Family Therapy
Are Your Familial Connections Suffering?
Is your family experiencing conflict in part due to intergenerational expectations not being met?
Are you avoiding one another, thereby avoiding tough conversations?
Do you wish there was a stronger sense of connection and closeness between you and your children or with your parents or siblings?
Perhaps you’re a parent worried about your adolescent or teenage child. If they are struggling in school, spending more time away from home, or veering from the vision you had for them, you may feel as though your child is not succeeding in the way you hoped they would.
They may have become irritable or aggressive towards you, or maybe they have shut you out entirely. Either way, your relationship with them has caused pain. And while you understand that they need to individuate and grow up, they are not following the path you dreamt for them.
Oftentimes, the well-meaning intention of parents to motivate their kids toward success leads to high expectations. As children grow into adolescence, they can begin to internalize their parents’ messages as rigid and filled with disappointment or rejection. Not only does this pressure lead to conflict at home—it blurs the line between who we authentically are and who we feel like we should be.
As a result, each person in the family system may lack a sense of belonging to the whole. Disconnection becomes the norm, and we miss seeing our children, siblings, and parents for the beautifully-imperfect people they really are. This is when waves of unresolved conflict and disagreement might enter the picture, as each individual may feel that their relational needs are not being met.
In systemic family therapy, your family has an opportunity to come together and collaborate around new narratives to re-author your relationship(s). Working with a trained systemic counselor can support your family as you co-explore old stories and move towards thicker ones that might bring harmony to your dynamic.
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Every Family—And Each Person In It—Has Their Own Unique Story
It goes without saying that every family experiences friction and disagreement. On the one hand, we highly value our familial relationships, but on the other hand, our uniqueness is essential to who we are as individuals. Sometimes, it’s difficult—and even painful—for our authentic selves to align with our family’s culture and expectations.
Technology has driven further wedges between ourselves and our family members. In addition to spending more time on the screen, we are exposed to so much new information that continually forces us to clarify or adjust our individual identities. For instance, we may come from a family that operates from a completely different political ideology than our own. In the increasingly tense political climate of our country, this division can fuel tension.
Generational Differences Often Perpetuate Discord
Furthermore, the current generation of youth is growing up at a remarkably different pace than we did. If you’re the parent of a teenager, you may be concerned about what your child is exposed to through social media, worried that certain behaviors are being normalized. Or perhaps you’re trying to understand some aspect of their identity, like their gender or sexuality, but always seem to say the wrong thing. Whatever the case may be, each of you might feel unheard.
All of us have unique beliefs, values, and perspectives that shape our story—family therapy is an opportunity to bring those narratives into harmony.
Family Therapy At People Not Problems
If cycles of conflict have become the norm at home, you may not have very many safe, neutral spaces where your family can come together to vulnerably explore emotions. Therapy provides each family member an opportunity to listen and grasp one another’s experiences.
My Approach
From a systems-oriented perspective, I seek to help folx explore individual, familial, and community narratives. And because I am a culturally aware therapist, I hold family narratives through a lens of justice and affirmation. At People Not Problems, therapy is available to any family system in which the child/children are ten or older.
Together in counseling, we will identify the stories that constrain your growth, freedom, and joy—both as individuals and as a family system. In doing this, we will be able to promote the stories that connect us while also highlighting the uniqueness that each family member has to offer. Through this process, we can learn to identify, appreciate, and celebrate differences.
Eventually, therapy may help your family understand that even when disagreement occurs, space can be created for parents, children, and siblings to listen. Rather than engaging in discussions solely to prove a point, families can sink into listening with the goal of understanding and connecting.
So much of our pain as individuals stems from not meeting our family’s socially constructed expectations of how our lives ‘should’ look—but counseling is a chance to challenge those narratives and develop new, thicker ones. In family therapy at People Not Problems, you can reclaim the power to reauthor familial lore in a way that honors your family’s uniqueness.
Still Not Sure If Counseling Is Right For Your Family?
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Research, and my own experience as a therapist, demonstrate that individuals are almost never the sole cause of family distress. We live in very complex social, cultural, and family systems, and the intersection of these elements shapes how we relate to one another. Working together with many stakeholders in family therapy takes the pressure off one person as the ‘patient’—instead fostering a collaborative and growth-oriented environment.
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Therapy is an investment in yourself and your entire family unit. In fact, by committing to therapy together, you are accelerating the healing process and developing new ways to relate to one another. Counseling gives you skills that you can take into all of your relationships, enhancing your and your family’s ability to thrive at home and elsewhere in your lives.
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The counseling process can start with wherever your family is. If this means meeting with you and your partner(s) before introducing your kids into the therapeutic space, we can do that. However, working toward the goal of incorporating a larger family system into the counseling environment might be a path that we consider, as you weigh the pros and cons of including multiple generations in the exploration of constraining narratives.
Re-Establish Your Bond As A Family
If your family is experiencing disconnection, therapy is a meaningful way to explore your relationships and realign your narratives. Working together, you can achieve a new sense of collaboration and harmony. Contact me to schedule a free, 30-minute consultation and find out more about my approach as a family therapist. I am currently taking new clients, and appointments are typically available within one week.