Family Therapy for Adults

When you love each other, but being in relationship has become painful.

Families can carry years of history into a single conversation.

Maybe every attempt to talk ends in the same argument. Maybe someone has pulled away, and no one quite knows how to find their way back. Maybe boundaries have changed and the family has not adjusted. Or maybe everyone agrees that something needs to change, but has a very different understanding of what went wrong.

Family therapy can create space for a different kind of conversation.

My work with families focuses exclusively on adult family relationships, including adult children and parents, adult siblings, and other important family relationships navigating conflict, hurt, distance, or disconnection.

Sometimes the Problem Isn't a Lack of Love

You can love someone deeply and still struggle to have a healthy relationship with them.

In families, the present rarely exists without the past. Old roles can reappear almost instantly. The responsible one becomes responsible again. The peacemaker starts managing everyone's emotions. The person who never felt heard stops trying to explain.

A parent may experience a boundary as rejection while an adult child experiences that same boundary as necessary for staying connected.

And everyone may genuinely believe they are responding to what is happening now.

Family therapy gives us room to slow those patterns down and understand what is happening underneath them.

The goal isn't to determine whose version of the family is correct. It's to understand the relationship well enough to see what keeps happening between you and whether something different is possible.

Who I Work With

My family therapy practice is designed specifically for adults working on relationships with other adults in their family.

This may include adult children and parents, mothers and adult daughters, fathers and adult children, adult siblings, multiple adult family members, and partners or spouses joining family work when clinically appropriate.

Families often come to therapy because of:

• Longstanding conflict or resentment

• Family-of-origin wounds

• Difficult or changing boundaries

• Communication that repeatedly breaks down

• Different expectations for the relationship

• Estrangement or increasing emotional distance

• Attempts at reconciliation or repair

• Major life transitions that have changed family dynamics

• Old roles and patterns that no longer work

• Painful experiences that were never fully addressed

Sometimes the question is “How do we repair this?”

Sometimes it's “How do we keep this from getting worse?”

And sometimes it's simply “Can someone help us understand what keeps happening?”

Family Therapy Without Choosing a Side

When families are hurting, it can be tempting to search for the person who caused the problem.

That isn't how I approach this work.

Each person brings their own history, experiences, protective strategies, expectations, wounds, and understanding of what has happened. Two people can experience the same relationship very differently without either person's experience being meaningless.

My role is not to decide who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.

It is also not to force forgiveness, automatically endorse distance, insist that a relationship be preserved at all costs, or assume reconciliation should always be the goal.

Instead, we work toward understanding the patterns between you, increasing each person's ability to take meaningful responsibility for their part, and determining what a healthier relationship might realistically look like.

Sometimes that means greater closeness.

Sometimes it means clearer boundaries.

And sometimes the first goal is simply being able to have a difficult conversation without repeating the same cycle.

How Family Therapy Works

I don't typically begin family therapy by putting everyone into the same virtual room and asking, “So, what brings you here?”

There is usually too much history for that.

Instead, I begin by meeting individually with each family member who will be participating. This gives each person an opportunity to share their experience of the relationship, relevant family history, what has happened from their perspective, and what they hope might be different.

After completing the individual assessment process, we begin meeting together.

For most families, 90-minute sessions are the standard I recommend for ongoing family therapy. When several people and years of history are involved, 60 minutes can disappear quickly. Ninety minutes gives us enough room to do meaningful relational work, particularly for families meeting every other week or less frequently.

As therapy progresses, we can determine whether 60-minute sessions become appropriate.

Specialized Family Therapy

Adult Children & Parents

Relationships between parents and their adult children can become complicated in ways that are very different from parenting a child.

Changing boundaries, old family roles, differences in expectations, unresolved childhood experiences, partners and grandchildren, and competing understandings of the past can all affect the relationship.

My practice has a particular focus on helping adult children and parents understand these patterns and explore what a healthier adult-to-adult relationship could look like.

[Explore Adult Children & Parent Therapy]

Family Estrangement & Reconciliation

Sometimes families come to therapy after contact has become limited or stopped altogether. Others come because they can feel the relationship moving in that direction.

Therapy can provide a structured place to explore what contributed to the rupture, whether repair is possible, and what each person would need for a healthier relationship moving forward.

[Explore Estrangement & Reconciliation Therapy]

Investment

Family therapy is billed based on the amount of therapy time provided, not the number of family members participating.

60 minutes: $235
90 minutes: $352.50

Most families begin with 90-minute sessions.

Families may decide among themselves how they would like to divide the cost. One person may pay the entire fee, family members may split it equally, or different family members may contribute different amounts.

The total session fee does not change based on the number of people participating.

Trauma Wise Healing is a private-pay practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do you meet with us individually before meeting together?

Each family member deserves an opportunity to share their experience without immediately needing to defend or explain it to someone else. These individual assessment sessions also allow me to understand the larger family system before we begin working together.

Do you take sides?

No. That doesn't mean I avoid accountability or difficult conversations. Part of family therapy may involve helping each person recognize their contribution to the relationship and make meaningful changes. But I don't begin with the assumption that one person's version of the family is the entire story.

Does family therapy mean we have to reconcile?

No. Therapy cannot guarantee reconciliation, and reconciliation is not always the appropriate outcome. We can work toward understanding, accountability, healthier communication, clearer boundaries, or determining what kind of relationship is realistically possible.

How does payment work with multiple family members?

The fee is based on session length rather than the number of participants. Your family can decide how to divide that cost. One person can pay, everyone can contribute equally, or family members can contribute different amounts.