Family Therapy and Reunification Therapy are two distinct therapeutic approaches that address different types of familial problems.
- Family Therapy focuses on addressing issues that impact the entire family unit, and in most cases will require the entire family to participate. Progress can easily become unraveled if both parents are not supportive of the process and one parent feels excluded.
- Reunification Therapy is designed specifically to help families reunite after a period of separation, estrangement, as well as irrational and rational rejection.
Family Therapy can be used to address a variety of problems, including communication issues, conflicts, and behavioral issues. However, Reunification Therapy also often calls to address communication issues, conflict, and behavioral issues as well. Therefore, both therapies can address the same issues.
One may inquire which specific type of therapy do they need for their client? To better sort out direction, one has to consider the focus. The key difference between each therapy is its primary focus.
- Family Therapy is designed to address issues affecting the entire family unit.
- Reunification Therapy is focused specifically on helping the family reunite (i.e., generally a parent-child relationship) after a period of separation. However, Reunification Therapy will often require the participation of the entire family as well, and will include many the same components associated with Family Therapy.
Therefore, it is helpful for the attorney(s) and/or parent(s), when trying to determine the primary focus of the family, to realize there are many overlaps between these two therapeutic approaches. As such, Reunification Therapy can be used as a part of (or subset of) Family Therapy to address underlying issue(s) and/or concern(s) that have and/or continue to contribute to the separation and/or rejection, in order to better improve family functioning.
Monika Logan is an owner and the Director of Texas Premier Counseling Services, PLLC (Texas PCS) located in Frisco, Texas. She specializes in Parental Alienation as well as troubled, damaged, and/or strained parent-child relationships. She provides counselling services for parents and their children in conflict and/or those struggling with issues related to separation and/or divorce. Ms. Logan offers Parenting Facilitation Services to help parents reduce conflict, and she helps repair parent-child relationship breaches as a Reunification Counselor.
Copyright © 2023 by Monika Logan, M.A., LPC, LSOTP
