Family Therapy: Restoring Cohesion through Validation and Compromise

September 18, 2020 Mark Wilhelm

“Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” — Michael J. Fox

Since the beginnings of human history, the family has always been our most vital social unit. Across all times and civilizations, people have always developed rules and customs for how to act within a family, which indicates the universal importance of this closest form on human connection. As Cummins therapist Melanie Gibbs puts it, “Our culture is really based on family systems. I don’t know of any culture where families are not the basis of what holds that culture together and drives it.”

Because families are our most fundamental social groups, it’s extremely important for our mental and emotional health that our family unit is cohesive. Generally speaking, a cohesive family is one in which the members live together harmoniously and each person is free to grow and express themselves as individuals. However, some amount of conflict within a family is virtually unavoidable.

Conflict can occur between two people anytime their needs or desires interfere with each other’s. Within families, this may be especially likely during periods of change and transition, such as when children are born or begin schooling, when a parent loses a job or begins a new one, when the family moves to a new geographic location, or when the parents become separated or divorced. When conflict arises, it is in everyone’s best interest to find a resolution that maintains or restores family cohesion as fully as possible.

Sometimes families need help working through conflict and returning to cohesive functioning. This is both understandable and normal; in fact, more than half of the work we do at Cummins Behavioral Health involves children and families. Melanie Gibbs, LCSW, has been a provider of behavioral health therapy for over 20 years, and she has helped many families heal from conflict during that time. In this blog post, Melanie explains how therapy can help a family overcome internal conflicts using the key principles of validation and compromise.

Mistrust: The Result of Communication Breakdown

As we said above, conflict usually arises between two people when the things one person wants interfere with the things the other person wants. It’s often possible for the two parties to resolve their conflict if they listen to each other’s perspectives and agree on a mutually acceptable compromise. When a conflict escalates, it’s typically due to a breakdown of respectful communication between the individuals in dispute.

This is usually the stage of conflict a family has reached when they choose to begin therapy. “Typically, feelings are very hurt, and people have been dealing with that hurt by either withdrawing or attacking back, typically with words,” Melanie explains. “Over time, that starts to erode feelings of trust and safety within the family. Trust diminishes, trust diminishes, trust diminishes, until there’s really no communication and no trust.”

If it is not addressed, this lack of trust will ultimately drive a family apart. The goal of therapy is to rebuild trust within the family, and the first step toward rebuilding trust is reestablishing constructive communication. “My job is to get people to hear each other—and to keep hearing each other until the message sent is the message received,” Melanie says.

In therapy, this is primarily achieved by validating the feelings and desires of each family member, as Melanie explains:

“I want each person in the room to tell me their perception of the story that brought them to therapy. What do they think is going on? How do they see it? I’ve been doing therapy for 20 years, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever had a conversation with anyone where I could not find some validity in what they were saying and how they were seeing it. A person’s backstory influences how they see things and what they need, so if you have four people in a room and everyone tells their story one by one, it’s easy to say, ‘Yes, I understand you because of this and this. This is the way this feels to you, and this is what’s going on in your mind.’ Everyone can feel heard and respected, and they can still come together to solve the problem.”

Dismantling the Fallacy of “Right and Wrong”

When two people are engaged in a conflict, it’s only natural for each person to believe that they are right and the other person is wrong. However, taking the time to listen to each person’s perspective helps us realize that this is not true. “People often anticipate that there’s going to be a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong,’ and they worry they’re going to be in the wrong and their feelings are going to be invalidated. But that’s not what family work is,” Melanie says. “It’s not my job to call out right and wrong. There is no right and wrong.”

To accept that neither person is right or wrong means two things: first, that each person has behaved reasonably given their point of view, and second, that each person may have unintentionally contributed to the problem. As Melanie explains, this is easier for people to do if they believe their own perspective is being taken into consideration:

“Until someone feels heard, they can’t be open to hearing anyone else. Their mind is full of everything they need to say. So before you can ask people to change, and before you can ask them how they think they’ve contributed to the problem, you have to hear their feelings, their perceptions, their experience, their hopes, and you have to say, ‘OK, I hear you. I see that these particular things are very important to you, and I understand why they’re important to you, and we’re going to remember that.’ It’s called ‘creating safety.’ You have to create emotional safety so people can begin to relax and be more open to hearing other people.“

In the case of family therapy, everyone must ultimately must work together to find an acceptable compromise that will keep the family together. “One of the premises that I promote in couples or families work is: instead of solving a problem in terms of who’s right and who’s wrong, how do you solve a problem in a way that everyone can most live with?” Melanie says. “What’s the solution that everyone can genuinely be the most on-board with? That’s the solution you want to go with, because in the end, holding the family system together in a way that people can feel seen, honored, respected and safe is much more important than the particular decision you make.”

Some amount of conflict within a family is normal, but conflict that escalates and goes unresolved can seriously threaten family cohesion. Family therapy can help to restore harmony by validating the thoughts and feelings of each person and working to find a compromise that everyone in the family can live with.

At Cummins Behavioral Health, we are committed to promoting healthy families and family resiliency among our consumers. If you are experiencing dysfunction in your family and think that family therapy might be right for you, please give us a call at (888) 714-1927 to discuss your options and schedule an appointment!

Looking for more services and interventions that can help strengthen family functioning? You might like our blog posts on wraparound services and Conscious Discipline below!

Mental Health IOT: Meeting the Need for Intensive Outpatient Therapy in Indiana

September 4, 2020 Mark Wilhelm

Just as no two individuals are the same, so too are everyone’s behavioral health needs unique. Even when two people suffer from the same mental illness—such as depression, anxiety or schizophrenia—the severity of their condition can vary greatly. Depending on the individual, a mental health issue could be a minor inconvenience in their life or a debilitating condition that impairs their day-to-day functioning.

When a person seeks treatment to help manage a mental illness, the level of care they receive should match the severity of their needs. For consumers with lesser needs, standard outpatient therapy (which typically consists of 30-minute to one-hour sessions no more than once or twice a week) is often sufficient to help them with their challenges. On the other hand, consumers who are experiencing a period of extreme need may be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for inpatient care. But what if a person’s needs are somewhere in between—too great for outpatient care to fully address, but not severe enough to warrant hospitalization?

Consumers who struggle with substance use disorder have the option of Intensive Outpatient Treatment (or IOT) if they fall within this category. However, consumers with other mental health challenges have not traditionally had access to this level of care, which is a gap that Sarah Gunther of KEY Consumer Organization has been passionate about filling. Gunther explains,

“I am on the Cummins Consumer Advisory Board, where I’m able to give some direction on ways that Cummins can improve. Every time we’ve had a conversation about substance use IOT, I’ve advocated for general mental health IOT as well. I thought it could help a lot of people as a step between purely outpatient and inpatient treatment. Not everyone benefits from hospitalization, which can actually be harmful for some people, but they might benefit from more intensive help than they get with regular outpatient care.”

At the suggestions of Gunther and other advocates, Cummins Behavioral Health has begun providing Intensive Outpatient Treatment for consumers with challenges not related to substance use disorder. We believe this program will help more people get the right kind of help for their behavioral health challenges, right when they need it. In this blog post, IOT group facilitator Christina Kerns explains who the program benefits, how it works, and exactly what it does help individuals with greater mental health struggles.

MHIOT: How It Works and Who It Can Help

Mental health IOT (or MHIOT) is a relatively simple program in practice, though it does require a large time commitment from consumers. Therapy is administered in a group setting, with group members meeting three days a week for three hours each day. During sessions, group members discuss whatever mental health difficulties they’re experiencing, provide input and communal support for each other, and learn life skills that can help them through their struggles.

As the group facilitator, Christina’s primary job is to ensure that the session runs smoothly. “I help keep the discussion moving,” she says. “I’m there to give feedback on any issues, help group members reach their treatment goals, and assist them in identifying common themes with one another so they can work together and help each other heal and grow. It’s so important because group members learn how to problem solve and cope with their challenges together.”

As mentioned above, the program is ideal for people whose needs are too great for standard outpatient treatment but not severe enough for inpatient treatment. In practice, many consumers are referred to MHIOT as a means of preventing hospitalization or as follow-up care after a stay in the hospital. “Our hope is to provide consumers with additional services so that we can help prevent crisis situations and hospitalizations from occurring,” Christina explains. “And if anyone has been hospitalized within the last month, we like to check and see if our group would be appropriate as a step-down for them.”

Although it has only been running since the end of June, Christina reports that many consumers of MHIOT have responded favorably to the program. It’s her opinion that the group format has been especially beneficial for helping members achieve their mental health goals. “The mental health IOT group is extremely important to Cummins, because so many individuals within our communities who are trying to manage a mental illness do not have access to support groups,” Christina says. “Since we’ve started this group, many of our consumers have found it helpful for their recovery to share their experiences in a safe and confidential setting, which allows them to gain hope and develop supportive relationships with one another.”

What Happens During a Typical MHIOT Session

We’ve explained the underlying principles of mental health IOT, but what exactly do these principles look like in practice? How do group members work toward their mental health goals, and what does Christina do to guide each session? What should someone expect the first time they attend a group?

Like many group therapy sessions, every MHIOT meeting begins with introductions. “We have five basic questions that everyone answers,” Christina explains. “They tell us their name, how they’re feeling that day, any court issues they’re willing to discuss, what skills they’ve used since the last session, and whether they’re having any suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, or thoughts of self-harm.” The group works through each member’s answers one by one, providing emotional support and guidance as needed.

After introductions, Christina leads the group in a discussion of their recovery values, including a daily reading to help members understand and apply each value. Once this is done, the group typically moves on to a lesson on mindfulness. “We teach the ‘wise mind,’ which is about not getting stuck in our emotional mind or our rational mind, but mixing the two together,” Christina says. “A lot of our members had no idea whether they tended to react with their emotional mind or their rational mind, nor did they know how to identify what feelings they’re feeling in the moment. It’s really a process that we have to teach ourselves.”

Finally, each session ends with training and discussion on a life skill that can help group members achieve their mental health goals. These skills are taken from dialectical behavior therapy (or DBT), a type of psychological therapy that emphasizes validation and acceptance. According to Christina,

“We chose dialectical behavior therapy because it’s the basis for skills training, and it’s been shown to help an array of diagnoses—especially serious mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and personality disorders. There are three bases that I teach from: on Monday, we focus on distress tolerance skills; on Wednesday, we focus on interpersonal effectiveness skills; and on Friday, we focus on emotional regulation skills. So the group is learning how to recognize and identify their emotions, how to interact with other people, and how to use these skills to improve their mental health and wellness.”

We are excited to now be offering Mental Health Intensive Outpatient Treatment to consumers who need additional support with non-addiction-related behavioral health problems! If you are a Cummins consumer and you believe MHIOT could be a good fit for your needs, we encourage you to discuss it with your care provider.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Sarah Gunther and KEY Consumer Organization for helping us continue to provide the best behavioral health care possible for our consumers. If you would like to learn more about KEY, you can visit their website at KEYConsumer.org, or call their mental health “warmline” at 800-933-5397 if you need a sympathetic ear to discuss your mental health challenges with.