Questions to Ask During Family Therapy
Questions for a family sitting in the room together, covering what to ask each other while there is someone there to help, what to ask the therapist about how the work is going, and how to carry a session home without it turning into another argument.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What would each of us like to be different in six months?
Everyone answers separately and out loud, often for the first time. Families arrive assuming they share a goal, and hearing that one person wants less conflict while another wants an apology is usually the most useful surprise of a first session.
- 2
What do you wish I understood that I clearly do not?
The phrasing invites the other person to teach rather than to accuse, which changes what comes back. Asking it of a specific family member rather than the room makes it much harder to answer with a generality.
- 3
What happens in our house in the ten minutes before an argument starts?
This moves the conversation from cause to sequence. Families argue endlessly about who is to blame and get nowhere, while a described sequence is something a therapist can actually interrupt at a specific point.
- 4
What do I do that makes it harder for you to talk to me?
The value is not in the answer but in whether you can receive it without defending yourself, which is the real exercise. Sitting through the reply in silence is the part that the presence of a therapist makes possible.
- 5
When did you last feel like I was on your side?
It asks for a good moment rather than a grievance, and people answer it with far more specificity than they bring to complaints. It also gives everyone in the room a concrete example of what already works.
- 6
What are we not allowed to talk about in this family?
Every family has a list, and naming an item does not commit anyone to discussing it today. Watch who looks at whom before answering, because that tells you who has been protecting the silence.
- 7
Who in this family do you worry about?
This often reveals that the person everyone treats as the problem is themselves worried about someone else. It also lets a child say something about a parent that they would never volunteer as a complaint.
- 8
What was that like for you when it happened?
Asked about a specific shared event: an illness, a move, a separation, a bad year. Families almost never compare their versions of the same event, and the differences explain a great deal of what came afterwards.
- 9
What did you need from us then that you did not get?
The past tense makes it answerable. A present-tense demand puts people on the defensive, while the same request about something years old can be heard, acknowledged, and sometimes still met.
- 10
What do you think I think of you?
The answers are almost always harsher than the truth, and correcting them takes about thirty seconds and lasts for years. It is one of the few questions in family work with a quick and durable payoff.
- 11
What rule did you grow up with that you brought here without deciding to?
Aimed at the parents, and it moves the conversation up a generation, which lowers the temperature considerably. Children often hear a parent explain something about themselves that reframes years of household rules.
- 12
What am I like to live with?
Wide open, and people answer it. It works particularly well from a parent to a teenager, because it reverses the usual direction of assessment in the house and it is very hard to hear it as a trap.
- 13
Is there something you have been carrying on your own?
This is permission rather than interrogation, so it needs a long silence afterwards. If nobody speaks, the question has still been asked and it often gets answered privately in the days that follow.
- 14
What do we do well as a family?
Easy to skip and worth protecting time for, because therapy that only catalogues problems makes families dread the appointment. It also tends to produce the only thing anyone quotes back at home during the week.
- 15
What patterns are you seeing that we cannot?
Asked directly to the therapist, and it is the whole reason for having a third person in the room. Many families wait to be told and never ask, so the observation stays in the therapist's notes rather than in the conversation.
- 16
Are we all here for the same reason?
Asked to the therapist, this surfaces the family member who came because they were made to. Naming that openly usually reduces the resistance more than another week of trying to persuade them.
- 17
What would progress look like, and how would we know?
Family therapy drifts when the goal stays vague. Ask for observable markers, such as fewer nights where someone eats alone or an argument that ends within an hour, so you can tell improvement from a good week.
- 18
What should we not try at home yet?
As useful as any homework and rarely offered unprompted. Some conversations go badly without support in the room, and knowing which topic to leave for the session prevents a week of damage between appointments.
- 19
Is there anything anyone wants to say before we stop?
Asked in the last few minutes, this catches the thing somebody has been building up to all hour. Sessions have a rhythm where the hardest sentence arrives just as people start reaching for their coats.
- 20
If nothing changes, what do you think happens to us?
Heavy, and best asked once the family can hold it rather than in a first session. Answers are usually more honest than anyone expects, and they clarify what each person actually thinks is at stake.
Working as a family in the room
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
What makes sessions work
What makes sessions work
Ask one person, not the room
Questions addressed to everyone get answered by whoever talks most, which is usually the person the session is least about. Naming who you are asking, and then waiting, changes who speaks in a family session more than any other single habit.
Answer for yourself only
Speaking on behalf of a quieter family member is usually meant kindly and always removes their turn. If someone struggles to find words, the therapist is there for exactly that, and the silence is doing more work than a translation would.
Let the therapist hold the difficult part
The point of a third person is that hard subjects can be raised with someone present who can slow them down. Saving the real topic for the car home wastes the hour and puts the conversation somewhere with no brakes.
Expect the first sessions to feel worse
Things that have been unsaid for years get said, and the week after can be tense. Agreeing in advance that this is normal keeps a family from quitting at the point where the work has just started.
If someone does not want to be there
If someone does not want to be there
- Say plainly that you know they were pressured to come, rather than pretending it was a joint decision.
- Ask them what would make an hour here worth their time, and take the answer seriously even if it is small.
- Agree a number of sessions rather than an open commitment, so there is a defined end they can count down to.
- Let them be quiet. A person who attends and says little is still hearing the session, and being pressed to perform usually ends attendance.
- Ask the therapist whether individual time for that person alongside the family work is an option.
- Notice whether the reluctance is about therapy or about a specific person in the room, since those need different responses.
Between sessions
Between sessions
- 1Agree that nothing said in the room gets used as ammunition at home. Without that, families stop being honest by the third session.
- 2Pick one thing to try, not five. A single change that survives the week is worth more than a list that collapses by Tuesday.
- 3Write down the question you wanted to ask and did not, and bring it next time rather than letting it go.
- 4Avoid post-mortems in the car. Most families need an hour before they can discuss what just happened without restarting it.
- 5If a session lands badly for one person, tell the therapist at the start of the next one rather than absorbing it.
- 6Keep going for long enough to judge. Deciding after two sessions is usually deciding about the discomfort rather than about the therapy.