Family Therapy

Support for Parent-Child Relationships or Whole Family Therapy

Stressors that can lead families to seek therapy together may include sibling conflict; parent-child disputes; grief following the loss of a family member, especially after a suicide; and the impact of one family member’s addictive, compulsive, or harmful behaviors on the rest of the family.

If you’re ready to break the cycle of raised voices, family tension disrupting special moments, and recurring conflicts without resolution, you’re in the right place. A lack of connection and harmony within the family doesn’t have to be the norm.

The stress and tension overtaking your home can be addressed. Together, we can find a solution that effectively and permanently addresses each family member’s concerns.

Family Therapy Can Create the Change You Need

Sometimes, life presents challenges that are best addressed as a family unit. Whether it is two members or the whole family, therapy as a unit can be effective and powerful for bringing about the change you desire.

Whether it’s grief, conflict, addiction, or something else afflicting your family, there is support available, and repair is possible. You don’t have to keep carrying the weight of past conflicts and difficult emotions on your own.

Family memories can start to be created again with some guidance from a trained professional. You can get help to return to the way your family used to get along.

Growth for Your Family

The loss of a family member, whether parent or child, forces each survivor to play a new role in the family and in life. There are books on grief, but the stress of the lived experience can feel very different. Similarly, turning to friends or family for comfort during a loss can leave anyone feeling like they need better support and real answers to their pain.

Different from loss, but still an equally prevalent stressor for families, is parent-child or child-child conflict. For some families, the conflict gets to the point where it can threaten to end marriages, ruin special events, and make it feel impossible to create meaningful memories as a family.

Managing grief, persistent conflict, or other family stressors on your own can feel confusing and overwhelming. From grief to addiction to conflict, it’s fair to want your family’s stability back.

Your Needs Your Solutions

Through grief, addiction, or other stressors, we will develop a clear understanding of the needs of your unique family.

Each member will have the opportunity to share their perspective of what isn’t working, what needs to change, or what is going on in the family system.

The complexity of balancing the needs of each family member with the overall needs of the larger family system will be discussed and intentionally worked through together at each stage of the process.

Steps of the Family Therapy Process

As each family member has an opportunity to express their perspective of the most urgent needs, therapy helps guide the family to agree upon mutual goals and outline the specific steps to reach that point.

As the process develops, moments are created for emotions to surface and be worked through as a family unit. Each member is allowed to retain their own identity while also feeling like a part of the supportive family around them.

Family therapy creates an environment in which each member of the family can be seen and heard. As each member feels understood, you will be guided in shaping new ways of relating with your family.

Throughout the process, you will be provided supplemental resources, books, events, and any other applicable resources that may support your situation.

New Patterns Are Created

One of the major markers you will notice as a result of family therapy is that each person has an increased self-awareness as well as an increased awareness of family dynamics.

Old patterns of the past that didn’t work to support understanding are replaced with new and more flexible communication methods. Tools for working through painful emotions with one another, especially for grief survivors, will be developed.

When conflict or emotional pain from past experiences emerges, you and your family will be able to confidently face it together.

Results of Family Therapy

After family therapy, clients report their grief being lighter and less frequent. They report feeling closer and more supportive of one another. And they report an awareness of the boundaries they need to feel like their best self when spending time with the family.

Families struggling with conflict or addiction report less frequent and less intense conflict. They report a felt sense of being on the same “team.” Clients report real healing from past hurts inflicted by family members.

At the end of the family therapy process, your family will feel more like a resource than a hindrance. A strong foundation for emotional support is re-established.

Connect With Me

The communication and emotional processing skills you are hoping to develop are achieveable. Healing as a family from grief, addiction, and long-term conflict is possible.

Together, we will identify the core of the issue and work through it in a systematic way as a family. The connection you are looking for can be restored.

You don’t have to feel the pressure to fix or change your family on your own. Reach out by calling (619) 771-1797 or emailing contact@rosskellogglmft.com. I look forward to connecting with you.