Counselling Families.

We recognize the powerful pull of the family’s past and its present influence on individual family members. Our approach involves actively influencing the family to recover what has been lost or create what they can hope for and move forward. We help families develop new, more adaptive patterns of interaction that allow for greater connection and the confidence to be different. 

When we typically see an individual exhibiting a behavior in the presence (or absence) of another individual, we also understand it to be a direct response to that other individual (or to how that individual is viewed in their mind). Emotional reactions, relationship conflicts, psychological symptoms, psychiatric conditions, and mental illness are not solely experienced internally by the individual alone, but also by others, particularly entire families. Yet, most individuals seeking our therapeutic services primarily identify an individual family member as the one with the symptoms, condition, or illness.

Working with families requires the understanding that human behavior is shaped by its social context. This approach also requires treating human problems by bringing family members together to help them work out conflicts at their source. Through our supportive and therapeutic services, we offer families the opportunity to develop healthier ways to manage and improve their interactions and relationships. We recognize the powerful pull of the family’s past and its present influence on individual family members. We also recognize the power of their present interactions and its potential influence on the family they can be. The aim of our approach is directed toward changing the family’s interactions and transforming how they reorganize themselves into a healthier social context that encourages and reinforces a better life for each family member. We work with families by challenging their existing patterns of interaction and supporting their engagement in healthier, more adaptive ways.  

Our Online Mental Health Therapy Approach

We are able to accommodate Online Mental Health Therapy Video sessions from individuals or families that sometimes develop into multiple service requests for more than one family member up to the entire family.

Requests are frequent for treatment services to address family life cycle issues that have intensified, escalated and manifested as follows:conflicting parenting styles and philosophies,teenage identity,gender and autonomy issues,extended family relations and loyalties,inter-generational, racial, and cultural family boundary,values and tradition conflicts.  Often, these issues are more evident in interracial and intercultural marriages and extended families, with divergent family histories, languages and religions.

Families also seek therapeutic support when they experience significant losses include the death of one or a series of family members, sometimes even a pet. Such losses may include the sudden or long-standing illnesses or infections that lead to temporary or permanent disruption of physical and mental functioning, chronic pain and permanent disability. Work-related or motor vehicle accidents, leading to lengthy rehabilitation and return to work, with potential temporary or permanent work interruption, job termination or lay-offs, necessitating retraining or careers changes. Such events can destabilize a family system cohesion and compromise the family’s ability to bounce back to their previous level of functioning and adaptability. Since the onset of the pandemic, we have responded with our 100% commitment and ability to provide online therapeutic services. Families have been encouraged by our services and are making themselves more available to benefit from our online family interventions.

We provide online therapeutic services to families. Following a comprehensive family assessment, we collaborate with the family and together develop a flexible treatment plan. The plan may include individual therapy for a single family member, support for other members, and/or family therapy for a subgroup or the entire family. 

When a family gets wedged in their development, the potential for resuming their growth is inherent within the family itself, if the relational patterns blocking their realization is removed. Four principles originate from this assumption to which we adhere:

Why do families seek therapeutic services? Because they are struggling with  . . . 

• Mental illness diagnosis, living with and managing complications, setting boundaries and limits 

• Anger management, family violence 

• Divorce, difficulties co-parenting with conflicting parenting styles and philosophies 

• Parental responsibility distribution, single parenting 

• Physical or mental disability, chronic illness, death in the family (including pets); unresolved grieving. Adjustments to the pandemic 

• Teenage identity crisis; gender and autonomy issues 

• Extended family relations and loyalties 

• Inter-generational, racial, cultural family boundaries  

• Inability to reconcile blended family dynamics 

• Infidelity 

• Trauma (physical, emotional, sexual, financial, accidental) 

A dramatic example, but not unusual, is when an individual has experienced a recently brief or lengthy psychiatric hospitalization or is soon to be discharged. That individual will likely require ongoing outpatient treatment and psycho-educational support. The severity of the illness or attempts to cope with the illness may include self-destructive gestures or suicidal behaviors, mismanagement of their dysregulated emotions, mood fluctuations, and conflicting relationships, as well as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Requesting therapeutic services to handle this sort of situation will often expand to include work with other family members. They may need to understand, cope with, and manage the reality of the family member’s mental illness and how others are reacting and adjusting to it separately and as a family. Such events can destabilize a family system and compromise the family’s ability to bounce back.  

Our view of the family is not as a mere recipient but as its own change agent, always possessing the key to its own solution. The ‘family’ is the primary context, even when working with a subgroup or only one family member. Our approach involves actively influencing the family to recover what has been lost or create what they can hope for and move forward.  

Change in interactions is a condition of psychological change and not the other way around. We confirm and encourage family members to experiment with behavior previously constrained by the family, and to allow for new possibilities that add greater complexity to their adaptation. 

We help families develop new, more adaptive patterns of interaction that allow for greater connection and the confidence to be different. This paves the way for a more complex family network capable of supporting both closeness and independence.