FAMILY THERAPY

Family dynamics are among the earliest and most powerful sources of anxiety, depression, and more serious mental health disorders. At their best, families offer us a space to love and be loved, to navigate the world in the company of people who care about and understand us. But families also pass on their dysfunctions and resist positive change. Indeed, many problems—such as alcoholism, abuse, and depression—recur intergenerationally not just because of genetics but also because families reproduce and pass on traumas, coping strategies, and negative cognitions.

For us, family therapy means group problem-solving with support and safety for all members of the family. In this kind of therapy, the therapist helps to identify family problems and patterns that might not be apparent, frames these problems as collaborative challenges, and helps individuals understand and embrace their own accountability within the family structure. Family therapy is typically complemented by individual counseling, in which we focus on identifying and healing personal problems that are contributing to adverse family dynamics.

Our counseling approaches are explicitly based in family therapy, which arose long after individual psychotherapy. It is more demanding, but arguably more powerful, than individual approaches. Because so many problems arise first in families and then reflect themselves in family members, family therapy offers an opportunity to heal problems at their collective root rather than working solely at the level of individual symptoms.

The progress you make in individual therapy is threatened by the possibility that your family system won’t also accommodate and support you. That requires the most lasting form of individual growth to be rooted in family therapy.