Family Conflict

I've worked as both a therapist and supervisor of intensive home-based family therapy services, and I have taught graduate-level counseling courses in family therapy for many years.

In discussing family conflict, we will analyze the family structure, hierarchy, and various communication patterns. I want to help you strengthen your relationship wit your family while maintaining secure boundaries.

Family relationships can be a source of both support and stress, especially when dealing with trauma, boundaries, or estrangement. I work with clients to navigate complex family dynamics, rebuild healthy communication, and address past wounds. Together, we’ll explore ways to foster connection, set boundaries, or find peace in situations where conflict may feel overwhelming.

Family Conflict can happen when family members have different views or beliefs that clash. Peaceful resolution depends on negotiation and respect for the other person’s point of view. Effect communication is key.

Past and current dysfunctional or unhealthy family dynamics can contribute to a myriad of mental health concerns, including anxiety and depression. Together we can explore how these dynamics impact your life without blaming your parents or caregivers.

Family relationships often emerge as topics in sessions. I use trauma informed care to guide clients toward better understanding patterns in family relationships and how intergenerational trauma may impact family functioning overall.

At The Refuge Marriage and Family Therapy, we specialize in helping families navigate and resolve conflict. Using a blend of research-based approaches like the Gottman Method and Emotion-Focused Therapy, we guide families in improving communication, fostering understanding, and building stronger relationships. Our trauma-informed, inclusive approach helps families address underlying issues, enhance emotional regulation, and create lasting solutions to restore harmony and connection.

Inner child work may help those experiencing interpersonal conflict. Inner child work helps explore unprocessed childhood emotions and feelings that currently impact one’s life and understanding, managing, and/or reducing triggers. One desire for inner child work may be to identify wounded areas and/or unmet needs of the child, learn to advocate, protect, or show compassion for the child, create a safe enough space to invite the child to play, and integrate the child with the adult self.

Growing up in a family with toxic dynamics can have profound effects on one’s emotional and psychological well-being. Families shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and understand the world. When these early relationships are marked by criticism, neglect, manipulation, or control, they can leave long-lasting wounds that impact self-esteem, trust, and one’s ability to form healthy relationships. Together we can help you heal, build healthier boundaries, and foster self-compassion.

You are safe here. I get it. I'm an adult with ADHD and mom to five fabulous kids, four of whom also have ADHD and other neurodiversities. I've lived through chaos, self-doubt, massive insecurity, depression, anxiety and so much more on my journey to becoming an LMSW. You are not alone and you are not crazy. You have ADHD. I can help.

I enjoy working with adult children and their parents to help open the lines of communication and change old relationship patterns. I think adulthood is a great time to work on re-working relationships with parents and siblings so you can have healthier connections going forward.

Intimate relationships that are not safe, trusting or respectful hijack your sense of feeling valued. Any compulsion, addiction, or dysfunction in the family, when the focus is on one member affects all. It may be a serious illness, a recent death, or a huge life stressor that creates upheaval and discord in the family. This can result in estrangement, bickering, loneliness, and isolation. Healing is available and often can help develop stronger bonds.

My course of graduate study emphasized family systems. I then put this study to work with families and relationships who were experiencing distress. I have experience in a therapeutic capacity and in the capacity of a crisis worker reuniting families in lockout or runaway situations, meaning either the child has run away from home or the family has refused to allow the child to return. Having had experience in high-stress situations, I am comfortable working with any level of conflict.

We help families get out of negative patterns of communication and get on the same page with things like parenting.

Without realizing it, you and your loved ones may all be seeing and trying to solve different parts of the same relationship problem. You may have even begun thinking that your loved ones (or you) ARE the problem. Couples and families that haven’t “joined around the problem” experience something best described in the Indian parable, The Six Blind Men and the Elephant. My job is to help you see through each other’s eyes, so you can work together.

It is difficult to heal when someone from our families may cause us to resort back to unhealthy relationship patterns. I like to explore family dynamics first to see if this person might be a trigger without even realizing it. If you feel this way, then perhaps we can explore ways to identify what a comfortable boundary is for you to set. Family therapy may also be an option if all parties are open to improving this relationship.