Introduction.
An American journalist and author, Mignon McLaughlin, once said, “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” For Samantha, the “many times” of falling in love with the same person seems too much now. Having been married for 18 years to her high school sweetheart, their marital status slumped as their family grew. Problems in the family became a norm! Samantha’s husband, a sales manager on trips almost every other week, started ignoring her and the kids. Samantha always felt empty and trapped. Frustrations and anger endowed Samantha’s life, but she kept everything to herself. Surprisingly, Samantha discovers that her husband has a pornography addiction. She was in a dilemma on whether to stay in the marriage or leave. After admitting that he had a problem with pornography, Samantha’s husband decided to seek help. Every family deserves great happiness all the time. For Samantha’s family, it should never be an exemption. With all the problems facing Samantha’s home, the family therapy theory would be suitable to amicably deal with the issues for the family to enjoy unmatched happiness.
Family therapy is part of psychological counseling approaches that help boost communication and resolve conflicts among family members (Dallos & Draper, 2015). In our case, Samantha’s family expresses marital conflicts and communication issues, as the husband shows no interest in interacting with the kids. Family therapy is the best approach in this case as it addresses communication issues, thus enabling the family members to share their thoughts and needs. Similarly, Samantha and her husband have no productive communication, deteriorating their marital relationship.
Consequently, family therapy is suitable as it helps address issues of an individual family member that would otherwise interrupt healthy family relationships if left unattended. After realizing that her husband is addicted to pornography, Samantha is angry, surprised, and hurt and is in a dilemma. Family therapy would help Samantha decide whether to stay in the marriage or leave, with the kids’ well-being first. Family therapy helps alter undesired conditions that lead to mental health among family members (Dallos & Draper, 2015).
At times, relatives and other people dear to us may lack the awareness to help deal with mental issues (Pinsof, 2014). Despite occupying herself with church duties and helping neighbors, and relatives, Samantha never revealed the wrangles in her marriage. People had the impression that she had a good marriage but in a real sense, Samantha felt empty and trapped in the deteriorated marital relationship. Family therapy would make it much easier to help handle Samantha’s problems in her marriage. Family therapy equips the counselors with the capacity to help members of the family member handle their mental issues, such as stress while preserving their mental well-being (Pinsof, 2014).
The family therapy theory is inclined towards helping people with different issues, such as changes within the family, communication problems, parent-child conflicts, stressful events or major life transitions, and parenting issues (Pinsof, 2014). The case of Samantha’s family replicates similar problems, which suits the family therapy approach to dealing with the problems.
For instance, Samantha’s family experiences major transitions whereby the family has to cope with the nature of the husband’s work. In this case, Samantha’s husband travels almost every week and thus limited time to spend with the family. When the husband suddenly changes and tends to ignore even the children, it becomes challenging for Samantha. Family therapy will help solve the husband’s weird behavior and ensure the children enjoy parental love and care. Similarly, Samantha depicts stressful events from her anger and frustrations after she realizes that her husband is addicted to pornography. However, family therapy will enable her to pull through and revive their marital relationship with her husband.
Family therapy is suitable since it advocates for various options to help deal with Samantha’s family issues. One such option is family systems therapy, which uses the strengths of the underlying relationships to overcome mental health problems (Diamond, Russon, & Levy, 2016). Family systems therapy is suitable to help Samantha overcome the dilemma of whether to stay in the marriage or leave. In this case, the well-being of the children would be considered a strength of their relationship and thus convince Samantha to stick in the marriage for the sake of the children.
With the option of narrative family therapy, the family therapy theory is suitable for Samantha’s family problems (Suddeath, Kerwin & Dugger, 2017). Narrative family therapy requires that each conflicting family member tells their own story to find the root cause of the current wrangles in the family. To help deal with the problems within Samantha’s family, narrative family therapy would encourage Samantha and her husband to honestly tell their own stories, which would help view the family problems more objectively than through a narrow lens.
Suppose we tend to think about the case of supportive family therapy. In that case, we can deduce that the family therapy theory is the way to go in dealing with Samantha’s family problems. Supportive family therapy entails establishing a safe milieu under which any family member can openly share their feelings and perceptions and seek support from other family members (Colapinto, 2019). For Samantha and her husband, supportive family therapy would be worth it to resolve their family problems. In this case, the husband would openly share his feelings and current thoughts that might have triggered his addiction to pornography.
Another reason why the theory of family therapy would be suitable is that it supports psychoeducation. Family therapists promote understanding different family conditions through self-help approaches, medications, and other treatment options (Colapinto, 2019). In our case, imparting knowledge on self-help approaches through family therapy will help Samantha’s husband recover from his addiction to pornography. Similarly, Samantha would consider the guided self-help approaches to be productive in enabling her to cope with frustrations and anger. The family members can hence comfortably function as a cohesive support system.
Some of the fundamental goals of family therapy are to solve family issues, comprehend all unique issues that families may encounter, and create a better home environment (Colapinto, 2019). All these goals are dire to Samantha’s family, thus making family therapy a unified theory for dealing with her family problems. For instance, Samantha desires to comprehend the issues with her husband’s life that may have triggered the sudden change to the extent of ignoring the children and, to the worst, indulging in pornography. Samantha wishes for a better home environment where she will always enjoy her marriage and have her children happy. Family therapy fosters change in close relationships and improves interactions among family members.
Family therapy is important for improving troubled relationships with spouses, children, or other family members (Gibbons et al., 2020). Therefore, it would be suitable to improve Samantha’s troubled relationship, where the husband no longer shows interest in her. Family therapy offers room to discuss the conflicts between parents and children, as Samantha’s parent ignores the children suggesting possible conflicts. The family therapy theory allows one to seek other kinds of interventions/treatment, especially where one has an addiction or mental illness. In our case, Samantha’s husband may require additional therapy or rehabilitation treatment to overcome his addiction to pornography. With family therapy, it would become possible for the entire Samantha family to attend family therapy sessions while the addicted husband participates in residential treatment. Also, it would be possible for Samantha and her children to subscribe to family therapy even if the husband subscribes to any other form.
Finally, family therapy would be suitable as it emerges as a possible intervention in dealing with pornography addiction. Technically, pornography addiction is regarded as a behavioral addiction that involves the compulsion to watch pornographic material that, in the end, would negatively impact the user’s life (Gibbons et al., 2020). While pornography is not considered a drug, its impacts on the brain are similar to those of addictive substances such as alcohol and drugs. Since it is considered a psychological addiction, family therapy can offer a conducive platform for treatment whereby the family therapist helps the victim to comprehend the underlying issues fueling the addiction. Samantha’s husband’s addiction to pornography is one of the critical problems affecting the family and could be effectively dealt with through family therapy. The husband had already admitted he had a problem and was ready to seek help. Family therapy would help him to understand why he engages in the behavior and resolves the underlying factors that may have triggered the addiction. The tremendous significance of family therapy in such cases of pornography addiction is that it will help reestablish trust, restore a healthy sexual relationship, and reduce shame and guilt Within Samantha’s family.
Conclusion.
Summarily, Samantha’s family is exposed to problems such as; the husband ignoring children, a conflicted marital relationship, and a husband addicted to pornography, among others. In this case, the family theory is suitable for dealing with problems. One reason family therapy is ideal in Samantha’s case is that it can be used as an intervention towards addiction to pornography and helps restore healthy sexual relationships and trust among all family members. While using a family therapy, it would be possible to easily integrate it with other forms of intervention that will help deal with the problem in the family.
References.
Colapinto, J. (2019). Structural family therapy. Encyclopedia of the couple and family therapy, 2820-2828. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_334.pdf
Dallos, R., & Draper, R. (2015). Ebook: An introduction to family therapy: Systemic theory and practice. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1skvEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=family+therapy&ots=KAY1kmXkjq&sig=AJ1uKmq6hzSkasUGAuwPvzSroWk
Diamond, G., Russon, J., & Levy, S. (2016). Attachment‐based family therapy: A review of the empirical support. Family Process, 55(3), 595-610. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12241
Gibbons, I., Bernards, J., Bean, R. A., Young, B., & Wolfgramm, M. (2020). Addressing problematic pornography use in adolescent/young adult males: a literature review and recommendations for family therapists. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 49(1), 57–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2020.1848481
Pinsof, W. M. (2014). Family therapy process research. In Handbook of family therapy (pp. 699–741). Taylor and Francis. https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/family-therapy-process-research
Suddeath, E. G., Kerwin, A. K., & Dugger, S. M. (2017). Narrative family therapy: Practical techniques for more effective work with couples and families. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 39(2), 116–131. https://doi.org/10.17744/mehc.39.2.03
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