, the treatment plan, the number of sessions, etc. Feel free to call our office, fill out our contact form, or browse our counselor directory to get started.