Along with supporting people going through romantic relationship issues or workplace conflicts, my work as a relationship counsellor in Farnham and online often includes supporting those experiencing family troubles of some kind. Family dynamics are usually the hardest to deal with. These relationships go so far back, and for many, expressing how one truly feels within this environment can feel impossible, which creates a number of issues.

Having spent a number of years supporting individuals through family issues, I have seen how certain themes continue to come up on a regular basis. In this blog post, I will walk through a few problems that I frequently encounter as a relationship counsellor.

Communication

As is the case in any relationship, communication is the most important aspect, and also the thing that most often goes wrong. This is especially the case in family relationships, particularly between parents and their children. There is, as I have seen, a predominance of parents who, for various reasons, never allowed themselves to express their emotions, which naturally puts up a wall between them and their children. Both sides may feel like they have important things to say, but after so long not communicating properly, it can seem impossible to bridge that gap.

Abuse

There is always some form of trauma that is passed down through the family. Usually, this trauma comes in the shape of things that should have happened not happening, like parents being emotionally and/or physically unavailable. Sometimes, however, the reverse happens: things that shouldn’t have happened that do happen. In other words: abuse.

For the most part, this abuse occurs in the form of verbal harassment, where parents take out their anger on children through chastising them or demeaning them in some way. Children are often told they are not good enough, or ‘failing’ in some way. Sometimes the abuse occurs between siblings. In rarer cases, there is physical and/or sexual abuse, which influences the way an individual perceives themselves and other people in adulthood. Only by engaging with these difficult memories can one start to move past them.

Neglect/Abandonment

Neglect and abandonment occur in a variety of ways. It could be that you lost touch with your parents, sibling, or some other family member, and no longer feel like you can reach out to them. Others have parents who, while physically present during childhood, were not emotionally attuned to their needs and made them feel unwelcome in the household.

And then there’s the situations where families, for whatever reason, are disbanded, perhaps through divorce, death, or because a parent simply decided to leave the family unit. These are all different forms of abandonment, and they lay a template for how one thinks, feels, and behaves further down the line.

To learn more about how I can support those going through family issues with personalised relationship counselling in Farnham and online, please do give me a call or fill out the contact form.