Family Systems

Family systems therapy is a great way to improve how your family interacts and supports each other. By looking at how everyone fits together, it helps spot patterns that might be causing tension or conflict. This approach not only helps with individual issues but also boosts overall family communication and connection. In the end, it can lead to a happier, more harmonious family life.

In my work with couples, I've learned that many of them get stuck in the same conflict patterns. After studying and learning about family systems, I help couples identify those negative interaction cycles and where they stem from. This creates a pathway to creating a new interaction cycle that contributes to greater intimacy and improved communication.

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.

My degree from LIOS/Saybrook University includes a focus in Systems Therapy. The Family Systems we are exposed to during our development informs how we look at the world, our sense of ourselves, and how the two interact. Our Family System especially informs our behavior, and learning more about how that works, and how to change our interactions with and perspectives on our family unit helps lead to change in our own behavior.

Family systems therapy views disordered eating as part of a larger network of family, social, and cultural influences. Instead of focusing only on the individual, it explores how relationships, communication patterns, and environmental factors contribute to eating behaviors. Therapy helps identify unhelpful dynamics, improve support systems, and create healthier interactions. By addressing the whole system, individuals can develop more balanced relationships with food, their bodies, and others.

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.

My family systems therapy background allows me to do deeper work with clients. As I get to know my clients, I ask about your family background and seek to understand the role you played in your family growing up. Sometimes there are survival skills, behaviors, and patterns you needed as a child that no longer serve you in your adult relationships -- traits like perfectionism, hypervigilence, defensiveness, and low self-confidence.

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.

A guy goes to a therapist and says, "please help me, my brother thinks he's a chicken". The therapist says, "well, did you try telling him he's a human?" The guy says, "I would but we need the eggs." (Woody Allen)

We all exist within a group, a family, or a community! The family system lens provides us with a visual map of our emotions, communication interaction patterns, and directions. We will see clearly where the boundaries need to be rebuilt, where the wall needs to be brought down a little bit, and where it needs to be renovated and made more cozy!

My background is in marriage and family therapy and I am a systemically oriented therapist - meaning I see all people as existing in connection to the beliefs, social norms, ideas, and pressures of the people and systems around them.

I have taken several trainings by top clinicians in the field and have integrated this approach into many of my sessions throughout my time as a counselor.

It can be incredibly empowering and liberating to learn about how your family's structure, patterns, and experiences (even through the generations!) are impacting the way you move through the world and your current position.

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.

Everybody had or has some form of family, whether you born into it, choose it, or found yourself in a situation with others that essentially represented a family. I use the Systems approach to change the perception of who you are and why you do the things you do by looking at how you were shaped and influenced by the people in your lives as you developed. We were all set up to think and believe and act the ways that we do because of those around us as we developed.

As a marriage and family therapist my primary training and expertise is in family systems and working with relationship dynamics.

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.