Family therapy worksheets that treat the system, not the symptom.
Forty evidence-informed family therapy worksheets drawing on Bowen (genograms, triangles, differentiation, cutoff), Minuchin (structural subsystems and boundaries), Satir (communication stances), McGoldrick and Carter (the family life cycle), Olson (circumplex cohesion and adaptability), Papernow (blended family stages), Gottman (emotion coaching), and the Family Acceptance Project. Free, printable, client-facing, and designed to actually get filled out.
Family Roles Worksheet
Hero, scapegoat, lost child, mascot — and what they cost
Name the role the family assigned, what it protected, and where it still runs in adult life.
Family Rules Worksheet
The spoken and unspoken rules that governed everything
Audit the rules you inherited about feelings, conflict, achievement, secrets — keep, revise, or retire each one.
Family Communication Worksheet
Satir's five stances — from placater to leveler
Identify the stance you take under stress and rehearse the congruent (leveler) version.
Family Boundaries Worksheet
The membrane between enmeshment and cutoff
Audit boundaries with each family member and set one specific, behavioral limit this month.
Blended Family Worksheet
Papernow's five stepfamily challenges
Insider/outsider, loyalty binds, parenting styles, losses, cross-household issues — name which is loudest and right-size the step-parent role.
Parenting Styles Worksheet
Authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved
Baumrind's four styles with a warmth-and-structure audit; find where you actually live vs where you meant to.
Co-Parenting Worksheet
The business partnership after the relationship ends
Align rules across two houses, install business-not-personal protocols, keep the kid out of the middle.
Family Conflict Resolution Worksheet
Four steps from surface fight to real repair
Name the pattern, surface each person's underlying need, and design the repair — not just the resolution.
Family Values Worksheet
Choose the values instead of inheriting them
Name the top values, audit where calendar and money agree or disagree, and operationalize one this month.
Family Genogram Worksheet
Three generations on one page
Draw the emotional system with standard symbols, then surface repeating patterns and triangles across generations.
Family Meeting Agenda Worksheet
The 20-minute structure that prevents most fights
Standing weekly agenda: appreciations, calendar, chores, one issue, one plan, a closing ritual.
Emotion Coaching for Parents Worksheet
Gottman's five steps for raising emotionally regulated kids
Notice, connect, listen, name, and set limits — with a rehearsal of one recent moment.
Sibling Conflict Worksheet
House rules and a repair protocol, not a referee
Install a shared house rule set and a post-fight repair sequence so kids negotiate, not just fight.
Teen-Parent Communication Worksheet
Door-opening moves vs door-closing moves
Concrete conversation moves that make a teen come back to you — and the ones that guarantee they won't.
Family Cohesion & Adaptability Worksheet
Olson's Circumplex Model, plotted for your family
Locate your family on cohesion (disengaged–enmeshed) and adaptability (rigid–chaotic), then move toward the balanced middle.
Structural Family Therapy Map
Minuchin's subsystems and boundaries
Map spouse, parental, and sibling subsystems; surface cross-generational coalitions and parentified children.
Family Life Cycle Worksheet
McGoldrick's stages — symptoms cluster at transitions
Identify your family's current stage, its developmental tasks, and where you're stalled or ungrieved.
Family Strengths Inventory Worksheet
Six strengths of resilient families
Rate appreciation, commitment, communication, time together, meaning, and crisis capacity — then protect what's working.
Empty Nest Transition Worksheet
Grieve the old chapter, design the next
Name the losses of the launch, rediscover the couple, and renegotiate the parent-adult child relationship.
Family Repair After Rupture Worksheet
Acknowledge, own, change, reconnect
Walk one rupture through a real four-part repair — not an apology-and-move-on.
Intergenerational Trauma Worksheet
What got passed down — and what stops here
Name the traumas prior generations carried, the survival rules that came out of them, and what to interrupt in your generation.
Family Secrets Worksheet
Privacy vs secrecy — and what to name
Distinguish healthy privacy from shame-shaped secrecy and decide what to name, to whom, and why now.
Enmeshment Assessment Worksheet
Closeness without differentiation
Screen for enmeshment and rehearse small differentiating moves that stay connected without fusion.
Cutoff & Estrangement Worksheet
Full cutoff, limited contact, or reconnection — clearly
Think through whether, when, and how any contact happens, and name non-negotiables if it resumes.
Family Legacy Letter (Ethical Will)
Values, lessons, and story for the next generation
A one-page scaffold for a letter that passes down what you value, learned, and hope for the family.
Grandparent Role Worksheet
Influence without overriding the parents
Clarify the grandparent role, where it's crossed into parenting decisions, and how to be told when.
Adoption Family Integration Worksheet
Holding joy and loss together from day one
For adoptive parents: how to hold the child's whole story — including the birth family — at every stage.
Foster Family First-90-Days Worksheet
Predictability, low expectations, trauma-informed limits
A trauma-informed scaffold for the first three months of a foster placement — connection before correction.
LGBTQ+ Family Support Worksheet
Family Acceptance Project — behaviors, not sentiment
Concrete accepting behaviors to add and rejecting behaviors to stop — the interventions that cut LGBTQ+ youth risk in half.
Bicultural Family Identity Worksheet
Two cultural scripts, held out loud
Name where cultural scripts cooperate, where they collide, and what this family is choosing to blend, keep, or set down.
Family Financial Values Worksheet
Money fights are rarely about money
Surface inherited money scripts, name where partners' scripts collide, and write one values sentence for what money is for.
Household Responsibilities & Mental Load Chart
Inventory the invisible labor too
Rebalance visible chores AND the mental load of noticing, planning, and remembering — with a standards conversation built in.
Family Screen-Time Agreement
The rules apply to adults too
A family-made agreement covering screen-free times and places, age-appropriate limits, and what adults are agreeing to.
Family Holiday Planning Worksheet
Plan the season deliberately — including the exits
More of / less of, three hardest moments with a plan for each, and which traditions to keep, revise, retire, or add.
Family Grief & Loss Ritual Worksheet
Grieve together without grieving alike
Design shared rituals that hold the loss without demanding every family member grieve in the same way.
Chronic Illness Family Adjustment Worksheet
Reallocate load; protect the non-ill members
Redistribute logistical and emotional load and name the ambiguous loss that lives alongside caretaking.
Aging Parent Caregiver Worksheet
Sibling load and anticipatory grief
Inventory care load, script the sibling conversation, and name anticipatory grief and role reversal.
Divorce Announcement to Kids Worksheet
A united script that gives kids what they need
Draft a shared announcement covering what kids need (not your fault, no choosing, love intact) and what they don't.
Family Reunification Worksheet
First 90 days after long separation
Pace the re-entry after deployment, incarceration, hospitalization, or long-distance separation.
Family Rituals & Traditions Builder
Small repeated events that tell a family who they are
Inventory existing rituals, revive dormant ones, and design one small, keepable new ritual across the categories that matter.
What this section covers
Family therapy is the discipline of treating the relational system, not just the person who was sent in. This library reflects that. You'll find assessment tools (Family Genogram, Structural Family Map, Olson Circumplex, Family Life Cycle) that surface the shape of the system, communication tools (Satir stances, Family Meeting Agenda, Teen-Parent Communication) that build new grooves, and structural interventions (Family Roles, Family Rules, Family Boundaries) that name and interrupt inherited patterns.
It also covers the sub-systems that carry the most clinical weight — co-parenting, blended families, sibling conflict, empty nest, and repair after rupture. Every worksheet is designed for adults and older adolescents, uses initials only, and never collects PII.
How clinicians tend to sequence these
For intake and assessment, the sequence typically begins with the Family Genogram Worksheet and the Family Cohesion & Adaptability Worksheet (Olson) to map the system, followed by Family Roles and Family Rules to name the assignments and unspoken agreements. The Structural Family Therapy Map surfaces cross-generational coalitions and parentified children — the shape-level work that has to happen before content-level fights will resolve.
For parenting-focused work, Parenting Styles and Emotion Coaching for Parents establish the frame, and Family Meeting Agenda installs the single most under-used structural intervention in the field: a predictable weekly meeting. For separated families, the Co-Parenting Worksheet turns the relationship into a professional partnership. For teens, the Teen-Parent Communication Worksheet trades interrogation for availability.
For transitions, the Family Life Cycle Worksheet locates the family in McGoldrick's stages, and Empty Nest Transition and Family Repair After Rupture handle the two most under-supported moments — the launch and the aftermath of a real break. The Family Strengths Inventory closes treatment on what to keep protecting.
Free to print, send, or use in session
Every sheet is free to print as a PDF and free to send as a secure link from a TherapistAssist account. No watermarks. No per-client limits. Designed to look and feel like real clinical material — because that's what your clients deserve.
Frequently asked questions
Are these worksheets appropriate for clinicians without a family-therapy specialty?+
Most are. The psychoeducation and communication sheets (Family Roles, Family Rules, Boundaries, Satir Communication, Parenting Styles, Emotion Coaching, Family Meeting Agenda) work well in generalist individual and couples practice. The structural and systemic assessments (Genogram, Structural Map, Circumplex, Family Life Cycle) sit closer to core family-therapy training — best used with training, supervision, or as adjuncts to a referral.
Can I use them with individual clients doing family-of-origin work?+
Yes — most of these were written to be as useful for an adult doing solo work on their family of origin as they are for a whole system in the room. The Genogram, Family Roles, Family Rules, and Family Boundaries sheets are especially strong here.
Are they usable with LGBTQ+, blended, and nonmonogamous family structures?+
Yes. Language is inclusive throughout, and the Blended Family and Co-Parenting sheets are written for any family configuration — biological, adoptive, step, chosen, or multi-household. Where a sheet is specific to a structure (e.g., Blended Family), it says so plainly.
How do you handle privacy in family work?+
No sheet in this library collects identifying information. Family members are referenced by role or initials. This matches TherapistAssist's site-wide policy: names, contact info, and identifying data are never collected or displayed.