Many families who look into family therapy are not in a crisis. More often, something at home has slowly become harder than it used to be. The same argument keeps coming back in slightly different forms, a teenager has gone quiet and seems hard to reach, or two parents who separated years ago still cannot talk about their children without the conversation turning tense. Sometimes one person in the family is struggling, and everyone around them is trying to help in ways that are not quite working.
Family therapy gives the people involved a place to talk about what is happening with someone who is not part of the pattern. At Living Well Counselling Services, family counselling in Calgary can include parents with younger children or teens, separated co-parents, or adult family members, in whatever combination makes sense for what is going on. If you are not sure whether family therapy is the right place to start, a free consultation gives you a chance to talk that through before you decide anything.
What Family Therapy Is, and What It Is Not?
Family therapy starts from a simple idea: people in a family affect one another, often in ways that are hard to see from the inside. A child’s anxiety can shape how the parents speak to each other, and the parents’ stress can in turn shape how the child copes. A family therapist pays attention to each person in the room and also to the patterns that connect them, because a change in one part of a family usually shows up somewhere else as well.
Because of this, family therapy is not a process for deciding who is to blame. Parents sometimes worry that sessions will turn into a list of everything they have done wrong, and teens sometimes expect to be cast as “the problem” the family has come to fix. A family therapist works to keep sessions from going either of those ways. The aim is for each person to be heard, to understand the others a little better, and to find ways of relating that work better for the family as a whole. A “family” in family therapy does not have to mean parents and young children. It can be a parent and an adult son or daughter, adult siblings working through a parent’s illness, a blended family still finding its footing, or co-parents who live in separate homes. What these situations have in common is that the relationships themselves have become part of what people want to work on.
Family Therapy or Family Counselling: Is There a Difference?
People often ask whether family therapy and family counselling are different services. In everyday use the two terms mean much the same thing, and the choice of word often reflects a practitioner’s training or professional title more than the work itself.
The difference that usually matters more to families is who the therapist is and what their credentials are. Living Well’s team includes Registered Psychologists, Registered Provisional Psychologists, Registered Social Workers and Clinical Counsellors, and each of these designations comes with its own training and professional standards. The designation can affect the fee and whether your benefits plan pays for the sessions. It is less likely to change the kind of conversation you have in the room, since that depends far more on the individual therapist’s experience and approach.
What Families Often Come In For
Every family’s reasons are different, and many families come in with more than one concern at once. These are some of the situations Living Well’s therapists work with:
- Conflict between parents and children or teens. The same arguments may keep repeating, a teen may have pulled away, or parents may be finding a younger child’s behaviour at home hard to manage.
- Communication that has broken down. Conversations may escalate quickly, or there may be topics everyone has quietly agreed to avoid, and sometimes one person has become the go-between who carries messages from one family member to another.
- Separation, divorce and co-parenting. Children may need help adjusting to life in two homes, and parents may need a workable way to make decisions together while living apart.
- Blended families. New roles, loyalties and household routines take time to settle, and that is often as true for the adults as it is for the children.
- A family member’s mental health, disability or illness. The family may be trying to support the person who is struggling while also making room for how it is affecting everyone else, including brothers and sisters.
- Grief and loss. Family members often grieve differently from one another, and those differences can create distance at a time when people need each other most.
- Family-of-origin patterns. Adult family members sometimes notice that old roles and ways of relating keep resurfacing decades later, especially at holidays or around big family decisions.
- Parenting concerns. Parents may want to understand their child better, or they may disagree with each other about how to respond to what is happening.
Where there has been violence or abuse in a family, safety comes first. Joint sessions are not always the right place to begin, and a therapist may suggest individual support before, or instead of, meeting together. If Living Well cannot offer the help your family needs, the team will do its best to refer you to someone who can. It may also help to know that Living Well therapists do not provide custody assessments or reports for court, although family therapy can still support parents and children through a separation.
If anyone in your family is in immediate danger, please call 911. For support at any hour, you can reach the Distress Centre Calgary crisis line at 403-266-4357, or Alberta’s Family Violence Info Line by phone or text at 310-1818, with phone support in more than 170 languages.
What Happens in Family Therapy
Family therapy can look quite different from one family to the next, but most families move through a similar rhythm.
The First Conversation
You can begin with a free 20-minute consultation with the therapist, which gives you a chance to describe what is happening, ask questions, and get a sense of whether they are a good fit for your family. If you already know who you would like to work with, you can go straight to a full first appointment instead. You do not need to have everything worked out beforehand, and you do not need a referral to start. Who joins the consultation is flexible and depends on what suits your family, so it might be one parent on their own or several family members together.
Who Comes to Sessions
Parents often wonder whether everyone has to be there from the start, and it is not always necessary. Depending on what is happening, a therapist may meet with the whole family, with parents on their own, with a child or teen individually, or with a smaller group such as one parent and one child. Some families begin with the parents alone, so that the adults can describe the history and talk about what they hope for before the children join. When a younger child is part of the work, parents usually stay closely involved, because they know their child best and are the ones who help carry what happens in sessions into everyday life. Your therapist will talk with you about which arrangement makes sense at each stage and why.
Early Sessions
In the first few sessions, the therapist gets to know the family: who is in it, how each person sees the current difficulties, and what each person hopes might change. They may ask about family history, daily routines and what has already been tried. These early sessions are also about building enough trust that everyone, including children and teens, feels able to speak openly.
Working Through the Harder Parts
As therapy continues, the focus usually moves toward the patterns that keep difficulties going. A family may practise having a conversation that normally ends in an argument, with the therapist helping everyone slow down and notice what happens along the way. Parents might develop new ways of responding to a child's behaviour, and family members often begin to see the reasons behind one another's reactions more clearly. Some of this work happens in session, and some of it is practised at home between appointments.
Preparing Your Family for the First Session
Many parents are unsure how to explain family therapy to their children, especially to a child or teen who has been the focus of worry at home. It usually helps to describe it plainly as a place where everyone in the family gets a chance to be heard, including the parents, rather than as somewhere a child is being taken because they are in trouble. Younger children generally need only a short, simple explanation, while teens may want to know more, so it is good to be open with them about who will be there and what the sessions are for.
If two parents are involved, it can help to agree beforehand on how you will explain to your children why the family is coming, even if you see the problem differently, so that neither of you is presenting it as the other’s fault. Some parents find it useful to jot down a few notes before the first session about what has changed, when things tend to go badly, and what each person hopes will be different. None of this has to be polished, and if you are unsure how to bring up family therapy at home, that is a reasonable question to ask at the free consultation.
When One Family Member Does Not Want to Come
It is common for one person to be reluctant, and it does not mean family therapy cannot help. Teens in particular may worry about being blamed, or may simply not see the point yet, and an adult family member can feel much the same way. Sometimes it makes sense for the family members who are willing to begin on their own, while the therapist talks with them about how to invite the others without pressure. People often become more open once they hear that sessions are not about assigning fault, and once they see that their own point of view will be taken seriously. If this is where your family is, it is a good thing to raise in the free consultation or at your first appointment.
Approaches Your Therapist May Draw On
There is no single best therapy for every family. Living Well’s therapists draw on different approaches depending on the family’s situation, the ages of the people involved and what the family hopes to change, and many of them combine more than one. Approaches used on the team include:
- Family systems approaches, which look at the family as a connected whole and pay attention to roles, patterns and how change in one person affects the others.
- Attachment-informed work, which focuses on the emotional bonds between family members and how safe people feel turning to one another.
- Emotion-focused approaches, which help people recognize and put words to the feelings underneath conflict, so that family members can begin to respond to each other differently.
- Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), often adapted for families, for example by involving parents in supporting a child’s work with anxiety or behaviour.
- Solution-focused therapy, which builds on what is already working, even in small ways, rather than concentrating only on the problem.
Internal Family Systems (IFS), which some Living Well therapists also use, is worth a brief note because of its name. Despite the word “family,” IFS is usually an individual therapy that explores the different parts of a person’s inner experience. It can be a helpful part of a family member’s own counselling, alongside family sessions or separate from them.
What Are the Four Types of Family Therapy?
If you have been reading about family therapy online, you may have seen it described as having four main types. That number is a common way of summarizing the field rather than an official classification, although the four schools of thought usually named are well established. Structural family therapy looks at how a family is organized, including its boundaries, hierarchies and alliances, while strategic family therapy concentrates on the specific interactions that keep a problem going. Bowen family systems therapy explores patterns passed down across generations, and Milan systemic family therapy looks at the beliefs and meanings a family shares and how those shape the way its members respond to one another. In practice, many family therapists borrow ideas from several of these, along with approaches such as narrative therapy and the ones described above, rather than working strictly within one.
Confidentiality When Children and Teens Are Involved
Parents understandably want to know what they will hear from sessions, and teens want to know what will stay private. These are reasonable concerns on both sides, and a family therapist will usually explain the arrangement at the start so that everyone knows what to expect. In general, the therapist aims to protect enough privacy for a child or teen to speak openly, while keeping parents informed about the overall direction of therapy and about anything that affects a young person’s safety. That explanation also covers the limits of privacy, including that a therapist has to act if a child’s safety is at risk, which is true in all counselling and not only in family work.
Can Things Feel Harder Before They Feel Easier?
Sometimes, yes. Talking about something the family has avoided can bring feelings closer to the surface for a while, and the early weeks of family therapy do not always feel like progress. For many families this is a normal part of the process, and it does not necessarily mean therapy is not working. If a session leaves someone feeling unsettled, it is worth raising at the next appointment, because how the family handles these moments is often part of the work itself.
How Long Family Therapy Takes
There is no fixed number of sessions. Some families come in for a specific concern and find that a handful of sessions is enough to change the pattern, while others work together over several months, particularly when there is a lot of history involved or the family is adjusting to a major change. Progress can show up in ordinary moments first, such as a disagreement that cools down sooner than it used to, or a teen who stays at the dinner table a little longer. It is worth talking with your therapist along the way about how things are going and whether the current plan still suits your family. Because several people need to feel comfortable with the same therapist, fit matters a great deal in family work, and if it does not feel right, you can ask the intake team about moving to a different therapist.
In Person or Online
Family sessions are available in person at our Kensington and Inglewood offices, and some of our therapists also offer online family sessions. Online sessions can suit families who are spread across the city, or adult family members who live elsewhere in Alberta, and they can also help when school, work and activities make it hard to get everyone to one office at the same time. Some families find that a mix of in-person and online sessions works well. Many of the therapists who see families also offer evening or weekend appointments, which can make it easier to find a time when everyone is free. You can find addresses on our locations page.
Cost and Benefits Coverage
Fees depend on the therapist’s professional designation, and although the fee schedule is based on 50-minute sessions, Living Well offers the full hour. You can see the current rates on our rates page.
Benefits coverage varies by insurer and by plan. Many plans specify which credentials they will cover, so it is worth checking with your benefits provider before you start, and some plans cover only a set dollar amount or a few sessions each year. If coverage is an important factor for your family, let the intake team know when you get in touch, so they can match you with a therapist whose designation fits your plan. Living Well does not direct bill, so sessions are paid at the time and you receive a receipt to submit for reimbursement. If your coverage runs out partway through and the full fee becomes difficult, you can talk with your therapist about the options.
Some Living Well therapists offer a sliding scale, although those spots can fill up, so if fees are a worry it is worth mentioning this on the appointment request form. If your family belongs to a faith community, the community may be able to help with counselling fees. You are welcome to ask them directly, and if they would like to speak with Living Well, the team is happy to work with them.
Free and Lower-Cost Family Counselling in Calgary
If cost is a barrier, Calgary has publicly funded and non-profit services that offer free or subsidized family counselling for families with children and youth, including the Calgary Family Therapy Centre and Carya. Each has its own eligibility criteria, and waiting lists are common.
Getting Started
If you would like to talk about whether family therapy might help, you can request a free consultation through our appointment request form. When you fill it in, one family member can enter their own details and then write “Family Therapy” in the “Anything else you’d like us to know?” box, along with the names of the other family members who may take part. If it is easier to explain things to a person, you can also call 403.695.7911 or email intake@livingwellcounselling.ca. The intake team aims to get back to new requests on the same day when possible.
If you are not sure which therapist would be the best fit, the intake team can help you choose based on what is happening in your family and whether you would rather meet in person or online. Between them, our family therapists see children of all ages, and some focus on older children and teens, so the intake team will match your family with a therapist who suits your children’s ages. Family sessions are offered in English, and some are also available in Urdu, Hindi or Punjabi, which can help when not everyone in the family is most comfortable in English.
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ADHD Counselling FAQs
There is no single answer that fits everyone, though cognitive behavioural therapy and skills-based coaching tend to help most. CBT addresses the thoughts and patterns that build up around ADHD, while skills coaching focuses on practical routines, and your therapist tailors the balance to your own goals.
Research supports the efficacy of counselling with ADHD. Counselling cannot cure ADHD, but it can make daily life more manageable by building strategies for focus and organization, easing the emotional weight that often comes with it, and helping you understand how to build on strengths and overcome challenges.
No. You can begin counselling at any point, with or without a formal diagnosis, and if you later decide you want an assessment, your counselling can continue alongside it.
Yes. Our therapists work with adults, teens, and children, and we also support parents and families who want to help a child with ADHD at home.
If ADHD has been making daily life harder than it needs to be, ADHD counselling in Calgary gives you a steady place to start. Reach out to Living Well Counselling Services to book your free consultation, and we will help you find a therapist who is the right fit.