Therapy for Families & Adolescents

Families

If you find that your family is in a state of emergency, has a child that is acting out, or is overwhelmed by either grief, anxiety or depression due to loss or addiction, family therapy can offer tremendous relief, understanding, and an opportunity for both individual growth and new, creative, ways for your family to respond to life's challenges.

I help families like yours understand their unique system: both the areas where they are getting stuck and the strengths they, as a family, possess in order to move through times of challenge and conflict.  I cherish the opportunity to sit with families and help them see the complex dynamics that constitute interweaving loving relationships in order to provide relief and an increased capacity to relate.

Adolescents

Being an adolescent can be a confusing, tumultuous, emotionally provocative time for adolescents and their families. This is because adolescence is a time of tremendous psychological change and growth. Specifically, this is the time when children psychologically revisit early conflicts around separation and connection/ dependence and independence in order to start to carve out a more defined sense of self.

There is much evidence of the psychological significance of this period of time. In many cultures, at adolescent age, initiation ceremonies of one sort or another provide the child the container with which to become an “adult” member of society.

Therapy can serve this purpose. It can be an invaluable source of support for kids, because it can serve as a vehicle for support and understanding during a volatile psychological transition. I work with adolescents who struggle with their emotions (anger, rage, depression, anxiety, fear), feel lost, are using substances such as alcohol or drugs to cope, or have acted out in aggressive and destructive ways, all signs that the psychological transition is too overwhelming or isolating for them.