Child & Family
Why try Therapy?
Even the most loving families can sometimes need professional help, and when it feels like the issues in your family are too big for you to handle or aren’t getting better, it may be time to reach out for help. Family therapy sessions can look different for each family and may include parent sessions, parent-child sessions, sibling sessions, individual sessions, or any combination of these. The treatment plan is tailored specifically for each family. Family therapy seeks to create a feeling of trust, mutual respect, and strong communication within families. When all family members feel emotionally secure in family discussions, they can discuss issues and disclose feelings. With each member feeling heard and validated, the family can work together to find solutions to problems and build individual relationships between all members. As sessions progress, the family will create a stronger bond while processing issues together, and the deep wounds that have been festering within the family can finally begin to heal. As your therapist, I will continue to moderate until together the family determines that they are comfortable and confident they can implement the skills on their own.
While I have extensive training in many different therapy modalities and interventions, I gravitate towards Emotionally-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) and evidence-based parent coaching skills and strategies rooted in attachment theory.
Emotionally-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT).
What Is It?
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is an integration of humanistic and systemic therapeutic approaches. The focus of treatment is on the ongoing construction of a family’s present experience and how patterns of interaction are organized and expressed between family members. Another significant aspect of EFFT is its detailed attention to emotions. Identifying emotions is viewed by the therapist as essential in how family members view themselves and others, or an event. Emotions are hard wired in our brain and are meant to inform us about our environment. They also contain physical impulses, which are designed by nature to be an immediate and adaptive call to action. In EFFT, emotions are categorized as primary and secondary. Primary emotions have been identified by researchers as universal emotions, such as joy, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and shame. Emotions are openly identified, shared and often reframed by the EFFT therapist, to help family members navigate into new and more favorable patterns of interaction, one’s that are more empathic and capable of building safe and healthier relationships.
Parent coaching
What Is It?
Being a parent can be SO TOUGH. Sometimes it can be so difficult to know how to respond to or know what to do when faced with challenging behavior from our children. We just feel “stuck.” Parent coaching can help you find peace again. Parent coaching uses positive parenting techniques rooted in brain science, research, and positive psychology to provide individualized solutions and support. The goal is not just to reduce challenging behavior, but to help rebuild and strengthen the parent-child relationship through promoting connection, communication, positive parenting and coping skills.
What most parents don’t know is that they’re already doing a good job, and just a little extra guidance and a few changes can make a huge difference in improving family dynamics and parent-child relationships.
Parent coordination
What Is It?
Parenting coordination is a hybrid legal-mental health role that combines assessment, education, case management, conflict management, dispute resolution, and sometimes even decision-making functions. Parent coordination is a child-focused process where coparents engaged in high conflict are provided guidance on how to implement a parenting plan. This often requires the parent coordinator to facilitate the resolution of coparent disputes in a timely manner, educate coparents on children’s needs, and make decisions within the scope of the court order. Parent coordination aims to protect the interest of children and sustain safe, healthy, and meaningful parent-child relationships.
Parent coordination is intended for coparents who are unable or unwilling to jointly make parenting decisions, communicate effectively, comply with parenting agreements and orders, or who struggle to shield their children from the impact of parental conflict. A parent coordinator’s recommendations are sometimes legally binding, as determined by the court. This is not always the case, and some coparents may agree to participate in the parenting coordination process of their own accord, without a court directive.
HAPPINESS IS POSSIBLE!
Sometimes it just takes a little bit of guidance to step us into the healthiest, happiest and best version of ourselves!
