Application: Family Life Cycle

As a professional counselor, your ability to recognize the complexity of relationships within marriages, couples, and families is vital for effective counseling. Understanding the concept of family and the components of both healthy and unhealthy family and relationship functioning throughout their life cycles will help you recognize your personal attributes as a counselor or potential counselor. Equally important for effective counseling is the examination of your own personal experiences and beliefs, and the impact of these experiences and beliefs on your views of relationships and family functioning.

In this Assignment, you will examine the life cycles of families, the meaning of family, and the concept of wellness in the family life cycle. You will explain how you apply these concepts when working with couples and families.

Write your paper on the family life cycle using the instructions below as a guide:

• Explain your understanding of the family life cycle as it applies to counselors working with couples and families.
• Provide an example of a family in which a counselor with expertise in marriage, couple, and family counseling would apply his or her understanding of the family life cycle.
• Describe the role of wellness in the family life cycle Discuss how concepts of wellness and prevention might be applied to the family described in your example