Interpersonal Therapy

Interpersonal therapy is helpful for people who are struggling with family issues—something that most of us are familiar with. Most of the time we manage well, feeling familiar with the characters and usual problems that arise within our families. We tend to have our usual way of dealing with things and hope that this is enough to keep things manageable. Around times of change and stress, however, family issues can become intensely overwhelming. If you find that you are struggling within your family and feeling overwhelmed with it all, it might be important to consider seeking therapeutic support and guidance.

Understanding Family Systems

In psychology, we call families ‘systems’ because, with all the people and moving parts, they work like complex machinery. All components of the system - the characters and personalities involved – ideally work together to make things run smoothly. Unfortunately, making things run smoothly sometimes means that we are taking on roles we don’t want to take on and acting in ways we might not want to act. We may feel pushed around or manipulated. We may keep losing our temper or our autonomy, acting co-dependently or growing resentful. These strains can feel entirely impossible and may render us feeling lost about what to do or how to handle it all. Psychological therapy can help you navigate complicated family situations when it becomes all too much.

In therapeutic practice, we regularly do interpersonal therapy with people who are struggling with family issues. In fact, dealing with problems within the family happens to be one of the most common things we all struggle with. There’s a famous quote that says, ‘If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.’ In other words, you’re not alone if you become triggered and overwhelmed by family.

Families Mould Us Into Who We Are

Our families raise us and mould us into who we are. They model for us how to handle life, deal with stress, relate to others, manage our fear and pain, negotiate conflict, provide love and support and make sense of the world around us. As such, they have everything to do with how we develop over time and who we become. Families even bear some responsibility for how we operate genetically, activating some genes and pruning others. Because of this fundamental role, issues that arise within your family can strike at the core of your identity and cause immense pain, distress, anxiety, depression, and obsessive rumination amongst other injuries to your well-being.

It's likely that if you’re having problems in your family, you’ve identified that it’s time for a change. Something needs to be different. The hardest part here is that addressing problems and changing ‘the family system’ can feel nearly impossible. How do we ask others to hear us when they’re too busy defending themselves or trying to win? How do we get others to do what is best for them when they continue to hurt themselves or others with their behaviours and choices? How do we get others to just do better? It’s not uncommon to meet a great deal of resistance when dealing with family issues which can make us feel entirely helpless.

How Interpersonal Therapy Can Help

Interpersonal therapy can help you address these issues by identifying what happens for you, on a deeper level, when you face family challenges. It can also help you to learn how to navigate and negotiate various complicated family situations. This may involve learning about establishing healthier boundaries with others, working on communication, asserting yourself, letting go, forgiving, sitting with discomfort, allowing others to be responsible for themselves, taking responsibility for yourself, working on anger management, finding your voice, taking accountability or holding others to account, tending to your trauma, working to heal from the ways you’ve been hurt… and the list goes on.

Our Approach to Family Issues

People are unique and so are their families. You will have been through certain life and family experiences that will have strongly influenced who you are and what you are going through. The first step is getting to know and understand your unique family situation and the life events you’ve been through. Together, we will make links between past experiences and what is going on now, so as to paint a picture that makes sense of what is happening.

We work to identify and understand your emotional experiences and why you do what you do within your own family structure. This way, you may come to identify and understand why you might engage in certain behaviours that don’t serve you well including people-pleasing, avoiding conflict, losing your temper, colluding, irritability, defensiveness, acting overly controlling, passive aggression, manipulation, fawning, peace-making, indifference, etc. This insight may help you to understand what actually helps and what harms your family relationships and yourself.

We will then work to help you establish new ways of relating to and coping with your family. At times, this may be the literal act of behaving differently than you normally do. Other times, this may involve the exploration of your emotions and thoughts around family so that we can learn how to cope better from within. This will involve cultivating understanding, compassion, acceptance and knowing who you are and what is important to you.

In interpersonal therapy, we take a non-judgmental approach and really work to understand a client’s ways of being. I approach family dynamics with an open mind and heart. Each one of us has the potential to find new ways of dealing with very complicated situations and work through very difficult emotions. On this premise, I will take you as you are and try to provide a safe and informed environment so that you might be able to share what’s going on for you and your family.

In clinical work, we rely on integrating many types of therapies and techniques to address the issues you may bring to the table. We particularly focus on Person Centred Therapy, CBT and CFT. So, if you have a very practical issue that requires some skills building, I may rely on some methods from CBT to help you find a new way of coping that works better. If you are struggling with deeper relational and interpersonal struggles, I will likely use a more psychodynamic Person-Centred approach. This way, we will be using the therapies that are most helpful for your unique situation.

How can therapy help you address your family issues?

There are so many things we can address family issues in our therapy together but a few of the most common ones include the following…