Sample Treatment Plans for Family Therapy

Family therapy can take the form of couples counseling or whole-family therapy, involving parents, children and, in some cases, extended family. The broad goals include learning to communicate, manage conflict and improve the family dynamic. The treatment plans are all targeted towards those broad goals, as well as towards helping the therapist understand and uncover problems in the familial structure.

Tracking

• Tracking is a form of treatment designed to provide the therapist with a better understanding of the family dynamic. This treatment method was developed in 1981 by Fishman and Minuchin and is primarily used by therapists who emphasize structural family therapy. Structural family therapy sees the family unit as part of a subset of a larger societal system. The focus is on developing stability and managing change.

  Tracking involves telling family stories to a therapist, who charts the stories sequentially in order to understand how events have culminated to shape the family. This can help to identify problem areas, and therapists can get a better understanding of which patterns of behavior need to be altered.

Family Sculpting

• Duhl, Duhl and Kantor developed family sculpting in 1973. This treatment method focuses on the physical organization of the family. During family sculpting, the therapist asks the family members to diagram or arrange the family members based upon their relationships to each other. Unlike tracking, which relies on verbal cues, family sculpting is non-verbal and involves a visual diagram. This form of therapy can be especially helpful when working with children and adolescents, who may not have the vocabulary to fully express their understanding of the family dynamics.

Reframing

• Reframing, developed in 1986 by Fredman and Sherman, focuses not on identifying underlying problems, but on coping with already apparent problems. Therapists using this treatment method urge family members to view problems or disagreements from a different mindset. For example, a parent nagging a child can also be viewed as concern for the child's well being. By re-categorizing the way family member's view conflicts, family therapists aim to help certain negatively characterized behaviors become positives within the family dynamic.