Family Life Skills � Men's and Women's Groups

(classes are separate for men & women)

Many of the personal problems we face arise from family situations. Relationships between husband and wife, partners or other family members can be a great source of support when they are working well and a great source of distress when they are not. The stresses and strains of everyday life, together with the tensions that each member may contribute, can put families under immense pressure. With qualified and experienced facilitators and psychotherapists on our team, this programme helps by changing the equilibrium. Families can explore their difficulties and ways to overcome them through Impact Skills. Together, the aim is to understand and avoid unhelpful and potentially destructive patters of behaviour and develop a new balance in relating.

Family Life Skills is based on the belief that once they have the information, individuals are able to use their choices to break damaging cycles of relating. These groups cover:

• What is emotional arrest, its causes and the effect on relationships?
• How core beliefs are constructed and form the foundation for our thoughts, actions and experiences
• How does the unconscious mind drive behaviour?
• Identifying abusive cycles in relationships.
• The effect of fear of abandonment in men and in women
• What causes fear of intimacy and subsequent compensatory behaviour in men and in women?
• Anger management and identifying triggers to aggression
• Shame and its affects and how shame maintains "reactive behaviours" (abuse, addictions, self-destructive behaviours, poor relationships).

The curriculum

This eighteen-week programme was developed to provide help and education to families and individuals in need of support in their relationships. For many clients, this group is an ideal introduction to the experience of counselling. Emphasis is placed upon developing an understanding of the roots of behaviour that causes pain and difficulty in relationships.

Through the Family Life Skills curriculum, individuals and couples begin to understand what underlying beliefs and representations are driving their behaviour and can start to separate from distorted models of expressing anger and intimacy. The groups discuss the effect of their fears of abandonment and the impact of inappropriate bonding with their parents that cause fear of intimacy and subsequent compensatory behaviours. The curriculum helps clients learn new habits of thinking and behaving and focuses on core beliefs about anger, anger management, sexuality and emotional bonding. The curriculum based upon strong research and it works. Family Life Skills groups have successfully reduced breakdown, abuse and other problems as well as promoting the education and well-being of over 4000 individuals and families.