Family therapy is a systemically-focused approach toward understanding the balance, allegiances, and instabilities in family life. The focus of family therapy is to understand dysfunctional patterns and bring the family to a different, functional level of homeostasis. Sometimes this is accomplished by focusing initially on the parenting structure that exists in the family. Understanding the leverage and influential structure that parents have in the family allows me to clearly understand the potential and direction of the family’s journey to stability and growth. While inherent parenting styles may differ between parents, it is the goal of therapy to enhance the communication and execution of the parental goals, rules, virtues, and aspirations that shape the family structure. As consistency and correctness is always a challenge when mastering any new behavior, it is particularly challenging in family therapy as a product of the number of working parts seeking harmony within one family structure. Therefore, it is not unusual for family therapy to maintain follow up treatments after the initial treatment goals have been met.
