family therapy
online family therapy:
A powerful experience for mental health matters.
BREAKing THE CYCLE, together.
familial relationships matter, a lot.
Is someone in your family suffering, though you feel you’ve tried everything to help?
Are two or more family members chronically at odds, impacting everyone else’s life?
Does it often feel like there’s an “elephant in the room,” something important you don’t know how to address?
Family Therapy may be your solution, whether some or all of your family members want to participate.
As an experienced family therapist, I help families understand how each member of your system directly and indirectly impacts the other members. We identify how communication patterns create and maintain adverse mental health symptoms. And you heal your relationships to achieve deeper levels of closeness.
What is systemic Family Therapy?
Sytemic family therapy is a functional approach to wellness that makes connections between individuals' mental health and the entire family system.
It is different from individual therapy in that the family is observed as its own complete entity greater than the sum of its parts (the “parts” being the individuals involved). In family therapy, we assess how each member shows up to and experiences the family as a whole. We deepen our understanding of past family dynamics to offer clarity on how these dynamics inform and maintain present functioning.
Together, we develop a therapeutic process that helps your family function optimally – which means the individuals, too!
types of family therapy
Deciding which type of therapy is right for your family can feel as daunting as securing everyone’s participation. Fortunately, the literature suggests that any sort of therapy helps more than no therapy at all. Studies also routinely illustrate the value of the family-therapist relationship; the stronger the therapeutic alliance, the more positive the overall result.
As an experienced family psychologist with training in various methodologies, I use an integrative approach. This means I call on several theories and interventions, emphasizing those that will most adequately serve your family.
My practice regularly incorporates these styles of family therapy:
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Contextual Family Therapy calls us to develop four main areas of understanding: 1) the objective facts of your family’s history and circumstances; 2) the individual psychological functioning and process of each member; 3) the interpersonal communication patterns between all members; and 4) the relational ethics that inform your engagement with the rest of your family. Most profoundly, Contextual Family Therapy reveals how issues of fairness and loyalty affect the overall dynamic of your family.
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Psychodynamic Family Therapy offers an insight-oriented, depth-based path to healing; it extends beyond conscious realities into exploration of the unconscious. Dynamic approaches support family members in recognizing unconscious motivations and feelings, and then bringing these to consciousness. Each member’s personality is assessed in terms of attachment, defense mechanisms, and capacity for empathy. Emotional wounding during early development is recognized as relevant to each person’s experience of trust and love within the family system.
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Multigenerational Family Therapy emphasizes the intergenerational transmission of emotional, psychological, and behavioral patterns of relational functioning. By analyzing earlier generations, this style of therapy supports learning about the ancestral origins of members’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This work pays careful attention to how each family member balances individualism versus togetherness, recognizes interpersonal projection, and engages in “triangulation” – bringing a third person into a challenge between two people.
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Structural Family Therapy is common when children or teenagers are involved in treatment. In these cases, the hierarchical order of the family becomes a distinct focus of therapeutic work. The objective is to structure (or re-structure) a hierarchy that optimizes the family’s well-being. Interventions include mapping the influence of earlier generations, and attending to the family’s “here-and-now” circumstances, and identifying “subsystems” (units of two or more people operating with their own roles and rules, distinct from the rest of the family).
working with a family therapist online
To get the most out of family therapy, participating members should remain open and willing to participate in the process.
Sometimes families are eager to start therapy, but it’s also common for beginners to feel anxious or even slightly reluctant. I welcome all of these emotions, and invite you to feel comfortable arriving as you are. Over the course of our work together, we will patiently build trust and safety so that you can feel certain your family is well cared-for.
While this service prioritizes the needs of “the family,” it also attends to the unique features of each individual to offer the most effective approach to collective healing. As a family therapist, I work to understand each person’s past and present perspectives, and to identify how they are influencing – and being influenced by – the overall family system.
areas of specialty
Deciding to expand (having, raising, & understanding children)
Separation and divorce processes
Recovering from infidelity
Blending families through re-partnering, re-marriage, and step-relationships
Adult children and parent reconciliation, post-estrangement
Understanding boundaries, how to implement & maintain them
Navigating in-law and family-of-origin dynamics
Restructuring family hierarchies and rebalancing power
Reconciling different attitudes, beliefs, and values
Getting to the root cause of hard-to-change communication patterns
Integrating awareness and structure in families suffering from addiction
family relationship tips
from my family blog
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FAQs
for family therapy
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When multiple people are involved in therapy, the answer really depends. I am always transparent about my sense of when members can expect to enjoy relief and progress. Generally, the longer the problem(s) have gone unprocessed, the longer the amount of time it takes to work though.
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To start, I ask that families attend weekly sessions. Beginning with weekly sessions supports building trust, establishes an effective working relationship, and creates the opportunity for relevant history to be supplied. Upon sustaining consistent progress, families may transition to a bi-weekly schedule. After graduating from therapy, families tend to find relief knowing they are always welcomed to return for a single session (or more) should there be a future need.
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It is not ethical for a family therapist to become the individual therapist for one member of the family; similar to it being unethical for an individual’s therapist to to transition into the role of the family therapist.
It is often the case that I meet with each member of the family individually, however it is consistently to support “the family.” If I facilitate a session with one member of the family, I will also facilitate sessions with the other members, individually. In any case, I always return to meeting with all members for joint sessions.
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Not necessarily. Sometimes two, or a few, members of a family seek therapy to process dynamics in their particular subsystem. However, if it is clear that the therapeutic work will be limited by not having additional members present, I let you know and equip you with the understanding of why that may be true.
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I am not able to provide family therapy in cases where one or more members are:
actively abusing or dependent on alcohol or illicit psychoactive drugs
struggling with chronic, debilitating anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder that is otherwise untreated
completely unwilling to recognize aspects of themselves as contributing to the overall family dynamic
concealing consequential secrets (i.e. those that would greatly alter the course of therapy) from one another with no intent to share
perpetrating moderate to severe domestic violence
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Please note that I do not accept insurance. I do offer monthly invoices that you may submit to your insurance company for potential out-of-network reimbursement.
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I offer family therapy exercises sparingly. If I do suggest exercises or homework, they are developed with a confident assessment of the family functioning. In my experience, I have found that universal techniques often lack meaning for how they can be helpful to any one family in particular. I believe the most worthwhile exercises are carefully tailored to the particular needs of the family. I am more enthusiastic about suggesting homework when members of the family are interested in them.
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In my experience, family therapy absolutely “works” – the tricky part, however, is finding a shared definition of that word. The answer to this question can be highly individual. Some people only believe that family therapy has “worked” if all of the relationships get “much better.” Of course, such an outcome is only possible when all members genuinely want this.
It is common for some or all family members to feel uncertain about what, exactly, they want from family therapy. In fact, this uncertainty is often a motivating factor in families' decisions to pursue therapy in the first place. In these cases, therapy begins with identifying each person’s desired outcome, and then assessing the extent to which these desires can be realized.
Sometimes, family work means learning how best to coexist, and sometimes it means learning how to grow closer. Other times, it means deciding how to respectfully part ways. Any of these outcomes may be considered “success,” depending on the family.
Also note that family therapy with children or adolescents is distinct from family therapy with adult children.
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As with any shared project, the benefits of family therapy depend on how fully each participant is willing to invest in the work – psychologically, emotionally, behaviorally, and financially.
The most impactful outcomes of family therapy usually include a significantly deeper understanding of self and others, along with vastly improved communication habits.
As a family therapist, it is my job to apply broad professional expertise to your particular styles of communication, and to figure out how these styles either help, or harm, the way your family functions. Trusting your family therapist makes it easier for each member to hear and understand their observations and recommendations for improvement.
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Please note that my services are primarily virtual. Since 2020, I have come to appreciate the continued efficacy of online family therapy. This medium of communication has made the service more accessible to families with members living in multiple states, as well as those with busy schedules who benefit from saving time on commuting to and from appointments.
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