Family Therapy

Are you struggling with how to communicate with your teen? Do they push back when you set limits? Are they distant, withdrawn, or angry? Are you feeling frustrated, helpless, unsure what to do?

Or maybe you’re a parent or adult child estranged from each other and experiencing the grief associated with the loss of a relationship you wish you could have but feel like you never will. You’re carrying hurt or anger in response to past experiences that have never been resolved. You might feel as though your feelings were “swept under the rug,” dismissed or ignored, or perhaps even turned against you when you tried to talk. “It’s impossible to talk to them about it” and “they just don’t get it” are some of the words we commonly hear.

Families struggle. We all do. However, when the safety and security of these most important relationships are threatened or strained, this can take a considerable toll on our well-being. When these feelings go unaddressed, we carry them into our future relationships.

Family therapy not only has the potential to have a positive impact on the family unit, it also has the potential to shift how we feel about ourselves in a positive direction. It can change the trajectory of the relationships our children form over their lifetime, including their friendships, romantic relationships, and how they parent.

Some of the areas where we support families include:
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• Marital and couple conflict
• Parent and child conflict
• Parents experiencing feelings of isolation, loss, grief, guilt, confusion, sadness, loneliness, despair, and fear of reaching out to estranged adult children
• Adult children experiencing lingering anger or hurt toward their parents
• Reunification of families who are estranged
• Grief and loss
• Anxiety and depression, and the impact these difficulties can have on the family

How Does Family Therapy Help?

Family therapy can be an incredibly powerful experience. It is one of the most moving experiences to sit in a room with a family and watch a family shift from anger and distance to closeness and connection over time. To hear a parent say to a child in a heartfelt way “it was never your fault,” “you’re not to blame,” “you were always enough,” “I let you down…I should have stood up for you,” can heal children in ways we can’t imagine until it’s said in the right way, at the right time. Similarly, for children to start to see their parents as human beings who have their own limitations and who don’t always get it right can be a powerful experience for both the child and parent alike.

Our goal is to help families develop new, positive patterns of communication by working through areas of hurt or misattunement and creating new corrective emotional experiences in session. Through this process, family members often gain greater feelings of security and feel happier and more at ease with each other. Communication becomes clearer, more open, and less scrambled by emotions that were getting in the way at the start of therapy. Trust is rebuilt and vulnerability feels safer. The family feels more connected. As many will share: “It feels like a home,” sometimes for the first time.