Intergenerational Family Therapy
Adult Families and Families with AdolescentsWe carry our pain in the form of shame, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, resentment, or just a lack of joy in our lives. Many of us seek out individual therapy to relieve ourselves from these unwanted burdens, but sometimes, until we meet with our original family of origin, these changes are very hard to make.
In my 30+ years of teaching Family Dynamics and Therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies and many other bay area graduate schools, hundreds of students have brought in their families for in-class sessions in an attempt to better understand their family’s dynamics and transform the roles they have all taken on for many years. It is remarkable to see how much transformation can occur in just one session.
By creating a safe container in which each member of your family gets to express themselves fully from their hearts and minds, you can have conversations with these important people in your life that you may not have been able to have before. With guidance, you can actually learn to communicate with one another in a deep, honest and authentic way which creates the intimacy everyone has been longing for all these years.
In addition to working with “adult children” and their families of origin, I have spent many years working in clinics and in private practice with families where the children/teens/ young adults are still living at home and the conflicts are more obvious and intense. Core Focused Family Therapy (see publications) works equally well with this kind of situation.
