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Unit 17 Middle Phase

1. What are short-term goals? Give examples.

Short term goals refer to the goals that are more immediate and need to be achieved in order to address the larger goals. Some of the short-term goals include:

• Ensuring that both partners participate equally in the session,
• Help discussions on their emotional experiences,
• Altering communication between members to reduce conflicts and increase positive communication, 
• Increasing their problem solving capacity, 
• Ensuring the well-being of the family members and reducing the stress experienced, and 
• Avoid blaming and decrease excalation of fights in the family. 

2. State a few long-term goals of family therapy.

Long-term goals of family therapy may include : 

i) Increasing intimacy between couple, 

ii) Increasing cohensiveness, 

iii) Making the hierarchies more age appropriate, 

iv) Encouraging forgiveness in the relationship, 

v) Building trust between family members, 

vi) Creating healthier subsystem boundaries, and 

vii) Creating healthier external boundaries, making families self reliant for negotiating future events. 

3. What are the tasks of the middle phase?

The middle phase of therapy is the intervention phase. The main tasks of this phase include:

• Setting of therapy goals: This involves defining what the family wants to achieve through therapy, and is ideally a collaborative effort between the family and the therapist.
• Employing various therapy techniques: This involves using specific interventions and strategies to address the therapy goals. Techniques may be drawn from various schools of family therapy and are often integrated to best meet the needs of the family.

4. What are the types of goals for middle phase?

In the middle phase, goals are typically divided into two types:

• Short-term goals: These are more immediate and specific, and are necessary steps toward achieving larger goals. They might include improving communication, building trust, or creating clearer boundaries.
• Long-term goals: These are the broader outcomes that the family hopes to achieve through therapy. These might involve resolving long-standing conflicts, improving overall family functioning, or enabling the family to manage future challenges independently.

5. What are the principles of communication skills training?

The principles of communication skills training revolve around helping family members to interact more effectively and constructively. Some key principles include:

• Active Listening: Encouraging family members to truly listen to each other, understand perspectives, and avoid interrupting.
• Clear and direct communication: Promoting clear, direct expression of thoughts and feelings, avoiding vagueness or passive aggression.
• Respectful communication: Establishing respectful and empathic communication, even when disagreements occur.
• "I" statements: Teaching family members to express their feelings and needs using "I" statements.
• Non-verbal cues: Becoming more aware of and improving non-verbal communication, like body language and tone of voice.

6. List some of the techniques that can be used to bring about a change in maladaptive emotions.

There are many techniques that can be used to help families manage maladaptive emotions. Some include:

• Emotion focused techniques: Therapists help the family identify underlying fears, feelings, and insecurities that contribute to emotional distress.
• Restructuring techniques: Therapists help families to identify and challenge negative thought patterns.
• Experiential awareness techniques: Therapists use exercises and activities to help family members become more aware of their emotional experiences and learn to express them in healthy ways.
• Relaxation methods: These techniques can be taught to help family members manage stress and anxiety in the moment, these include: progressive muscle relaxation, breathing techniques, meditation, guided imagery, and hypnosis.

Important Points

• Therapist neutrality is one of the biggest challenges to family therapy.
• Resistance to family therapy does affects the family therapy process.
• The identification of underlying fears, emotions, feelings, insecurities and needs in a relationship is an important technique of emotion focused school of therapy.