Families
Your own family is the most important enterprise you must take care of
The ever-demanding rhythm of modern life can make us leave behind so many important things. Family members find it quite difficult to have true and deep encounter moments. Parents usually are immersed in their to-do tasks and children are “inside the cave” of their room or “in the jungle” of the street with their friends. Generally, we are all kidnapped by our electronic devices. We are so close, yet so disconnected.
I help by building bonds, bonds that build. That is why I have named these activities “Building Vincles (bonds in Catalan language)”. Generally, moments and spaces of quality communication do not fall spontaneously from the sky but must be generated.
Maybe you are going through a special difficulty (lack of communication, emotional withdrawal, heartful offenses and resentments, problems with grades in school, important disagreements, fights regarding parenthood and children limits, punishments, etc.), or maybe everything apparently is flowing in a relative and calm way. Whether they find themselves in one situation or another, some families want to spend a day to reconnect and tighten their bonds.
My work with families, focused on strengthening their emotional bonds, is approached in two possible ways:
- Private work with a family:
- Group workshops with several families:
1. Private work with a family:
As an outsider facilitator of the family system, as the workshops progresses, I gradually generate, through entertaining dynamics, a space of empathy, active listening, and a serene climate of absolute trust where deep, endearing conversations can take place, from the heart, aimed at getting to know and discovering each other even more, as well as feeling understood. The workshop will strengthen noticeably the affective bond in the family and will become a perfect platform where different family situations can be faced with love.
How does it work?
- A day of family get-together/work, from 10:00am to 8:00pm approximately, without mobile phones or electronic devices that divert our attention. Splitting the workshop in two or more sessions is also possible, previous analysis with the family members.
- Essential condition: whoever participates in the workshop must be willing to be there. No one can be forced to take part in it.
- 1st Diagnosis: prior to the workshop, I conduct an individual and private interview with each of the family members who are going to take part in the get together. Each one’s viewpoint is extremely important.
- 2nd Design: these interviews help me to better understand the inner family dynamics, the strengths, and the areas they can still improve, as well the particular concerns that are present and should be faced. Thus, I can layout an accurate set of dynamics to develop those skills and abilities that the family most needs.
- 3rd Development: I carry out the workshop in the family’s private home or wherever they consider a comfortable place. The workshop has a gradual emotional curve through which the conversations that are most needed to tighten the family bond progressively take place. It ends with a series of personal and group commitments.
- 4th Evaluation: if the family wants to, there is a subsequent session one month later. The purpose is that they may evaluate the progress and fulfillment of the commitments they reached in the workshop.
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2. Group workshops with several families:
In these experience-based group communication workshops, a safe space of trust and active listening is created. There, in addition to being provided with knowledge and conversational skills, the family will have the opportunity right there to put what they have just learned into practice. They will hold conversations of great positive impact on their relationship that will tighten their bonds. Conversations that normally cannot be held on a day-to-day basis due to the busy schedules we all have.
Sharing some dynamics with children belonging to other families and the fact that your children will get to know the other parents’ viewpoints may be exactly what a family was in need of to discover new paths of encounter and solving conflicts.
How does it work?
- 1-day workshops: from 09:00 am to 7:00 pm
- Both parents can participate together along with one or two adolescent children (between 13 and 18 years old). One of the parents together with one or two children is also allowed.
- It is not a workshop just for parents. Without your children you cannot participate since the dynamics and activities require their involvement and participation.
- The number of participants is limited, in order to ensure adequate accompaniment by the workshop facilitators.
- Usually, it happens that when the teenagers arrive in the morning, they do not show external eagerness to participate. But quite soon, as the workshop progresses, they find themselves more and more comfortable. Towards the conclusion, they end up very happy.
- During the workshop there are some dynamics and activities that are held together with other participants and families, but you will only have intimate conversations with your own family members, in a privacy ambience.
- These are not testimonial workshops in which other people’s experiences are heard. We do not expose anyone in public and we respect the total privacy of each family.