We all need love and connection. From the earliest days of your childhood, you learn how to seek and protect connections with others in order to survive. Sometimes these strategies for connection come at the expense of your authenticity. Sometimes at an early age you decide that to be fully yourself is a threat to being loved. This tragic yet common misperception then shapes your life well into adulthood.
Within families, we are all, in different ways, seeking to get our needs for love and connection met while also fulfilling our need to be ourselves. Because everyone goes about this differently though, it can be confusing and tumultuous. Disappointments, anger and hurt can accumulate and create chaos in the family system as connections become more fraught. As individuals rely more on their coping strategies their underlying needs can be obscured.
Family therapy offers a safe and confidential place to clear layers of confusion and stress, and to increase awareness, compassion and communication. The focus is on strengthening connections within the family while deepening each individual’s relationship to their authentic needs and resources.
Family therapy can be helpful when dealing with issues of conflict within the family, separation & divorce, parent/child relationships, sibling relationships, and recovering from impacts of loss, trauma or addictions.
Please contact me to set up an appointment
Image credit: Valerie Williams
Pamela Richardson, PhD, RCC 