Christian Family Counseling

We can all remember how hard growing up was. Christian family counseling can help resolve issues stemming from behavior issues, social problems, educational hardships, emotional disorders, self-image disorders, and trauma. A trained counselor works with children and teenagers and determines how other family members may inadvertently be impacting or compounding the issues that the child or teen is facing.

At Culver City Christian Counseling, we can work together to the address concerns, promote inter-family communication and understanding, and foster a healthy, spiritual family environment where the child or teen can grow, learn, and mature. For the children or teenagers who need individualized attention, we may recommend Christian Counseling for children or Christian Counseling for teens.

Common Focuses of Christian Counseling for Families

Dynamics within the Parents’ Relationship

The strength of the relationship between husband and wife has a profound influence on children. Conflict with your spouse usually makes it hard or even impossible to keep peace at home and therefore affects the ability to be a good parent. The nature of the bond between husband and wife lays the foundation for the types of relationships that your children are going to create when they become adults.

By exploring how your parents have influenced your relationships as an adult, you may begin to see how your issues may have influenced your marriage, and even onto your children. Just by recognizing these patterns would be the first crucial step in ending harmful patterns.

Children best learn through observation and through examples. The greatest way to teach your children about strong relationships is by actually living out a healthy, nurturing, loving marriage.

If you are going through hardships in your marriage, you can benefit from attending marriage counseling. However, if you feel your issue is how your marriage is affecting your family as a whole, Christian family counseling may be a more suitable path.

Dynamics Between a Child the Parents

One of the most difficult things as a parent is the feeling that the child is isolating him- or herself and that the child’s behavior is reckless. Children who do not feel love and supported often suffer from various social and emotional issues, thus potentially leading to risky, abusive, and even self-destructing behaviors.

One main cause is the dynamic of a split family. In the USA, from the 1970’s to the 2010’s, the percentage of children growing up in two-parent families decreased from 85% to 69%. The breakdown of the traditional family unit resulted in disciplinary, educational, and social problems, and now children tend to experience an increase in depression, stress, and anxiety. Dealing with these issues together and doing all you can to keep your family intact can greatly help your child succeed. If you’re feeling like you’ve tried your hardest but you still feel a disconnect within your relationship with your child or if you are concerned about his or her behavior, a Christian counselor will find the reasons for the behaviors. Together, you will help them address their thoughts and emotions, and ultimately leading the family back to a Christ-centered life.

Dynamics of Nuclear Families and Extended Families

There are times when there’s conflict between members of your nuclear (immediate) family and members of your extended family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, in-laws can cause emotional distress, resulting in conflicts that affect your entire family. Sometimes they have expectations and demands that seem overbearing and unreasonable. Although they might mean well, they can feel like they are intruding on personal matters.

Because of unresolved issues with their own parents, some parents hesitate to let their children have relationships with their grandparents, which can cause distress to both grandparent and the child. Issues of trust and insecurity would come into play, creating more problems down the road. Ideally, you’d want a wide network of support, which can make things much smoother, especially for children.

Here at Culver City Christian Counseling, we can show you methods of communication with your extended family members in effective, productive, and healthy ways as well as how to set boundaries in regard to controlling and overbearing extended family members.

Loss and Grief Counseling

Almost nothing can upset the family more than the loss of a loved one. We are here to offer help and counseling for a loss of any family members, loss of a close family friend, or a loss of a family pet. These losses are extremely heartbreaking and impact each family member in different ways. Every individual deals with grief differently.

Young children who have little concept of death can experience feelings of confusion, fear, and sadness. Parents who have lost a loved one might feel so much grief and guilt that they may not be able to take care of their children or themselves. Culver City Christian Counselors offer loving support to those dealing with grief. Although it may seem hopeless and dark now, we can help your family recover and grow closer as a family through faith, acceptance, cherishing and the memory of your loved one.

Transitions

Major life changes, such as moving, having more children, caring for sick or elderly family members, career changes, unexpected unemployment, can pose serious challenges for each family member. Christian counseling for families offers the chance for all of the family members to express their viewpoints and emotions and talk about how the transition is affecting them and impacting their relationships with other members of the family. We can explore methods for overcoming these obstacles, which includes possibly making compromises and new ways to adjust to the change.

Health-Related Issues

When a family member is struggling with an illness, the whole family struggles as well. If a loved one is suffering from a terminal illness, disability, or any form of trauma, each family member is affected in different but profound ways. Christian counseling for families can help your family identify the ways that the health condition is affecting the family dynamics as well as the emotional and physical feeling of the patient.

Physical illnesses can cause other problems including marital issues, depression, and spiritual conflicts. It is difficult to not have any control over certain things including your future and that of your family members. Beliefs and feelings about death also tend to surface for people who suffer through health conditions.

In order to deal with health-related problems, it is important to try your hardest to still enjoy family interactions and life despite any physical limitations. Using faith to find peace is very hard, but counseling can help the family use faith to find peace. Improving the quality of life for everyone involved is key to counseling as well as improving communication between members of the family and healthcare providers.

One of the hardest parts of having a chronic or terminal illness is acceptance, and counseling can help you and your family enjoy time together as well as make necessary changes. Culver City Christian Counselors can help you find comfort in Jesus and support one another through emotional healing.

Expressing Faith in the Family

The way Christians express their faith and develop spiritually is important to how they build a Christ-filled life and family. Sharing beliefs within a family offers the ability to pray, worship, and study the Bible together. Shared values can bring peace and functionality, and families who worship together can find hope and guidance through God’s word.

Sometimes, though, family members hold different beliefs and this can lead to tension, frustration, and disagreements. Christian counseling for families, however, can work towards helping all families learn better communication skills that they can use to express their religious beliefs and work towards understanding and respecting each other’s faith.

Christian counseling for families aims to give all family members the opportunity to speak and be respected despite a difference in beliefs. Culver City Christian Counselors will work with you to explore prayer and how you can shift your family dynamic so that God’s will is fulfilled in your life as well as your family members’ lives.

Addiction

Addiction is a widely referenced struggle that can have a severe impact on a family because it can affect each family member emotionally, financially, and physically. Families are important to an addict’s healing and working together can help productively change family dynamics. Our counselors will teach you about addiction, which will help you provide support for the addict while still holding him or her accountable. Counseling aims to help family members support each other and improve how effective the addiction treatment is.

When someone is suffering from an addition, Christian counseling for families can be very useful. Many different addictions can be treated, including drug and alcohol abuse, food addiction, or sex and pornography addictions. Your counselor at Culver City Christian Counselors will provide you with support and faith-based counseling that will benefit all members of the family. Additionally, addicts of all types (those with a sex or porn addiction, chemical dependency, eating disorders, etc.) may benefit from treatment through individual Christian counseling.