Family Counseling Because There's No Such Thing as a Perfect Family
Walking through the world as a human being with human emotions can be difficult enough as it is. Bind a few humans together for life, and it's no wonder we rarely achieve that picket-fence ideal. Families can be challenging and complicated and can also be a great source of love, support, and security. Dr. Conrad offers family counseling focused on relationships of dyads (or two people). For example, a parent/adult child, or two siblings, etc. are good candidates for Dr. Conrad's therapeutic support.
The Family Dynamic Learning to Navigate Life's Hurdles Together
Every family deals with its own set of obstacles. The goal of EFT family therapy is to help create secure connection and learn new and more effective patterns of communicating with each other.
Has Your Family Struggled With Any of These?
Communication Issues
Parenting Difficulties
Divorce
Illness or Death
Shared Trauma
Domestic Abuse
When Love is Not Enough Get Your Family Back on Track
Using emotionally focused therapy techniques, we work with family dyads as well as the family as a whole to help families experience and learn new interactive ways of being with each other that creates greater security and happiness in the family unit. We do this by:
Experiencing the Power to Change the Family Dynamics by Understanding Negative Patterns that Interfere with Loving Connections
Understanding Each Other's Perspectives & Emotions
Creating Effective Ways to Communicate Your Wants & Needs
Learning to Cope with Traumatic Events & Changing Dynamics
Heal Old Wounds that Get in the Way of Feeling Bonded and Close
Becky & Jennifer―Strained Mother/Daughter Relationship
Tom & Cassandra―A Blended Family
Frequently Asked Questions About Family Counseling
We're here to answer any questions you may have before starting family counseling or therapy. Please contact us with additional questions!
If the issues are pertaining to all of the family and the family dynamic is chaotic and not connective, then yes. Your practitioner would bring everyone to assess the dynamics and discover what dyads needed some specific attention for the first session. After that we might break up and do some dyad work, like mom and son, or dad and daughter. If the problem seems to be rooted in the parents relationship, we might make a referral for couple's counseling, or we might just work with the couple. If the problem is between siblings, depending on their age (if they are under 13 we would likely have a parent with them) or we might just pull out a brother and sister dyad and work with them for a few sessions. Usually the problems can be observed between two family members. We pull out those dyads, work with them to some resolution of their negative dance and put everyone back together again to continue to assess where the dyadic issues stick out. Then at the end we would bring the whole family back together to talk about the changes in their family dynamics.
Yes! We find that working with teenagers alone rarely is fruitful, being seen with their family system is much more productive in general. From a systemic perspective, your teenager is part of a bigger whole and we need to see the dynamics at play and help the family together realize where things go wrong and parents to understand the blocks to tuning in with their child, what the impact they are having on each other, and begin to soften the distress with validation of everyone's perspective and then working toward listening and hearing each other and discovering the teenager's needs that aren't being met. So, yes, please bring your teenager in! We might start with just the parents giving us their side of the story, and then having an individual session with the teenager and then back together again.
That depends. If you don't feel there are any blocks or impediments to your relationship with your daughter or your wife and it seems mostly focused around your wife and teen, then you may not need to attend. On the other hand, sometimes spouses have a very helpful view of what is happening, so it could be important to have the whole system come in a time or two with your wife and daughter. It would be something you determined with your provider.
We absolutely work with adult children and parents! Sometimes this work is most rewarding and the richest kind of family therapy there is; to make amends, to repair hurts, and to find a new way together to go forward. We can do dyad work, mom and daughter, father and son, and any combination that would be helpful. You would want to talk to your provider to decide the best approach for your family system.