Blended Family Counseling

Blended Family Counseling in Michigan

What is a Blended Family?

There are many other names for a blended family such as, stepfamilies, merged families, and remarried families. If your family consists of two adults and either stepchildren, adoptive children, or foster children then you are considered to have a blended family. Blended families can be created after a marriage ends in a divorce, the death of a spouse or abandonment by a spouse. Blended families are seen as more complex that other families because different people, histories, personalities, and values are merging together to make a new and unique combination. Being a part of a blended family can be overwhelming and challenging at times, but it can also open the door for new relationships and opportunities. Therapists, Counselors, Psychotherapists, and Psychologists at each of our locations in Michigan provide blended family counseling to help blended families work through their differences and concerns to become a united, happy, and healthy family.

Concerns Commonly Covered in Blended Family Therapy

There are many challenges and obstacles that individuals in blended families must overcome. A range of emotions are common for both adults and children in the family. It is important to remember that each individual will respond differently to becoming a part of a blended family. Being able to discuss these issues openly with one another is important to achieving the blended family that you want to be. Blended Family Therapy offers families the opportunity to discuss some of the concerns that they may have about their new family. Some of the most common concerns seen in Blended Family Counseling are listed below:

• Dealing with the loss of an important member of the previous family
• Establishing, understanding, and coping with a new family hierarchy
• Overcoming new boundary difficulties
• Coping with unresolved emotions
• Working together on economic concerns and financial difficulties

Approaches to Blended Family Counseling

Professionals help families by using a number of different techniques and focus on a number of different elements. Blended Family Therapy guides family members in keeping their old loyalties while developing new ones and not feeling guilty about it. Families are encouraged and assisted in creating new traditions and rituals which facilitate the forming of relationships, beginnings to change, and a number of different things. Professionals also focus on parental involvement, helping parents develop a healthy bond, and creating parenting coalition. The more children and spouses in the families’ past, the harder it is for parents to have a balance between their natural children and their new children. Professionals at Sollars and Associates also use blended family counseling as a time to provide education to all members of the family. The family is educated on what exactly makes a blended family, things to expect when being part of a blended family, ways to handle typical situations, and how to communicate with one another. Education is one of the best ways that blended family counseling can help blended families adapt and grow together as a new family.

We’re proud to have counselors available at our clinics across Michigan. For more information and to find a blended family counselor near you, you can start by clinic on one of the office locations below: