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 the lives of others?
Does it often feel like there’s an “elephant in the room,” something important you don’t know how to address?
Online 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?
Systemic family therapy is a functional approach to wellness that connects individuals' mental health to the entire family system.
It's different from individual therapy in that the family is observed as its own complete entity, greater than the sum of its parts–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 clarify 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, research suggests that any sort of therapy helps more than none 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 draw 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 helps us develop four primary areas of understanding:
The objective facts of your family’s history and circumstances.
The individual psychological functioning and process of each member.
The interpersonal communication patterns between all members.
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 bringing them to consciousness.
With this approach, your therapist assesses each member’s personality in terms of attachment, defense mechanisms, and capacity for empathy. We also recognize that emotional wounding during early development is relevant to each person’s experience of trust and love within the family system.
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Multigenerational Family Therapy emphasizes the intergenerational communication of emotional, psychological, and behavioral patterns of relational functioning.
This style of therapy supports learning about the ancestral origins of members’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by analyzing earlier generations. With this approach, we carefully examine 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 family's hierarchical order 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, 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.
Is online family therapy effective?
Online family therapy is usually effective if participating members 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. When I work with families, 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 family counseling prioritizes the needs of “the family,” it also attends to the unique qualities 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
Through my extensive research and experience as a family therapist, I write articles that can teach you family communication patterns, how set boundaries with family, and much more.
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FAQs
for family therapy
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The time it takes for family therapy depends on your unique experience and the individuals participating.
When I work with families, I'm 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 time it takes to work.
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Families participating in therapy should start with weekly sessions and then move to biweekly.
With my online family therapy services, I ask that you attend weekly sessions. This lets us build trust, establish an effective working relationship, and discuss relevant history. Upon sustaining consistent progress, families may transition to a biweekly schedule.
After graduating from therapy, families tend to find relief knowing they are always welcome to return for a single session or more should there be a future need.
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It’s 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 transition into the role of the family therapist.
I often meet with each family member individually. However, I consistently support “the family.” If I facilitate a session with one family member, 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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Every family member doesn’t necessarily need to participate in therapy.
Sometimes, two or a few family members seek therapy to process dynamics in their particular subsystem. However, if it’s clear that the therapeutic work will be limited by not having additional members present, I will let you know and equip you with an understanding of why that may be true.
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Family therapy is suitable for most families, but there are exceptions.
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’re developed based on a confident assessment of the family's 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’m 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.” However, the tricky part is finding a shared definition of what “works” means.
This is highly individual, as 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’s 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 to coexist best. Other times, it means learning how to grow closer. In other cases, 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 differs from family therapy with adult children.
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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 and vastly improved communication skills.
As a family therapist, my job is to apply broad professional expertise to your particular communication styles and figure out how these styles either help or harm your family's function.
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 family therapy 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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