Family Counseling in Gilbert and Mesa, Arizona

Parenting Classes and Resources for Arizona's Families

Family Counseling in Gilbert and Mesa, Arizona

What is Family Counseling?

Family counseling is where the focus of counseling is not on just one individual but rather the focus is on the way individuals relate within the family. A family systems approach to counseling is similar to understanding how a car engine works. Each part of the engine affects, and is affected by, other parts of the engine. If one part breaks, it doesn’t take long for other parts to be affected. Similarly, when one individual within a family is struggling, sooner or later, other members of the family also may struggle.

Family therapy can also be looked at as a dance between individuals. If one member of the family is dancing the waltz while another member is dancing the jitterbug, the dance between them will look disjointed and chaotic. A family system’s approach to therapy helps family members learn to create a new dance where members of the family can harmonize their movements together.

Children Therapy

Family therapy in mesa and gilbert arizona In the past in child psychology, and sometimes even now, some child therapists worked just with the children often times using play therapy. While play therapy has its benefits, recent research within the infant and early childhood mental health field have found the benefits of incorporating parents in the therapy with their children to be much more effective than working with the child in play therapy alone. This is true in pediatric therapy as well as therapy with older children.

Parent-Child Psychotherapy

Parent-child psychotherapy, Circle of Security® Parenting, Floor time® Therapy, Theraplay®, and other attachment based therapies for children help children heal from trauma as they learn to trust their parents and their parents learn to attune themselves to the needs of their children.