Any experience of/advice about family therapy?

[Wherevernext]

Hello
Keen to hear experience of family therapy, good or bad.

We have LOTS of issues, with decades of back story, that have really come to a horrible messy head recently (adoption, mental health issues, financial stuff, alcohol, parent-child, sibling-sibling, even managing to throw in some good old fashioned British class war).

I’ve been trying to mediate for a couple of years but while I’m not one of the main protagonists I can’t really be objective about any of it, because it’s all very distressing and emotional for me too. And to be honest my efforts haven’t worked.

I’m an eternal optimist however and wondering whether family therapy could help. No idea if I could persuade those involved to try it, and I’m sure it must depend so much on the individual therapist. But I’d be really interested to hear from people who’ve tried.

If we don’t make some progress, I think we’re just going to end up with various configurations of NC, and people carrying around lots of bitterness for decades to come. And I can’t really bear the thought of that.

Thanks in advance for any advice. x

By the way, just to clarify, we’re all adults, and mostly over 40. No kids involved.

Bumping myself to a more sociable time of day... I appreciate this is possibly a bit of a niche request, however!

Why have you felt any need to fix this situation that is not of your making or causing?. That is the question you really do need to ask yourself here. Why have you at all taken this awful sounding role upon yourself; why have you made yourself responsible for these other people?. Its not your fault this has happened.

The road to hell is after all paved with good intentions and what you have tried has not worked. Nor will family therapy; none of these people seem at all willing to go and that never works either in families that are inherently dysfunctional with dysfunction going back generations. You need to raise your boundaries a lot higher and let them go.

Thanks for replying @Atilla. The main protagonists are my mum and my sister, which perhaps explains a bit why I have been so enmeshed. I love them both very much and it's horrible to see how much distress they seem to have managed to cause each other (for so many reasons that seem so avoidable too). Obviously some of my attempts to help have been self interested, in that I'd like us all to play happy families again. And I am perhaps being too optimistic in assuming that's what missing is an objective arbiter (which I am definitely not). It may well be that I just need to step away as you say, and leave them to their path of mutually assured destruction... Thanks for your thoughts.

The association for family therapy isn't the governing body. They will have a list of qualified people in your area. All are different so maybe worth giving a couple a call and putting what you've written to them to see if they think it will help...as previous poster said they need to be willing to go.

is not isnt!

Thanks @Digestive28