Family counseling services
Helping you become a healthy family.
Serving Knoxville, Nashville, and online across four states.
Tennessee I California I Nevada I Virginia
You’ve lost connection with your adult children.
Simple interactions with your college-aged children turn into arguments. You don’t know how to navigate the tension and conflict, and you feel misunderstood by your adult kids. It’s as though there is a big void between you and your family members, and you don’t understand when it came about or what happened. You feel there is a lack of understanding between you all, and you find yourself wishing your relationship with them was how it used to be. Each time you want to reconnect, it seems the opposite occurs.
Your conflict at home is most likely affecting your other relationships, too. You may be less motivated at work, distracted in daily life, and find yourself thinking or talking about your family problems more than you want to. Our personal relationships affect the well-being in all realms of our lives, so it makes sense you may be more irritable and worries things won’t get better.
Your family can look and feel differently.
Family counseling can improve your relationships and reduce stress and conflict.
You and your family members will understand yourselves and one another better, learn to navigate conflict, and cope with challenging situations in more effective ways. It is possible to create new and more meaningful bonds and achieve a sense of togetherness.
You and your family members will…
Improve communication skills
Reduce stress and conflict
Build empathy
Repair relationships
Develop healthy boundaries
Learn and implement problem-solving skills
Heal together
Strengths-Based Approach
In our sessions, your family members will reconnect in new ways. Everyone’s perspective matters. We will examine the whole family system and your communication patterns. You will learn to identify and adjust these patterns as a family unit rather than blaming or naming one specific person as the sole source of the problem or conflict.
What can
we expect?
-
In our first sessions, we will focus on understanding the problems that you are facing in your family. This will include discussing important history that has led your family to this point, defining specific problems, exploring family roles, identifying impacting stressors, and collaboratively setting goals for our time together.
-
The next phase will focus on building specific tools that improve communication and increase empathy with one another. We will practice using these tools in sessions and identify opportunities to use them between sessions. You will also increase emotional intelligence in this phase by learning to identify emotions, communicate how you’re feeling to one another, and implement skills to regulate emotional intensity.
-
Once a solid foundation has been rebuilt and trust is beginning to form again in your family, we will use these communication and empathy tools to discuss the deeper hurts and pain points. Family members will not be blamed or scapegoated. Each person will be heard and given the opportunity to understand themselves more deeply and why others act and respond the way they do, leading to a more empathic understanding of one another. You will learn more about the nuances, history, and emotional provocations of conflict and work together to learn ways to anticipate conflict before it happens and dispel it if it does.
-
Throughout our time together, we will check in regarding progress towards your goals for family counseling and make adjustments as needed. When goals are met, we will agree on a final session and list your take-aways for continued healthy communication, ways you can support one another, identify opportunities to work through future stressors, and celebrate your overall progress.
We may be a good fit if…
Each family member is willing to participate (even begrudgingly!)
You have at least one child 18+ yrs old
Someone is the family is withdrawing from life
Adult children are away at college*
Adult children are living at home*
Adult children are living on their own*
Family members have shared a traumatic experience such as a natural disaster, housefire, divorce, moving, sudden death, or incarceration of a family member
*All participating family members must reside in Tennessee, California, Virginia, or Nevada.
We are not a good fit if violence, the threat of violence, or any type of abuse has occurred between the attending family members at any time.
Frequently asked questions about family counseling
FAQs
-
Family counseling can involve any number of family members and is focused on talk therapy and interactive techniques. This means we will sometimes talk through issues and solutions, practice communication skills, and participate in thought exercises and reflective activities. A family is a group of people who care about each other.
-
At times, we desperately want to communicate with and be understood by our loved ones. Without intending to, we may be contributing to the emotional distance and communication breakdown in our family system. In family counseling, you will learn to identify those patterns, heal old wounds, listen and talk with empathy, solve family problems, and create a more healthy functioning home environment. Our personal relationships affect our well-being in life, and repairing family conflict can lead to greater overall life satisfaction.
-
Online family counseling is an effective way to reconnect your family members. We will meet on a HIPAA-secure TeleHealth platform, and you will receive a secure link accessible on a computer, tablet, or phone prior to the session. Attending family members have the convenience of living in anywhere in any of the four states where I am licensed to practice therapy: Tennessee, California, Nevada, and Virginia.
-
We will collaboratively create, review, and modify goals throughout our time together. With a specific goal in mind, family therapy can be achieved in an average of 16 sessions, though many families continue on to focus on changing deeper relational patterns and attend sessions for a full year.
-
Yes! In fact, family, couples, and individual therapy often complement each other very well. It can help you meet goals faster, gain new insights, improve relationships, and problem solve more efficiently. I can guide you through the process of finding an individual or couples therapist and provide referrals if needed.
-
Family counseling sessions can be 50 or 90 minutes. The longer sessions allow us to discuss deeper topics at length and provide time for all family members to share their reflections and engage with one another. We will discuss at the onset of therapy which timeframe is most beneficial and works best for your family.
-
50-55 minute session $220
90 minute session $330
Less than 24 hours’ notice late cancellation fee is the full price of the session
The MFT Difference
As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I have specific dynamic training in improving communication skills between family members and helping families realize, address, and reconcile past hurts. These trainings include:
Attachment-Based Family Systems
Structural Family Therapy
Emotionally Focused Therapy for Families
Gottman Level One Therapy
Therapeutic Team-Building
Strategic Family Therapy
Transgenerational Therapy
Hands-On Experiential Therapy
Group EMDR for Shared Traumatic Experiences
I have experience providing therapy with multigenerational family groups, families with young children, teenagers, young adults, and adults. I especially enjoy working with parents and their college-aged children. Since I am licensed to provide therapy in four states, it is accessible for family members who reside or attend school in different locations within Tennessee, California, Nevada, and Virginia. I am a clinical fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists and an active leader and conference presenter with the Tennessee Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
