Family is essential to one’s life as your close ones will always be for you, whatever the matter is. It is always essential to keep your family together. If your family has been struggling for years, you must consider strategic family therapy, as it can help solve issues and improve communication within the family unit. This article will explore strategic family therapy techniques and how it helps patients.
What Is Brief Strategic Family Therapy?
Strategic family therapy is a short-term family therapy that might last between twelve and sixteen sessions with the thought that family is the most important. The challenges inside the family cause risky behaviors in adolescents, like substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, or abuse.
The primary goal of SFT is to fortify family ties to prevent teenagers from engaging in risky behavior. While providing parents and teenagers with the resources to acquire and practice healthy communication skills has the strategic purpose of limiting undesirable dynamics and communication. Direct referrals from a juvenile justice court for SFT are common.
How To Use Strategic Family Therapy Techniques?
In brief strategic family therapy, each family’s circumstances and makeup are considered. However, the following techniques may be used in this therapy procedure:
Building a therapeutic partnership with the family and encouraging mutual respect are the first steps in joining.
Adopting this therapeutic posture, the family therapist near me can interact with the family unit and demonstrate their support.
Tracking & Diagnosis: After forming the therapeutic partnership, the therapist investigates the family’s behavioral pattern. They can develop a treatment plan by identifying the areas where they excel and any abnormal interactive behaviors.
Restructuring: In this case, many strategies are put together to help the family modify how they interact. The following are some interventions a therapist might use:
- Developing nonverbal cues
- establishing new routes for communication
- Changing the environment Increasing stress Giving the family assignments
- Hypothesizing Directives
- A series of questions
This restructuring process teaches more beneficial relationships that can encourage a shift in family dynamics.
What Is The Process Of Strategic Family Therapy?
Therapists can treat different issues successfully in children, adolescents, and adults through strategic family therapy. Strategic family therapy is the subject of many studies, which shows how it can help families who need assistance. According to studies, this kind of therapy can result in the following:
- reductions in harmful or undesired behaviors.
- decrease in parental drug use.
- Teenage substance use is being reduced.
- improvement in family communication.
- decreased bullying behavior.
A mental health professional may be helpful if you’re having issues with your family, whether related to one of the issues mentioned above or something else, such as frequent disputes, difficulties expressing your thoughts, or trouble adjusting to changes in your family’s dynamic. You may improve the present and future of your family unit by creating workable solutions with the aid of an SFT therapist.
When Should A Family Adopt Strategic Therapy?
Teenagers who have had some experience with the juvenile justice system because of delinquency, substance misuse, behavioral issues, parental abuse, or risky sexual behavior are the ones who typically receive SFT treatment. The entire family meets with a therapist during sessions to discuss the issues.
What To Expect From Strategic Family Therapy?
You may anticipate plenty of candid conversations between all family members during your sessions with the Strategic Family Therapist. Each family member will learn about their place in the family structure and how it impacts other members from the therapist’s perspective.
For instance, the first phase in Strategic Family Therapy is to pinpoint the family’s issues and set mutually acceptable goals. After that, the therapist will work with each family member to help them see how their actions can affect the entire family structure.
The therapist might also promote particular forms of communication, such as letting each person express their wants and feelings. The therapist will also support family members in improving their communication skills to foster trust and enhance their bonds.
After each session, The therapist will review the topics covered with the entire family. Next, assign each family member a specific assignment to advance the family’s objectives.
What Is The Difference Between Structural And Strategic Family Therapy?
Effective communication is facilitated, and appropriate boundaries are established or restored in structural family therapy. The therapist focuses on improving the family organizational structure. Family members are encouraged to rethink and resolve their issues as a unit through strategic family therapy.
Conclusion:
To become a competent family therapist, one must be aware of the many ideas and practices in family therapy. Selecting the theory that would be most useful or appropriate for the family system requires understanding the similarities and differences between each approach. An individual can become a successful therapist by using empirical research and understanding each theory.
