Family Systems

I've worked with families for the past 11 years and have experience with foster/adoptive, racial minority and LGBTQ families, adult children and families experiencing major life transitions.

Ultimately, family systems therapy aims to improve the overall functioning and emotional well-being of the family unit by fostering understanding, healthier communication, and more supportive relationships. I will examine the dynamics, relationships, and interactions within the family unit to better understood the interconnected individuals, where each person's behavior affects and is affected by the others.

Having originally trained in family therapy, I now utilize family systems in an individual therapy context. How you grew up, your current or past relationships with family members, and intergenerational trauma all have a significant impact on your current functioning and mental health. Better understanding your family experiences and dynamics can help you make positive changes.

There are many different parts of you that protect you, that manage internal crises, and carry the emotional damage of our past traumas. I work with you to understand your full self, create an appreciation for yourself, and work to give yourself permission to be your true self.

We all view the world through a certain lens. How we were raised in our family of origin affects how we view ourselves and others around us. It affects how we show up in the world and we interrupt our world. When we are aware of how the environment we grew up in affects us we can learn to grow from the ways we are living that are harmful to us or that are detrimental to our growth and fulfillment.

My clinical training is as a Marriage & Family Therapist, which means, at my core, I am a systems thinker. I do not believe that our mental health symptoms are only individual issues; I believe they are born out of and in response to the various systems we have been born and socialized into. Our social location, race, gender identity, and family of origin experiences directly inform and are deeply intertwined with our mental health journeys. This is the framework I bring to every client journey.

In my work with families experiencing relational conflict, my clients find that employing an approach rooted in attachment theory allows me to help them learn about the communication patterns within the family unit. Through this work, members of the family typically report that they understand where their own communication patterns come from, how their family system operates as a whole, and their role in improving communication within that system.

Families can be complicated and having insight into your family group dynamic can promote overall health. When growing up the relationships inside your family can become impacted by unhealthy behaviors. With this understanding in mind, using family systems therapy, you can learn to resolve issues in the context of the family unit.

I am trained in family systems (Bowenian) approaches to therapy. By examining the patterns within the family and across generations, we can bring insight into behaviors that may be holding us back. This approach is especially useful in communities of color given our desire to maintain strong multi-generational kinship networks.

Understanding family patterns can help us understand how we got to where we are today. Along with attachment theory, I use family systems to help clients build a picture of their past so they understand who they are in their relationships today, and can make choices about how they want to grow in relation to themselves and others.

The goal of Ego State Therapy is to facilitate communication and collaboration among internal parts of self, fostering a sense of harmony and integration within the individual. Rather than viewing internal conflicts as a battle to be won or lost, this approach emphasizes compassion, curiosity, and understanding towards all parts of the self.

Similar to attachment theory, family systems shape our childhoods and give us experience playing certain roles early in life. These roles may or may not create difficulty later on, especially when you are faced with a need to be flexible and divert from your most comfortable role. We can merge family systems work and analysis with role playing and other embodied methods to help break free of the constraints that roles can force upon you.

In my work with families experiencing relational conflict, my clients find that employing an approach rooted in attachment theory allows me to help them learn about the communication patterns within the family unit. Through this work, members of the family typically report that they understand where their own communication patterns come from, how their family system operates as a whole, and their role in improving communication within that system.

Family Systems are a multigenerational/historical approach to understanding emotional and behavioral disorders. Rooted in the notion that the self needs to be differentiated from the family system with clarity, insight, and evaluation of the transmission processes one can have a reduction in anxiety, depression, and symptoms related to family processes and can become highly individualized engaging in the extended families system.

Even people who have not studied Family Systems tend to be aware of the huge impact that our families have on who and how we are. Even if we come from a "Little House on the Prairie" type family, we carry ideas about ourselves and life that are not serving us now. A huge part of my work with clients is to methodically take a deep look at the developmental period of their lives and become more able to make choices rather than react.

In my work with couples, I utilize the family systems approach to help them navigate their negative cycles of interaction. I've learned through my study and experience that couples often repeat the same conflict patterns without understanding why they do it. Mapping out their cycle of interaction helps them understand what their needs, wants, and desires are in a relationship with a loved one.

We explore the patterns and structures present within the family that impact relational patterns that can lead to individual behavioral and emotional struggles, as well as communication challenges. We work to build healthier patterns of interaction, and reinforce healthy structure within the family to improve the function of both the individuals and family as a whole.