Family Counseling

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INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this essay assignment is to briefly examine and analyze such
family structure and its dynamics related to a theme evolving family counseling
therapy that will be explain through the case analysis within the related
theories and models that will help achieve goals and objectives that can help a
counselor in handling family situations to act and respond accordingly to such
problems that may be involve and be able to provide the needed assessment of it
in terms of appropriate theory and how to apply it to achieve effectiveness in
the counseling process as the counselor will have to integrate with the theory
and the encouragement to express feelings and the effectiveness in improving
communication relevant to the case such as when observing family members from a
variety of family emotional backgrounds, does the individual family of origin
perceived emotional impact the ability of the members to establish closeness and
understanding their own family relationships in experience on the level of
growth and acceptance achieved in their interpersonal relationships. 

CASE INTRODUCTION
          The family
structure is composed of five family members. Joseph, the father aged 55 years
old and is working as a technician at a construction project in their town,
Mary, the mother who is 51 years old and is just a housewife, Joshua, the eldest
among the two siblings who is a 27 years old and serves as a community social
worker, Macy, the middle child is 25 years old and working as a regular
accountant in a lending bank, Terrance, the youngest 24 years old and is working
as an engineer in a reputable business firm in Hong Kong. The immediate family
orientation of Joseph and Mary is quite different from their own family built up
as of the present since both of them are the only child for their original
family and that their respective grandfather and grandmother both passed away
previous years ago due to aging. The family has a very close and supportive
family relationship. The mother, Mary and the client, Joshua are very close
while Macy and Terrance are supportive and close and that they share a lot in
common with regards to hobbies and interests.  The two siblings are very close
to each other but not to Joshua and that the family are intact and share their
views and opinions often. 
 
 
          Since, Joshua is
more attached to his mother, Mary rather than his father; he has a hard time to
decide with regards to his personal life and his career as a social worker
because lately, he feels insecure and awkward to his sister Macy who is an
accountant and his brother Terrance who is a successful engineer. Joshua feels
that amongst the three of them, he is only a in a low profile because he is just
a social worker and he thinks that he is useless to his parents financially in
terms of family support and that lately, Joshua is starting to question himself
as to what is wrong with him and because he never shares his problems and
concerns to his siblings as well as to his parent, Joshua failed to open the
lines of communication within their family and probably there is a sibling gap
among them in the since that Macy and Terrance could think that their brother
Joshua is of no worth to their family. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

PRESENTING PROBLEM
          The problem is
centered on Joshua who wants to move away from his family and find himself a
better opportunity in terms of his career but his parents won’t allow him to
move especially his mother, Mary who is so close to him and that Joshua has
finally decided to move out and give his best chance to live alone and
indecently. He possesses low self-esteem and confidence with his abilities as an
individual person and lacks the power to break the gap with his siblings and he
does not know how to handle better communication lines within his family. He
moved away and lived in a small town during the time when his mother got sick
and run away from home even if he knows that he is hurting his mother a lot.
Macy and Terrance is quite sad to the moving away of Joshua but they are too
preoccupied with their work schedules so, they never have time to confront their
brother about the reason behind of his moving away from the family. Joshua’s
father is civil with regards to his decision of moving but his mother had a hard
time accepting that it was happening because she is closest to Joshua than the
other children. 
 
 
          There could be a
problem in the family upbringing of the parents and that being the only child in
their families is a factor because they never had the experience of how is it
like to have a brother or a sister that is why such insecurities and
misunderstandings have had happened within their children and they may not
recognize it that it has turned out to be a serious problem in their family. The
client may have a communication disorder due to the lack of confidence and
self-esteem and that he has this insecurity habit to the career status of his
siblings who can be doing better than himself, career wise. The client had a
tendency of having a runaway behaviour so that he can escape to the reality that
he has insecurities with regards to the status of his younger siblings Macy and
Terrance. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

ASSESSMENT OF THE CASE 

          It is true that
behind every individual person lies the importance of family as it is the basic
social unit in the society and that cognitive and behaviour learning skills
starts within the family. Thus, in the case there could arise such sibling
rivalry within the family as well as communication gap within the family members
that can lead to serious family problems that is very difficult to handle in the
process and that the parents lacks proper orientation relating to the family
structure and dynamics on how to resolve those problems and enhance a better
family relationships within them and the children maybe because of the fact that
the father has no time for spending quality time with the children because
almost all of the children are busy working and that the mother never had an
idea that there could be a negative impact to her other children with regards to
the closeness of her and her son, Joshua. The situation need have to adopt some
essential related theories and models that could be a big help in terms of
resolving any issues and problems within the family and strengthen the family
relationship in good faith which I believe is the most crucial in keeping a
harmonious relationship within the family members. 
 
          The lack of
effective use of parenting styles is another factor as it helps children accept
themselves and how they are able to interact within the family and can help in
improving behaviour problems of the children in lieu to their siblings, parents
and relatives as well as friends. The parents are 
sometimes afraid that raising children,
nurturing their children’s relationship and assuming responsibility are too much
to handle as parenting gives each of parents an opportunity to make a
significant difference in the lives of their children. The mother can take the
job of being a housewife, the father turning down a promotion to spend time with
his children, the step parent encouraging children’s dreams so they can be a
fulfilled human being that can take pride in themselves as parents. 
Families
today are about connections with children, partners, siblings, parents, extended
family, friends and community. Too often, the parents can feel isolated and
alone and needs help and support from professionals and other parents in similar
situations not only about family problems, but also about family strengths.
Henceforth, 
today’s family works and is a resource for its members and
society. 
 
 
          A big concern for parents,
especially working parents with little free time, is: how do we spend enough
meaningful time with their children? That is not seen in the case situation as
quantity time is the most important maybe there is no dinner with their children
and there is no spending of special time with each child at the end of each day.
The failure in to realizing that their children’s activities will be with their
friends and not with them and that they can still be involved in their lives as
Joshua’s parents should be available when needed as it is important to share
feelings and emotions to know how should the parents feel and what they can and
can’t do. thus, emotional unavailability – feeling loss when the parent or child
are not available to share pleasurable time, children’s natural desire to spend
less time with parents and more with peers, patents and children feel awkward
together and don’t know what to do with each other. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RELATED THEORY AND MODEL TO
ANALYZE THE PARTICULAR FAMILY STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS

            When a child is diagnosed with a communication disorder, 
family
members often are confused as they are not prepared for the challenges
associated with a long-term communication disorder and 
family focused
resources are not readily accessible. The sense of loss related to the diagnosis
may provoke a grief reaction, which, if not resolved, could lead to depression
and other problems for the 
family
and the child in recognizing and understanding the 
family’s
grief and facilitating positive strategies for dealing with it. Strong 
family
involvement is important for children from diverse families in order to
offset the potential bias in assessment as well as intervention (Baca &
Cervantes, 1998). Despite the fact that children needing speech and language
services and the diversity of children has increased, little change has been
noted in training programs and experiences relative to 
counseling
(Culpepper, Mendel and McCarthy, 1994). Professional training programs state
the need for 
counseling (Rollin, 2000).
 

 

Bowenian Theory
           
This theory will be used in the case since this
is described as having the most comprehensive view of human behavior and human
problems of any approach to family treatment and tends to have a more
intellectual orientation and less of an emotional focus. Individuality, a
natural force rooted in an instinctual drive to be a self-contained independent
organism. This theory because the client seems to have emotional problems and
that the theory involves the emotional system within the force that biology
defines as the automatic activity controlled by the autonomic nervous system,
subjective emotional and feeling states and the forces that govern relationship
systems.  The emotional system governs the "dance of life" in all living things
(Bowen, 1975) Individuals with low levels of differentiation are guided
predominantly by their pseudo-self, and behavior tends to be directed by their
emotions. A family therapy approach, combining the conceptual frameworks of the
Bowen model and Olson’s Circumflex model, was used to restructure family
relationships in order to prevent further runaway behavior of a 27 years old
Joshua. A structured family interview was conducted to identify problems, a
genogram was used to obtain the family’s history and therapy was provided to
change the family system. 

            The Family Satisfaction Scale need
have to be administered to evaluate the effectiveness of this therapeutic
approach. Runaway behavior for the youth is usually not the result of a wish
experience. It is often their dramatic way of dealing with longstanding
conflicts with family (Sharlin & Mor Barak, 1992).  The Bowen model of family
therapy (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 1991) and the Circumplex model (Olson,
Russell, & Sprenkle, 1983) provide a complementary framework from which
effective interventions can be designed.  Running away may be a phenomenon
related to the search for self-identity or it can be due to personal, family
problems. There is a correlation between runaway behavior and family instability
(Sharlin & Mor-Barak, 1992). The child who runs away from family strain caused
by a crisis; the child who runs away from excessive parental expectations and
control and the child who runs away from emotional abusive situation. Assessment
includes determining whether the child’s behavior is new and amenable to change
or habitual and well-entrenched. An additional category is the "thrown out"
youth (Zide & Cherry, 1992). 

 

 

 
           
The family situation is often pathological, such
as those involving extreme financial difficulties. Running away in these
instances can be viewed as a rational decision to escape harm (Speck, Ginther, &
Helton, 1988; Zide & Cherry, 1992). There are several models from which a
framework for family intervention should be built. Lappin and Covelman (1985)
have formulated a structural model for examining runaway behaviors. They view
running away as a symptom of the family’s difficulty in dealing with the
adolescent’s separation and individuation. According to Crespi and Sabatelli
(1993), family dynamics, coupled with the adolescent’s developmental processes,
account for the attempt to individuate and gain autonomy by running away from
the family unit. Bowen’s family systems approach is relevant to the structural
context of pathology noted by Lappin and Covelman (1985). Bowen proposed that
all families can be characterized on a continuum of differentiation levels. The
nuclear family emotional system, the family projection process, emotional
cutoff, sibling position, and societal regression, shapes family functioning
(Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 1991) 

 

 

 

            The structured family interview is a
technique used to assess the family’s ongoing transaction patterns. It is
concerned with family members’ roles, with particular attention to hierarchy and
the ability of subsystems to carry out their functions, family members’
alignments and coalitions, and the ease with which individuals can cross
subsystem boundaries. Moreover, to bridge the gap between 
theory and
practice, Olson (1989) developed the Circumplex Model of Marital and Family
Systems. The model analyzes the family’s cohesion and adaptability. When there
is too much loyalty to the family and too little independence, the family
members are enmeshed (Olson, 1989). A balanced family system accommodates the
adolescent’s growing need for independence and differentiation. Cohesion is the
emotional bond that family members feel toward one another (Green, 1989). Family
adaptability relates to the extent to which the family system is able to change.
Further, it is the ability of the family system to alter its power structure and
role relationships in response to situational stress (Olson, Russell, & Sprenkle,
1983). It was hypothesized that the intervention would produce a more balanced
degree of family adaptability. 

 

 
           
The family had a choice of office visits or
having the therapist visit them in their home. There were fifteen sessions over
a four-month period, with three family sessions in which everyone was present,
six sessions with mother and father, three sessions with Joshua and three
sessions with Macy and Terrance. The focus of the single-system design was to
evaluate the usefulness of a family systems approach with a family that was
experiencing problems regarding adaptability as evidenced by the runaway
behavior of an adolescent son. The use of the structured family interview and
the combined modalities of family and individual therapy increased family
satisfaction. In a fused family system with high levels of anxiety a family
member may increase interpersonal distance when he or she is unable to manage
emotional reactivity. Problems and anxiety between spouses can be avoided by
parental focus on one or more children. The most common pattern is for the
mother to focus much her emotional energy on a child while the father supports
this via reciprocal distancing. Seniority and sex distribution among siblings in
the same and related generations have a strong influence on behavior. Different
roles individuals take as a result of their position in their families of origin


 

 

HOW TO DO IN THE COUNSELING PROCESS

            High quality 
counseling
is crucial to any 
family program. 
Counseling
is intended to ensure that clients make free and informed decisions about
family
matters as it requires both giving unbiased information and helping
clients make their own, uncoerced decisions. Good 
counseling
requires both empathy and information. Providers need to show that they care
about their clients and establish an atmosphere of understanding, respect and
honesty. The providers should have accurate information and know how to
communicate it clearly to clients in language that they understand. Ideally,
providers help clients consider the pros and cons of 
family
structure and dynamics in light of the clients’ own circumstances and help
clients make informed choices that are appropriate for them. 
 
 
 
 
 

            In reality, most communication disorders in children are caused by
factors beyond one’s control which contributes to heightened fears and anxiety
about how best to facilitate recovery. Emphasize not only the progress being
made but also the strengths of the child. Part of episodic grief includes
acceptance of the disability as well as the child. The child’s role in the
family
is as important as his or her performance levels of communication skills.
Provide information about coping strategies so as to establish a level of
cognitive understanding. Adopting a proactive stance toward the emotions
associated with stress and transition has been strongly recommended (Wade &
Taylor, 1996). It is believed that the impact of the family environment for
adults may be significant as the influences within the adult cycle of life have
gone unstudied (Collins & Read, 1990). 
 
 
 
 
 

            
Counseling Today’s Families is tailored superbly for
persons engaged actively in <a name=”besthit”>
family</a>
counseling.
The wealth of practical and theoretical material covered in the text is also of
substantial scholarly and professional benefit to persons aspiring to careers in
family
counseling and
reveals a strong cognizance of the highly pluralistic and
dynamic nature of society in understanding 
family
relationships and 
counseling
families with special circumstances. Substantial attention is focused on 
family
structures that comprise vital pillars upholding the foundation of contemporary
family
life. The ability of 
family
counselors to function professionally is affected not only by their
professional knowledge but also by their unique cultural filter. To reduce the
level of anxiety, to improve the level of responsible open communication within
the family, to reduce the irresponsible, underground communication of secrets
and gossip to others (Bowen, 1978) Reduced anxiety in the emotional field to
improve the functional level of differentiation of self and reduce symptoms and
improve the basic level of differentiation to increase the adaptability of the
person to intense emotional fields.
 

 

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROCESS

            Moreover, one of the most widely
used therapeutic models in the "real world" family systems therapy has barely
made a ripple in the ocean of literary. Hence, when thinking about the
imaginative construct called character, readers may profit by looking at this
most ancient of literary conventions through newer psychological spectacles, the
lens of family systems as the family system becomes the matrix of identity for
the self, the cybernetic origins of the tension between emergence and reduction
and of the competing models those practiced by Virginia 
Satir,
Murray Bowen and the Milan school of Mara Selvini Palazzoli. Define and clarify
the relationship between spouses, keep self detriangled from the family
emotional system. Teach the functioning of emotional systems using the tenets of
the model. Demonstrate differentiation by managing self during the course of
therapy, and

 

 

 

 

 

Techniques

Focus on understanding the family’s emotional
process

Keep emotional reactivity and anxiety in the
sessions low

Focus on thinking and intellectual processes by
asking frequent factual questions

Externalize the thinking of family members such
that members of the family system can hear each other’s perspective.

Therapist remains emotionally neutral and
avoids taking sides; therefore the therapist remains detriangled from the family
emotional system

The therapist also maintains emotional
neutrality in the session through the use of modeling, nonverbal behavior, and
appropriate use of humor

This can lead to a reduction of fusion and
emotional cutoffs in the system

Genograms are used to organize information
about a family and provide a means to track the family’s progress in therapy

 

 

 

 

 

            Most practitioners of real-world therapy have long since moved on to
many other theoretical models (Corsini et al., 1989). Even very recent
psychoanalytic literary models that seek to incorporate contemporary
psychological thinking (Kohut, 1984) from point of view of family systems
psychotherapy, the family system becomes the source of the matrix of identity,
rather than only the individual character. Thus, the "causes" of a given problem
in growing up is much less the person construct and more the emotional process
that links people and events (Minuchin and Nichols, p. 112). Within the family
system, each member is said to determine the conditions for the development of
all the other family members. One of the most significant tasks for the family
is to provide support for both integration into a solid family unit and
differentiation into relatively independent selves – to think, act and feel for
oneself (Bowen, 1985; Kegan, 1982, 1994). This mutual process is lifelong, as
members of one’s primary group change from family of origin to one’s created
family and is somewhat different developmentally for male and female. 

 
 

            In case, the effectiveness is that each member develops a solid
self, able to act, think and feel so that the inside and outside of the self are
congruent  and that there is feat and anxiety that force members to create a
pseudo-self, so that one’s inner feelings and outer behavior are often not
congruent. Hence, 
Satir believes, that sex in not the basic drive of man;
rather, "the sex drive is continually subordinated to and used for the purpose
of enhancing self-esteem and defending against threats of self-esteem" (Family
55). Recently, practitioners have tried to integrate knowledge of previous
actions within the family and plans for solving contemporary familial issues.
Indeed, James Framo (1996) thinks "hidden transgenerational forces exercise
critical influence on relationships" and that one of the theoretical systems may
be called the 
Satir Communication Process 
model;
whose dynamic presence and emotional excitement indicated that is every bit as
much an art as it is a science – the Communication Process 
model
assumes a Rousseau-like view of human nature. 
 
 
 

            According to 
Satir,
each person has the potential to transform his/her own life into something she
refers to as a mature existence. A person is said to be mature when that
individual, "having attained his majority, is able to make choices and decisions
based on accurate perception about himself, others and the context in which he
finds himself who acknowledges these choices and decisions as being his; and who
accepts responsibility for their outcomes" (Family 91). 

LIMITATION OF THE THEORY AND THE
CASE

            The limitation of the
theory and the case focuses on the 
concepts of open and closed family system having a kind of threat/reward
mentality on the family members and allows each person to fulfill his own
potential in a changing family environment and this tendency of the family unit
to remain stable within a dynamic, evolving set of relationships then, require
rules for "appropriate" behavior and styles of communication from the
interpretations of the parents’ actual intentions, the growing children learns
about power and control. 

 

 

            Children intuit the sense that they
can control parents in proving who is right in parenting sometimes this type of
Mother and Father triangulates the children, making them feel helpless. The
parents can help the problematic child feel that he is able to have a positive
impact on the parents and on his siblings as well. 
Satir
suggested that healthy families develop patterns of conversation that
enhance self-worth through mutual cooperation and becomes a goal toward which
families in pain might aim. 

 

INSIGHTS

            Families that are happy with how well a member is adapting to
hearing rehabilitation resemble one another because they all benefit from
improved communication, increased socialization, and more normal 
family
life. When a 
family is unhappy because a member is not adapting well
to hearing care, any number of unresolved problems may be the cause, including
the patient’s negative attitude, difficult listening environments, lack of
family
cooperation within the 
family
that undermine the process and that certain problems can make each 
family
react in a distinct and sometimes puzzling way. 
 

            Furthermore, presence of a professional 
counseling is important in
terms of rebuilding the family,
I agree that the family involve needs professional 
counseling
because of limited financial resources, including a stigma that accompanies
receiving help from a psychologist and the fact that while some may want help,
they do not know that there are counselors available. The role of the parent is
to provide direction for the children and the best way to provide direction is
by keeping the lines of communication open. 

SUGGESTION

I will have to suggest the
following in terms of the areas of
self-enhancement and improvement: 

To assure that the client makes a better informed choice, the counselor must
accomplish these important tasks: 

Ø     
Tell the client about the range of
methods available; 

Ø     
Screen the client to be sure that
she will not regret her decision 

Ø     
Explain the procedure and its
benefits and possible complications

Ø     
Obtain informed consent

 

        Tell the client about the range of
methods available as he needs to know the methods he can choose from. The client
must know enough about the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques to be
able to make an informed choice among them. Thus, family 
counseling
therapy should take into consideration the context of the 
family’s
life situation. The goal in 
counseling
is to help the child and 
family
recognize problems, acknowledge the role and nature of identify healthy
strategies for dealing with insecurity related behavior, activate constructive
coping strategies and seek professional 
counseling
as needed. Assessment of the amount of information that the 
family
can handle at any given time and be sensitive to how much time is available
for resolving the specific emotion being experienced necessary for making
decisions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

            In conclusion, 
the impact of such diagnosis of communication
disorder and inhibits the processing of any other information presented anytime.
The family
members’ priority is to seek help for their child. They need information
pertaining to the nature of the communication disorder and services available.
Feelings of guilt occur when 
family
members believe that the communication disorder could have been prevented if
a cause can be determined, it may be easier for some families to move forward.
Therefore, it is really important to consider family counseling therapy in order
to assume that one examines a character’s motivations for reasons and perceive
that simple causality is merely one component in a much larger set of loops and
that to understand families, one must look for a character’s behavior as a
response quite often to a move by another to a response in a previous round of
moves and that each family develops its style and forcefulness of communication
in order to contain the centripetal forces threatening to modify their daily
processes. Family members are enormously protective of one another to those
outside, even in the middle of the most painful battles within. 

 

 

REFERENCES

Baca, L. M., & Cervantes, H. T. (1998). The
bilingual special educations interface (3rd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill. 


Bowen, Murray. Family Therapy in Clinical
Practice. 3rd ed. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1985. 

Bump, Jerome. "D. H. Lawrence and Family Systems
Theory." Renascence 44. I (1991): 61-80. 

Culpepper, B., Mendel, L., & McCarthy, P.
(1994). Counseling
experience and training offered by ESB-accredited programs. Asha, 36, 55-57.


Dalton, P. (1994). 
Counseling
people with communication problems. London: Thousand Oaks. 

Luterman, D. (2001). 
Counseling
persons with communication disorders and their families. Austin, TX: PRO-ED.


Framo, James L. "A Personal Retrospective of the
Family Therapy Field: Then and Now." Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 22.3
(July 1996): 289-315. 

Kegan, Robert. The Evolving Self. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1982. 

Kohut, Heinz. How Does Analysis Cure? Chicago: U
of Chicago P, 1984. 

Palazzoli, Mara Selvini, Luigi Boscolo,
Gianfranco Cecchin, and Giuliana Prata. Paradox and Counterparadox: A New
Model
in the Therapy of the Family in Schizophrenic Transaction. New York: Jason
Aronson, 1978. 

Palazzoli, Mara Selvini, Stefano Cirillo, Matteo
Selvini, and Anna Maria Sorrentino. Family Games: General Models of Psychotic
Processes in the Family. New York: Norton, 1989. 

 
 

Powell, T. J. (1998, March). Meeting the unique
needs of brothers and sisters: Strategies for parents and professionals. Paper
presented to South Dakota Children’s Care Hospital and School, Sioux Falls.


Rollin, W. J. (2000). 
Counseling
individuals with communication disorders: Psychodynamic and 
family
aspects. Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann. 

Satir,
Virginia. Conjoint Family Therapy. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books,
1967. 

Satir,
Virginia, and M. Baldwin. 
Satir Step
by Step. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, 1983. 

Wade, S., & Taylor, G. (1996). Childhood
traumatic brain injury: Initial impact on the 
family.
Journal of Learning Disabilities. 29, 652-662.

Wade, S., Borawski, E., Taylor, G., Drotar, D.,
Yeates, K., & Stancin, T. (2001). The relationship of caregiver coping to
family
outcomes during the initial year following pediatric traumatic injury
[Electronic version]. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69,
406-415. 

Vancouver, Jeffery B. "Living Systems Theory as
a Paradigm for Organizational Behavior: Understanding Humans, Organizations, and
Social Processes." Behavioral Sciences 41 (July 1996): 165-204.

Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Family Counseling

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