Questions to Ask in Family Therapy
Questions for a family in therapy together, at the start or some sessions in. The first few are for the therapist, covering format, confidentiality, and how progress gets reviewed. Most of the rest are questions to bring into the room, and a few later ones go back to the therapist.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
How does family therapy work, week to week?
Why ask it
Knowing the format lowers the anxiety that stops families returning for a second session. Ask about session length, who speaks first, and whether the therapist directs the conversation or lets it run.
Who do you need in the room, and what happens if someone won't come?
Why ask it
Attendance is a common early obstacle. Many therapists will work with whoever attends, and knowing that in advance stops one reluctant person holding up the whole family.
How long do families usually work with you before anything shifts?
Why ask it
Answers vary by approach, and an honest one includes uncertainty. What matters is whether they will review progress with you at a set point rather than continuing indefinitely.
What's confidential between you and each of us, and what gets shared with everyone?
Why ask it
The rules differ between family and individual work, and misunderstanding them causes real harm. Ask specifically what happens to something disclosed in a one-to-one session.
How will we know whether this is working?
Why ask it
Ask for observable changes rather than feelings: fewer shouted arguments, one meal eaten together, a teenager leaving their room. Vague measures make progress impossible to distinguish from fatigue.
What do you need from us between sessions?
Why ask it
Some approaches set tasks at home and others deliberately do not. Knowing which lets you commit realistically instead of quietly failing at homework nobody explained.
What happens if one of us doesn't want to be here?
Why ask it
Reluctance is normal and usually protective. Naming it in the first session, rather than performing enthusiasm, tends to lower the temperature for everyone.
Can any of us talk to you without the whole family present?
Why ask it
Individual sessions alongside family work are common but not automatic. Asking early avoids requesting one later at a moment when it looks like a manoeuvre.
What do you think each of us finds hardest to say in this room?
Why ask it
Asking the therapist rather than each other keeps this from becoming an accusation. It puts the difficult material on the table without anyone having to volunteer first.
When did it start feeling like this between us?
Why ask it
Families often disagree about when things changed, and the disagreement is the useful part. One person may date it to an event that nobody else registered at the time.
What do you each think I don't understand about you?
Why ask it
This invites correction rather than defence. Expect answers about being cast as the difficult one, the reliable one, or the child assumed to need nothing.
When an argument starts, what does each of us do, and who moves first?
Why ask it
Arguments follow a sequence, and the sequence is easier to change than the subject. Ask who raises their voice first, who leaves the room, and who follows them.
What are we not talking about?
Why ask it
The unspoken subject is usually known to everyone: money, illness, drinking, or a family member never mentioned. Asking it in a supported setting is much of the reason for being there.
What did each of us learn about conflict growing up?
Why ask it
Everyone brings a template from their own childhood: shouting, silence, or fast repair. Naming those explains a great deal of the mismatch without assigning blame to anyone present.
What do you need from me that you've stopped asking for?
Why ask it
Abandoned requests reveal more than current complaints. When someone stops asking, they have usually concluded that asking does not work, which is a harder position to reverse.
What do you think I'm blaming you for?
Why ask it
This surfaces attributed blame, which is often heavier than anything anyone actually said. People regularly discover they have been blamed for something they never intended.
What would you like to hear me take responsibility for?
Why ask it
Offering responsibility rather than demanding it changes the direction of a session. Specificity matters, because a general apology tends to land as evasion.
What would an ordinary Tuesday evening look like if this were better?
Why ask it
A concrete picture is easier to work toward than harmony in the abstract. It also tends to reveal how modest people's real hopes are, which is encouraging for everyone.
What is each of us willing to change this week, specifically?
Why ask it
Sessions can produce insight and no change unless someone names an action. Small and specific works better than sincere and broad.
What do you want me to know that you've never said out loud?
Why ask it
Keep this until the room feels safe enough to hold the answer. What comes out is often the reason the family came, and it rarely arrives in the first session.
Are we all here for the same reason?
Why ask it
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.
What would each of us like to be different in six months?
Why ask it
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.
What do I do that makes it harder for you to talk to me?
Why ask it
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.
When did you last feel like I was on your side?
Why ask it
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.
What do you think I think of you?
Why ask it
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.
What am I like to live with?
Why ask it
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.
Who in this family do you worry about?
Why ask it
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.
What was that like for you when it happened?
Why ask it
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.
What did you need from us then that you did not get?
Why ask it
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.
What do we do well as a family?
Why ask it
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.
If nothing changes, what do you think happens to us?
Why ask it
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.
What patterns are you seeing that we cannot?
Why ask it
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.
What should we not try at home yet?
Why ask it
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.
Is there anything anyone wants to say before we stop?
Why ask it
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.
Before and during family therapy
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to use these
- The first nine are addressed to the therapist, and so are a few later ones: whether you are all there for the same reason, what patterns the therapist is seeing, and what not to try at home yet. The rest are for the room, and work better introduced one at a time with the therapist's help than read out as a list.
- Bring one question you genuinely want answered rather than a list you want covered. Sessions are short, and the important material takes time to reach.
- Write down what you hope changes before the first session. It is easy to lose the original aim once weekly conversation gets going.
What tends to help in the room
- Speak about your own experience rather than the other person's motives. What you did and what you felt is harder to argue with.
- Let the therapist manage the turn-taking. Families arrive with a habitual order of speaking, and interrupting that order is much of the work.
- Expect early sessions to feel worse before they feel better. Material avoided for years tends to surface first.
- Allow silence. Filling it usually means the person who most needs to speak does not get to.
What tends not to help
- Presenting evidence. This is not a hearing, and building a case entrenches everybody.
- Bringing a diagnosis for another family member.
- Repeating something said in session as ammunition afterwards, which is the fastest way to end anyone's willingness to be honest.
- Treating one person as the problem to be fixed. Where that framing holds, the work usually stalls.
Practical matters worth checking
- Cost per session, cancellation terms, and whether any part is covered by insurance or a public service.
- The therapist's training, and whether they are registered with a professional body.
- What happens if the therapist thinks one family member needs separate individual support.
- If there is violence, abuse, or fear of someone who would be in the room, say so to the therapist privately before joint sessions begin. Joint work is not appropriate in those circumstances, and a competent therapist will tell you the same.