Family Therapy

My path to working with families began early in my career, when I worked primarily with children and adolescents. Over time, it became clear that a young person's struggles rarely existed in isolation — the family environment shaped so much of what I was seeing in the room, and involving the family almost always led to better outcomes. That foundation led me to pursue deeper training in family systems work, and eventually to spend years working with families navigating shared custody across two households. That experience taught me a great deal about the power of aligned co-parenting — not identical parenting, but parenting that shares enough common ground to give children stability, even when the adults are living very different lives.

Family Therapy

My current family therapy practice focuses on families where the youngest member is at least 12 years old. Because my skills are rooted in talk-based approaches rather than play, I work best when everyone in the room is able to engage in that way. Many of the families I see are moving through developmentally normal transitions — a child leaving for college, a parent aging, a family reconstituting after divorce — while others have a member who is struggling and a family that is willing to be part of the solution together. In this work, I draw on traditional family systems approaches, including Narrative, Structural, and Solution-Focused frameworks, and I bring in IFS-informed perspectives when they feel like the right fit.

Adult Families Experiencing High Conflict or Estrangement

This work is distinct from typical family therapy, and I approach it differently. When relationships have fractured to the point of serious conflict or estrangement, jumping into joint sessions too soon can do more harm than good. I typically begin with individual sessions, working with each person to develop clarity about their own goals, patterns, and the experiences that have shaped them. Only when there's enough individual groundedness do we move toward meetings together. The shared work focuses on developing realistic, mutually understood goals, establishing clear boundaries and expectations, and building the conditions for more open communication. We often start with very little emotional safety in the room — and gradually, as each person feels more seen and less threatened, the power dynamics begin to even out and real conversation becomes possible. I draw on the full range of my clinical approaches in this work, and I also incorporate the Collaborative Change Model along with what I learned doing reunification therapy over many years.

For more detailed information about this process, click here.