What Is the Time Frame Needed for Family Counseling to Work?

People who come to counseling often want to know how long it will take for them to feel better.

In family counseling, a series of dynamics significantly differ from those in individual counseling, potentially affecting the time it takes for developments to occur. Here, those therapists shed light on those distinctions, and share information about what it does and doesn't mean to practice family counseling the way it's supposed to be practiced.

Why Family Counseling Duration Varies

There's no such thing as a timeline for family counseling. The first few sessions are joint orientation and relationship-building exercises, as with any treatment.

In family counseling, the therapist is making connections with more people, and that is huge. No one in the family will talk until they feel safe. So really, that can affect how long it's going to take to make progress.

Building Trust Takes Time

Aside from trust, the substance of one's work is another factor that determines the length of time. "For families who are learning to set limits for teens, counseling may be four to six sessions; if the teenager is struggling with behavior or feelings, it may be longer. Families grappling with sexual abuse of a child may be in counseling for years. "It's not uncommon for the family to come in for one thing, and other issues need to be dealt with.

Stages of Family Counseling

Beginning Stage – Building Trust and Setting Goals

Counseling, generally, does have a beginning, middle, and end. In the first phase, you're getting to know each other and building trust. In addition to this purpose, the therapist is also in the process of deciding which concerns require removal. Once the therapist has heard a lot about the issues, s/he will collaborate with the family to identify goals for counseling.

Middle Stage – Active Work and Skill Building

The middle of counseling is where the real work takes place. And an open discussion about the challenges, learning new skills, homework to practice the latest skills, and reports on what is and isn't working, so we can decide what needs to be tweaked. Keep doing this until you land on a remedy that fits.

End stage – Checking in and tapering off

The final stage involves regular check-ins to ensure progress, which decreases in frequency until the client decides to end treatment. Other people return every so often for follow-ups.

The Impact of Consistency in Family Counseling

Weekly Sessions Are Crucial for Change

Life is busy, and we have crazy times, but to change, you need to work weekly. Weekly counseling sessions are necessary because changing is hard, even for one person, and it's even tougher to change as a couple or a family.

Treating the Family as a System

A family is a "system," and for systemic change, you need a team with constancy, consistency, dedication, and patience. "It's almost like learning a whole new language that the whole family can speak and understand."

Since the vast majority of these families find their way to counseling as a last resort, when all else has fallen apart and crises have developed, long-entrenched problems have torn and are tearing the family apart, the roads take even more time and even more patience.

First, the fires need to be extinguished so that the hidden fractures and ruptures can be named and mended. This new way of knowing and being can take root.

Anticipated Time Commitment for Most Families

Six to Nine Months as a Starting Point

Family counseling in general: Should the family be ambivalent about the process?

They should understand this is a process and that because of the complexity of the family system, or network of relationships, that they (especially if some or all of the family is new to counseling—as counseling has its learning curve) should expect to engage the family counseling process for a very minimum of six to nine months if not longer.

And that means weekly visits, because consistency is so important, you know.

Twelve Months Is Often Ideal for Deep Issues

Naturally, all families are not created equal, and as with any relationship, some are more flexible than others. Many, however, can't change. Being aware of this fact is particularly true when it comes to addictions, which can bring about very complex layers of trauma and familial wounding. A one-year minimum to start "family counseling" would be even better.

Every Family Is Different

These are just suggestions, and remember that each circumstance, family, and individual issue will certainly warrant very different time investments. And really, it's nearly impossible to foresee how other systems will respond to various interventions.

Psychology is as much an art as it is a science. For family work, a collaborative process between therapist(s) and family members, it is very tricky, if not impossible, to figure out the timeline.

What Ultimately Determines the Length of Counseling?

Meeting Shared Family Goals

Perhaps an even more pithy response to the question would be: as long as it takes to meet the goals that everyone agrees are the bottom line.

For example, being able to talk to each other without verbally assaulting or ignoring one another, being able to go to the gym or dinner together without too much bitterness, and so on.

The dysfunctional, dysphoric patterns that are so present in families often take years to develop; it takes both time and patience to unravel those patterns and then create new ones. But a family, through counseling, can make it happen, and the changes can be wonderfully liberating.

The response to that is: it depends! That depends on several factors, including the nature of the issues that brought the family to counseling, the impact on family members, the duration of these issues, and the family's overall resilience in handling adversity.

Rewiring Long-Standing Patterns Takes Time

Family counseling is usually shorter-term than individual counseling. It's not uncommon for family counseling to start when a member of the family shows signs of a behavior or problem that demands professional help, like substance abuse. In such a case, the family member may be receiving individual counseling with family counseling as an adjunctive treatment.

Occasionally, the behavioral problems of a child lead a family to pursue counseling, and family counseling is initiated as the predominant treatment modality for everyone in the family.

In some instances, a change in the larger family system prompts one family subgroup to pursue family counseling. For example, parents divorce, and one parent chooses to engage their children in family counseling.

Flexibility and Resilience Can Speed the Way

Functional families, that is to say, families that are flexible and have resources in place, are likely not to require as long in counseling as those who lack healthy resources and tend to have rigid responses to life's challenges.

The latter types of families require less time in treatment to internalize techniques and have little interest in learning processes or developing conduits for dealing with difficult situations, accepting the stagnation of painful and unpleasant emotional states, and managing relational dynamics.