Families

Families are complex systems that require a unique understanding

Family Counseling & Therapy

Sometimes families get ‘stuck’ in unhealthy roles, conflicts, and competing needs. Instead of working as a team towards mutual goals and happiness, family members may become isolated, angry, or depressed as they are unable to achieve a balance between their individual needs, developmental changes, the family’s needs, and unexpected stressors.

Families are complex systems that require a unique understanding of the intricate play between multiple individuals. We offer family counseling in San Diego to help you and your loved ones deal with conflict and form a more cohesive family unit.

When to Seek Help

Many families struggle with accepting that they need help to work through their issues. These are very private matters and it’s only natural to attempt to solve them within the family unit. However, sometimes it’s impossible to solve these issues in the same environment that fostered them in the first place. If your family is experiencing one or more of these symptoms, it may be time to seek outside help.

Extreme Emotional Reactions

Is someone in your household showing signs of excessive anger, fear, depression, anxiety or other extreme emotions?

Violence

While rough play can be acceptable to some extent, violence that goes beyond normal “horseplay” is a problem that should be addressed as soon as possible.

Lack of Communication

Once communication between family members breaks down, working through issues becomes almost impossible. If you find yourself unable to communicate with your family in a civil manner, consider attending a therapist, who can mediate as an unbiased third party.

Traumatic Experiences or Change

Adjusting to a new reality after major changes to the household, such as the death of a loved one or other trauma, can be a huge challenge to overcome alone.

Mental Illness or Other Conditions

When one of your loved ones is struggling with mental health issues or other conditions, such as substance abuse, eating disorders or depression the whole family will be affected. Family therapy can help other family members understand what each other is going through, as well as make recovery for whoever is affected as easy as possible.

Family Counseling

Families are complicated, dynamic systems with multiple and complex needs. Our extensive experience in family systems therapy, child and adolescent development, and couples therapy enables us to understand individual needs and goals while keeping in mind the overarching goals of the family unit as a whole. We create a safe and collaborative environment and are flexible in creating a treatment plan that is comfortable and effective for all family members. Our goal is to work closely with each of you within the overall family unit to help create a collaborative, respectful, and healthy ‘team’. Contact us to help your family achieve mutual success and happiness.

How We Work with Families

Our goal in family therapy is to assist each family member in identifying their particular role and contribution to the family struggle, to gain insight as to how and why they adopted that unique role, the purpose it serves the family, and to learn the steps to change, adapt, and grow within the family system.

Together, we work on assessing and re-negotiating individual needs, and how they compete and conflict with other members’ needs.

We closely explore and learn to cope with developmental changes and stressors that are burdening the family system. We also assess and correct communication styles that prevent healthy adaptation, and instead, learn to foster expressions of care and concern for one another.