You can’t forget about feelings. When your family has been through something difficult, everyone feels it. Your children feel it. You feel it. What is amazing about feelings is that everyone absorbs the same energy. When it is joyful, it is amazing. If it is negative, it can be a struggle. If you are angry or depressed, your children feel it. When they are upset, you feel it. It’s important for your family to learn how to validate and have compassion and empathy for everyone’s emotions – even your teenager with BIG feelings. Family therapy can help you to increase your capacity for shared emotion and how to support and tolerate your children’s BIG emotions even when you don’t understand or agree with them.

WHAT IS FAMILY THERAPY?

Family therapists view an individual’s problems/ struggles within the context of the system they are he/ she is in, not in isolation. Problems cannot be successfully addressed if they are not addressed within the dynamics of the family system. The way your family operates determines how individuals within your family respond. Oftentimes parents want their children to be different. Children can’t change without parents changing. It takes the entire family system to work together to create change.

Family therapy with adult children

Family therapists view an individual’s problems/ struggles within the context of the system he/ she is in, not in isolation. Problems cannot be successfully addressed if they are not addressed within the dynamics of the family system. The way your family operates determines how individuals within your family respond. Oftentimes parents want their children to be different. Children can’t change without parents changing. It takes the entire family system to work together to create change.

Life-stages and transitions

Families go through many life stages and transitions and can have difficulty navigating smoothly. Therapy can help you and your family identify where you are missing each other and how to heal, understand one another, and work together through your challenges. Together, we will look at how each member of your family processes and works through emotions and develop a shared language all of you can understand. Often times families just need to validate one another’s concerns and complaints and work together to make necessary changes.

Some examples of transitional struggles are:

• Middle school years and high school – it’s a BIG developmental time in your child’s brain
• Healing after a loss
• Readjusting after a divorce or separation
• Living as a newly formed stepfamily
• Adjusting to changing economic circumstances or parents re-entering the workforce after being home full time
• Dealing with a chronic illness or substance addiction

Anger

Oftentimes families come to therapy when one partner’s reactions to the child (children) are often filled with anger and negative energy. Where the response to the child doesn’t match what he/ she did in the first place. Chronic anger can be very traumatizing for children. Children who have to face the anger of a mother or father may grow up scared, hold shame, feel like something is inherently wrong with them, and be prone to experiencing their own anger and depression. In this situation, we may ask the ‘angry’ parent to move through the anger in individual sessions.

Do our children need to come?

Not all the time. We can still work on your family system by working with you – the parents. If you are concerned about your children and/ or your family dynamics, come in. We can assess where you are and identify where change can be made.