Families are complex. Every family member is unique and has different developmental concerns, needs, perceptions, and aspirations. Family members’ ways of experiencing their environment, social engagement, and physical and psychological conditions compound their differences. Despite these disparities, families do function!
Typical of complex systems, families function when they can regulate themselves. Absent self-regulation, a family becomes more chaotic as the differences between the members increase. Every member has a unique role in the regulation of the family. Problems in the family arise when one or more members cannot play their appropriate role.
I work with family members to clarify the cause of distress. Members can influence each other’s engagement with the family; therefore, I work with the whole family to develop responses that enhance engagement. Then I help the distressed members build skills and resources to manage their situations to play their roles to improve family function.
Areas of focus in helping families regain and improve family function include:
- Development of beliefs that value and acknowledge the benefit of individual differences, uniqueness, and worth among family members,
- Development of attitudes and behaviours that honour, support, and celebrate individual differences and uniqueness among family members,
- Facilitate understanding, appreciation, and implications of the individual-specific developmental demands on the family members,
- Facilitate understanding of the difficulties as personal responses to demands.
- Frame difficulties family members experience within the intersection of demands and resources (i.e., health, skills, supports),
- Development of resources
- improvement of physical, mental, and emotional health,
- development of skills for managing demands, and
- development of social supports among family members (i.e., empathy, kindness, unconditional positive regard, compassion),
- Support the development of personal responsibility for family functioning in family members.