Treatment
SII houses a stable of licensed and pre-licensed marriage and family therapists who are available to help you. Click HERE to read about us.
Family Counseling: How It Works
Treatment with us looks both similar to and different from what you might be used to. Our offices are relatively standard—couches and tissue boxes—and we abide by all the normal laws governing the privacy of therapy. We meet with our clients regularly (usually weekly) and typically charge the going rate for therapy in our area. But that’s probably where the similarities end. Where we look different is in the treatment model itself. First, we don’t usually work with just the self-injurer. That kind of therapy doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us, because that person is likely just reacting to something in the environment. (It just so happens that theirs is the most visible issue.) We’d rather work with the environment itself—that’s where we’ve seen the strongest results. So, one week might be the whole family together, another week might be just parents, another week might be a son or daughter and their girlfriend/boyfriend, and another week might be just one member of the family, and so on. Sometimes the word “family” doesn’t mean mom-dad-sister-brother, and in those cases, we even meet with friends, lovers, neighbors, and coworkers. We don’t know who we need to meet with until we sit down and get a better idea of what’s needed.
That happens during our assessment meeting. After an initial free consultation, we set up a block of time to meet with everyone we think might be needed for the therapy, even if we end up only needing that person once or twice. During the assessment, everyone gets a brief private interview with the therapist and takes a few tests so we can collect as much information as possible. (Don’t worry – the tests are fun. No creepy ink blots.) From that point, a few of us sit down together to analyze all the data and put together a plan we think will work best for that family. This usually takes about a week. Sometimes we think just one therapist is needed, other times we think a few might be needed for different parts of the family.
We then invite the family back in to present our ideas. If they like it, we start working. And the rest is therapy.
Individual Counseling
Sometimes a self-injurer needs our help and for whatever reason, the family isn’t available to participate in therapy. While this isn’t our first choice, we work within the limitations and do our best to provide treatment that might help an individual client have some kind of positive impact on his/her environment—hopefully creating the conditions for a happy life. What we have found with almost all our cases, however, is that eventually the self-injurer wants to bring at least someone from their family or environment into sessions to help solve the problem. That’s when we really start to see some results.
If this kind of therapy sounds like something you might like to try, please send us the following information, and someone will contact you as soon as possible, typically within 24 hours: