Wanting to take a vacation from your family?

The last three years have been unprecedented and almost unimaginable. It may have stretched you and your family to the limit. While normalcy is finally in sight, no one seems particularly functional, close, or happy. You’re more reactive to your partner and your kids — no matter if they’re 5 or 35 — and you find yourself saying and doing things you regret. Other family members may be flaring up, too, and not communicating well, leaving you and everyone else feeling anxious, frustrated, and hurt. All of this may have landed on top of existing challenges, like troubled relationship dynamics with your spouse, parenting or co-parenting difficulties, and mental or physical health issues. If you’ve recently moved, had changes at work or started a new job, or lost loved ones, it may have depleted your reserves to just about zero. You know you can’t unwind these problems yourself, there are too many players and you’re one of them. It’s time to bring in outside help.

I help families burdened by big changes and challenges learn how to communicate openly and respectfully, adapt with skill, and connect in ways that lead to deeply satisfying relationships.

The families I work with are having problems communicating, such as chronic misunderstandings, overt arguing, or refusing to communicate at all. For many, trust has broken down and goodwill is in short supply, leaving everyone vulnerable to less than optimal behaviors and choices. Most are dealing with significant, and sometimes bittersweet, changes, transitions, and losses. These may include a family member moving into a distinctly different life/developmental stage, like a child moving into puberty or becoming a full-fledged adolescent, or an aging parent needing help from their adult child who is still on the frontlines parenting their own kids. Other disruptions get set in motion when there is distinct marital conflict or a separation, divorce, or remarriage, all of which usher in substantial fear, grief, uncertainty, and the need to adapt to challenging new realities. Yet others are due to the onset of mental or physical illness in a family member, the death of a family member, or traumatic experiences.

We all exist as part of a relational system, where both problems and solutions to those problems reside. This is why getting family members together — sometimes as a whole group and sometimes in various subgroups — is often the most effective and efficient way to effect change.

Many family members approach family therapy with trepidation, fearing the experience will be filled with conflict, intolerably awkward, or that they will be blamed by each other or even by the therapist. We undertake family work very deliberately, inviting and exploring each family member’s unique perspective while looking for shared concerns and targets for treatment. In service to your goals, we help your family process and resolve emotional hurts, learn and practice new skills, and commit to plans for change. Since problems come in all shapes and sizes, your family may only need a handful of sessions or, conversely, to stay in therapy for the foreseeable. No matter the number of sessions, we’ll actively monitor your progress and make adjustments in the treatment as new needs emerge or goals change.

How I can help.

• I’ll help your family identify and solve vital problems, whether those stem from unproductive interactional patterns, unresolved hurts, or differences arising from how to address changes, losses, or traumas. I’ll enlist all family members in identifying and formulating hypotheses about the problems at hand and help you work together to unpack, reflect upon, and accurately understand them as well as to make desired changes.

• I’ll help your family communicate more effectively and override ingrained patterns of reacting that can interfere with even basic information exchange. I’ll teach your family how to actively and non-judgmentally listen, constructively express feelings, assert wants and needs, validate each other, and collaborate to solve problems, come to agreements, and enjoy your relationships, more often than not.

• I’ll help your family define expectations between parents and kids of all ages, working towards mutual and clear understandings that relieve individual and collective anxiety. I’ll help your family develop the skills to respectfully discuss each others’ hopes, wants, and needs and to translate them into family agreements and guidelines. I’ll further support your family in anchoring these to larger values, creating a shared ethos and family identity.

• I’ll teach your family the principles of secure, healthy relationships so you have the framework to guide your behavioral choices on a moment-to-moment basis and to direct how your family engages and responds to one another more generally. In sessions, I’ll help you learn how to act according to the principles of sensitivity, fairness, and reciprocity which, when practiced and repeated over time, builds a foundation of trust and reliable connection.