Family Counseling

What is family therapy?

Family therapy is an approach that acknowledges that when one family member is suffering, it impacts everybody. Everybody has a voice and family therapy helps members to use it to communicate to each other more effectively. Family therapy tends to be short term, or meet only as needed.

Who comes to session?

Family therapy is done with different members of the family unit. It might include everybody coming in to the therapy room together. Or family therapy may work mostly with the parents to support them understanding how to more effectively parent their unique child.

Families come in all shapes and sizes. I work with many special families who don't look like other families in their area, and I would want to understand how your family works.

Is family therapy only for families with kids?

No, in fact family therapy can be very meaningful as adult children and their parents find new ways to talk and be together. As children grow up, family dynamics shift. Therapy can help everyone step out of outdated roles and build relationships based on mutual respect and understanding.

Family therapy with adult children offers a safe space to untangle old patterns, repair trust, and create healthier ways of relating. Whether it’s launching into independence, caregiving for aging parents, or blended-family challenges, therapy provides tools to navigate these changes as a team. Sessions focus on improving listening, expressing needs, and resolving conflicts so family members feel heard and valued.

What if my teen has their own therapist ?

Most teens work best in their ongoing individual therapy, and use family therapy when they need help communicating something to parents, or parents need help communicating something to their teen. At home, these conversations lead to shutting down or worse conflict. In the therapy office, you have someone to help you talk things out.

Because of my extensive work with adolescents, I often provide the family therapy while the teen is in individual or group therapy with a different therapist. If I am meeting individually with a teen, I sometimes find a separate therapist to provide the family therapy.

Looking for your own support?

Whether it be through therapy or something else, families function better when stressed members are getting support.

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When should parents get help for themselves?

Getting your own help may be the best way to help your family

Many parents find my site because they are in crisis. There is something going on with their teen and they need help. Their need for help is very real, and their concern for their child's well-being can be felt.

But parents have their own needs as well. Sometimes it's most helpful to the teen for the parent(s) to be receiving support in their own counseling. In fact, sometimes the therapy of the parent impacts the entire family more than the therapy of the adolescent.

Parenting is stressful, and the intensity of your reactions might catch you off guard. When a parent addresses these feelings in counseling, the triggers lose their power, and the parent is able to become a calmer, less reactive, more centered person, which helps them to return to being the kind of parent they want to be.

There are numerous topics that parents bring to therapy including:

fear of making the same mistakes their parents made with them
feeling unhappy and overwhelmed
wondering if they did something wrong to cause their family pain
being reminded of their own childhood
reactions to major stressors and life events impacting their family
feeling guilty about being disappointed about how it feels to be a parent
feeling scared that their teen won't change fast enough to avoid even more pain
current difficulties with siblings or aging parents

Your child does not have to be in counseling for you to get your own help. You also do not have to be in your own counseling for your teen to be. Whether it be through therapy or something else, families function better when stressed members are getting support.

I usually work with one member of the family on an ongoing basis. I am happy to provide referrals for counselors that I respect if a second family member (child, teen, or adult) would like to pursue counseling.

Family Counseling

Family counseling is most helpful when the teen is already working with their own therapist. It involves meeting with different components of the family:

Parents only
Parents and kids
Parents and adult kids
One parent
One parent and one child

I've often provided the family therapy when the teen is already receiving counseling from another therapist.

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Family Counseling

What is family therapy?

Who comes to session?

Is family therapy only for families with kids?

What if my teen has their own therapist ?

Looking for your own support?

When should parents get help for themselves?

Getting your own help may be the best way to help your family

Family Counseling

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