Family Therapy is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members. It emphasizes family relationships as an important factor in psychological health. Systemic Family Therapy is a tradition of Family Therapy that treats the systemic context rather than the isolated behavior and/or individual that is defined as problematic. The systemic context includes the circular interaction of problems and their attempted solutions and the social coalitions that involve the participation of at least three people. Using this approach; there is no guilty and no innocent, no right and no wrong, no strong and no victim; there are just relationship cycles that have unhealthy constructions.

Among the family therapy trends we use, solution focused therapy which prescribes an interactional way of disrupting problem-solution interaction by exploring past and imagined future types of solutions that are successful. Structural family therapy focuses on interrupting social behavioral sequences that hold inappropriate triadic relations. It adds an interpretive approach that paradoxically describes the problem with an explanation that highlights its positive contribution to the social organization of the family. Our overall approach is improvisational and defined by the clients’ needs and priority.

Regardless of the origin of the problem, and regardless of whether the clients consider it an "individual" or "family" issue, involving families in solutions often benefits clients. Families participate directly in the therapy session which makes it possible to make use of the strengths, wisdom, and support of the wider system. In family therapy, family can be defined traditionally as parents and children and more recently as “strongly supportive, long-term roles and relationships between people who may or may not be related by blood or marriage”. Therefore, all people who define themselves as a family or couple can apply and benefit from Family and Couple Therapy.

The number of sessions depends on the situation, but the average is 5-20 sessions.

Family therapy focuses on the maintenance and/or solving of problems rather than in trying to identify a single cause. Putting the blame on one or more individuals has no clinical utility. Using a circular way of problem evaluation rather than a linear route (cause-effect approach) family therapy helps families by finding patterns of behavior, what the causes are, and what can be done to improve their situation.

Psychotherapy is a therapeutic interaction or treatment relationship with a trained professional to find solutions to psychological problems which can vary in terms of their causes, influences, triggers, and potential resolutions. Therapy is generally used in response to a variety of clinically diagnosable and/or existential crises in addition to everyday problems.

The aim of psychotherapy is mainly the exploration of thoughts, feelings and behavior for the purpose of problem solving or achieving higher levels of functioning. Psychotherapy can aid clients in reaching their full potential or to cope better with problems of life. Increasing awareness and the capacity for self-observation, psychotherapy helps to change behavior and cognition, and to develop insight and empathy. Through therapy, individuals are enabled to come up with other choices of thought, feeling or action, and their sense of well-being is increased so that they can better manage discomfort or distress while perception of reality is improved.

Therapy may address specific forms of diagnosable mental illness, or everyday problems in managing or maintaining interpersonal relationships or meeting personal goals. Therapy also helps with the grieving process producing less long term depression. Treatment in families with children can favorably influence a child’s development, lasting for life and into future generations. Better parenting can also be an indirect result of therapy or purposefully learned as parenting techniques.

As sensitive and deeply personal topics are discussed during psychotherapy sessions, therapists are legally bound to respect client confidentiality.

Individual psychotherapy is generally applied through 50-minute-long weekly sessions. The length of this process and the number of sessions depend on a variety of factors; commonly being between a few months and a few years. Some of these factors are the individual’s will and motivation for participation in therapy and the nature, intensity and frequency of the presented problem. New stress factors that might come up during the therapy process can also affect the length, intensity and frequency of sessions.

“Supervision is a working alliance between two professionals where supervisees offer an account of their work, reflect on it, receive feedback, and receive guidance if appropriate. The object of this alliance is to enable the worker to gain in ethical competency, confidence and creativity as to give the best possible services to clients”. (Inskipp and Proctor, 2001)

Within this framework Supervision is primarily focused on the Supervisor helping the Supervisee/Therapist to develop their specific skills in the service of the client while helping them to reflect and develop. The supervision process includes the discussion of the therapists’ (supervisees’) role and the interface between personal and professional life. Through supervision, supervisees get a chance to find out where their "growing edges" are and how they wish to develop both as a person and as a counselor/therapist. They learn how to link theory and practice, to formulate what is going on with complex cases and to be aware of the systemic context. The supervisor also shares own experience, decision making and interpretation with the supervisee's observations, experiences and information gathering.

Supervision best works if practiced on a regular basis, once a week or once every two weeks according to the setting and the need. Supervisees can choose to take individual supervision or group supervision. Through my experience, I have come to see that both individual and group supervision have their advantages. I personally find the group supervision process more enriching as it spreads over a longer time period and enables to learn from each other’s cases at the same time. It also promotes peer vision for the future.

As a supervisor, I offer individual and group supervisions to practitioners of Family and Couple Therapy and individual therapy. For information on conditions and future supervision groups, you can reach me through e-mail.

New training will be announced in September of 2014. Please check our website again later; Thank you for your interest.