Therapy Guide: Functional Family Traits

A therapist can help you improve your family functioning by teaching you how to communicate, pointing out weaknesses in the family structure, and giving you space to practice functional family traits.

If you would like to improve your family and learn more functional family traits, here is how to bring it up with a therapist:

• “My family hides problems. I want us to learn how to be more honest and work through problems.”
• “My mom refuses to apologize when she does something wrong. I know this isn’t helping our relationship.”
• “I wish my family was more reliable. I want to figure out how this is impacting me.”
• “I feel like I can’t be myself around my family and it makes it so hard to have a functional relationship.”
• “My parents still treat me like I’m a little kid. I want them to understand that I’m an adult now. It’s so hard to have a relationship with them.”