You may never step foot into a therapist's office in your lifetime, but many people find that this is where they end up at least once in their life. Though many go for individual therapy to help them when they are depressed or dealing with complications in life, family counseling is something that can happen to heal a rift in a family or to help the whole family deal with a sudden and often negative situation. Some go into family therapy sessions for a long time and come out having learned nothing. If you are going into therapy, do your best to get the most out of your sessions. You never know what you may learn.
If you don't take your family counseling sessions seriously, you are not going to get much out of them. You may be there because you have to be, but that does not mean that you can not learn something that can be to the benefit of your family and your life. If something is wrong, therapy is not always the way to fix it, but in some cases it can give a family a new direction and some tools to work through whatever is going on. Family counseling often teaches family members to communicate with each other in a new and productive way. That is always a good thing.
Family counseling can come when something bad has happened. It could be that someone in the family was abused, and the family has to learn to cope with the new reality of this. It is often a hard thing to come to grips with and an even harder thing to live with as the years go by. Abuse changes a person, and therefore it changes the dynamics of a family forever. This does not mean that your family is going to be in a bad place forever. Therapy for all involved may actually give a family a new path so that they move on a positive manner.
Making the most of your family counseling sessions means writing down things that are bothering you and things that you have problems dealing with each day or in general. It helps to have things written down so you do not forget what you need to talk about the most when you have your family counseling sessions. Also, write down what your therapist tells you when you feel you may forget what is being said. You can give and receive a lot of information in just one session, and no matter how good your memory may be, you could easily forget something that is rather important.
Also, talk with the rest of your family about making the most of your family counseling sessions. Tell them that though the process of going through therapy may seem awkward and strange to them, they can learn a lot and even go through some good changes if they try to embrace what is going on. As with anything else, there are some therapists that are going to be a better fit for your family than others. If you go to a few family counseling sessions and you just aren't clicking, find another therapist. Sometimes, it takes individuals and families a while to find the right one.