Family Therapy

Usually there’s tension. Often someone really wants to be there and wants things to get better, and usually there’s a person or two who doesn’t, who feels dragged in or braced to get attacked. So part of our job is creating safety for everyone in the room. First, naming why you’re actually here. We’re not going to pick apart everything you’ve done over the years and rebuild it all, so what are we here for? Then a few ground rules to keep it useful.

You might still be uncomfortable at moments, because it’s hard work. No one should feel unsafe or under attack, because that’s not productive. And when it works, it’s something to see. When family members finally sit with each other and, with a little facilitation, someone has that aha moment, that this person isn’t just being a pain, they’re acting that way because of what they’re feeling or what happened to them, the other person can respond with a whole different level of understanding. You start to watch the whole system shift.

• Parents and a teenager who have stopped being able to talk without it going sideways
• Conflict that’s become a pattern rather than an event
• One person in the family carrying the label of the problem
• Young children whose behavior escalates because they don’t yet have the words
• Parents who need coaching more than their child needs a session
• Blended families working out how to actually be one
• Adult children and aging parents renegotiating roles
• A family where individual therapy helped one person and the dynamic stayed stuck

The first thing we do is name why you’re here, because families often brace for a therapist who’s going to take apart everything they’ve done over the years.

That’s not the work. We set ground rules first so the hard conversations stay useful, and nobody gets to be the target. You may still be uncomfortable at points, because it is genuinely hard, but uncomfortable and under attack are different things. What we’re driving toward is the moment somebody hears why another person acts the way they do, and answers them differently because of it. With young children the shape changes and much of it becomes parent coaching, which can shift a household in two or three sessions.

Available in person or by telehealth.

Tension in the room isn’t a sign it’s going badly, and a well-facilitated session shouldn’t feel like a fight with someone keeping score. Our therapists are there to keep anyone from getting hurt and to make sure the difficult stretches lead somewhere, toward insight and a real change in how the family reads each other.

We also don’t force it. Nobody is made to participate on a schedule that isn’t theirs, and teenagers in particular get a voice in how family work happens, because therapy imposed on someone rarely does anything. If part of your family is ready and part isn’t, we start with who’s ready. A five-minute phone call to size up a therapist is a perfectly good first step, and often the reluctant ones come along once they see something changing.