Why Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT)?

1. MFTs are specially trained: Marriage and family therapists are the only behavioral health professionals required to get specialized training and education in working with couples and families. Psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, professional counselors, and clinical social workers can all obtain their licenses without ever having experience conducting therapy with a couple or family. Before obtaining a license in the field, MFTs in Arizona are required to have taken classes pertaining to working with both couples and families and to have had conducted supervised hours of therapy with couples and families. Helping you create and maintain a healthy relationship with your partner and family is both our expertise and our joy.
2. MFTs look at the whole picture: MFTs do not consider problems to be isolated to the individual. Rather, we take into account the fact that individual problems affect the whole family and that family problems affect each individual member. MFTs see the family as more than a collection of people. Instead, it is an organized network of interlocking relationships that fit together to function as a whole. It is our goal to look at the whole puzzle and the way it fits together, rather than at a single piece of it, in order to provide clients with the most comprehensive therapeutic services available and best possible outcomes.
3. MFTs exercise neutrality in therapy: Rather than taking the side of one individual in a couple or family system, MFTs see the perspectives and goals of each member as equally valid and valuable. When looking at the source of a problem, we likewise place no blame on any individual in the family or couple system. Instead, we look at the cyclical patterns between people, rather than within them, that serve to maintain problems.
4. MFTs view change with great hope: MFTs believe that individuals and families in crisis are stuck—not sick. We view your problems as transitional rather than innate and believe it is our job simply to help you and your relationship adjust to and prepare for bumps along the road. We believe that families and individuals can be the creators of their own experiences rather than the recipients of them, thus making change both accessible now and sustainable over time.