Family Counseling Services in Charter Oak, CA.

Abby offers family therapy to support healthier communication, stronger relationships, and greater understanding among family members. Using a collaborative, trauma-informed approach, she helps families navigate conflict, life transitions, and emotional challenges in a safe, structured environment. Her work focuses on repairing connection, enhancing empathy, and building practical tools for managing stress and improving dynamics. Whether addressing parenting struggles, sibling conflict, or intergenerational patterns, Abby guides families toward more cohesive and supportive relationships.

Every family has some sort of dysfunction since individuals are not perfect. I have worked for over ten years with youth and their families. I believe family therapy is essential when working with youth since children and adolescents have limited insight and need structure, guidance, and discipline from parents/caregivers. I begin the initial session meeting with the parents/caregivers to identify and discuss problems and confidentiality. I then meet with the youth/children with the parents to work on agreed treatment goals. The ultimate goal of family therapy is to increase open and respectful communication and improve parent/child relationships.

Family counseling is helpful with problems setting limits with children, dealing with grief, divorce, loss that can cause behavior problems, school issues, or family problems. Sometimes parents want help with boundaries for teenagers with anger issues, reblelliousness or entitlement problems. In some cases family therapy involves young adults who need support building an indepentent lifestyle and recovery from drugs or alcohol. Family therapy helps you learn how to help without enabling!

Many of our struggles are not just individually focused; they are shaped by and affect the family system around us. I have a passion for helping family relationships heal in places where they are broken, and thrive in places that are stagnant. I especially love journeying with parents and their children, strengthening bonds and decreasing family conflict. My training has predominantly been in family psychology, and I love to watch families transform together -- as individuals and as whole units.

Are you in need of family counseling for you as a parent, your children, or your family? I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and offer professional counseling for individuals, couples, children, and families. I'm a certified Prepare-Enrich Counselor and I'm also a certified Family Wellness Instructor. I'm a professional member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. My approach integrates Attachment Theory, Family Systems, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and Life Coaching, and is collaborative, supportive, non-judgmental, and tailored to fit your needs. If you are ready to take the next step I am here to support and empower you. I look forward to working with you

In today’s culture, having children derived from more than one relationship is common. Divorce and remarriage can lead to a complex view of what is family. With these complexities come pressure, confusion, frustration, anxiety, and depression. These emotions can be experienced by any part of the family; the children, the father(s), or the mother(s) or even with extended family like the grandparents. Often these emotions are advanced as the lines of connection and boundaries are blurred or misunderstood. Counseling can help you to discover the importance of boundaries, understand the need for healthy relationships, and find balance.

Families are the places where we should find the love and support to face the world and all its challenges. However, sometimes families loose their way due to poor communication and misunderstandings , anger, acting out behaviors, hurt feelings and lack of knowledge. Maya Angelou has said: "People do what they know; when they know better, they do better." My plan for families is to help them know better so they can do better. Where there is loving-kindness and a will to make change the future seems brighter.

Most family therapists inadvertently create more chaos through their well-intentioned efforts to assist a family move through a change process. Why? Brains are inherently dysregulated (all of us, may I add) and most talking and dialoguing misses brain-centric problems that need more intensive help. Many times the emotional trauma created by years of solving problems ineffectively can wreak havoc on the brain's parasympathetic nervous system, not ever giving the family a break from flight or fight thinking. Contact us for an innovative neuroscience solution to family dystunction. Kevin@kevinflemingphd.com or 877-606-6161

Family therapy is the treatment of more than one member of a family at the same session, based on the idea that problems going on within the family can best be understood and corrected by observing the interaction of family members and identifying methods for improving their interrelationships. The behaviors of one member of the family affects the emotions, perceptions and behaviors of another member of the family. They are intertwined as something larger than themselves. Together, I will teach you a variety of tools that will help your family's interaction. For example, through reframing, we can often turn a negative experience into a positive one. Call me for a phone consultation to determine when we can meet to discuss your family issues.

I offer family therapy for families who have young children and/or adolescents. This is a speciality! I have three therapists who have different specialtes with family therapy! One is a teen and teen parenting specialists, another specializes in families with young children and another specializes in difficult families, families and trauma and another still with single parent families or blended families (families coming together with other families). I specifically work with families and parents of teens and alterative families (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families - either parents are GLBT or families who have a GLBT child). Call me and one of us will be the perfect match!

As someone trained in family therapy, I see each family member as part of a team. Sometimes, one member is in pain and acting out. The whole family will then feel the effect. I love my work with families to help them get unstuck and see the growth. For the children / teens, family counseling can help sort through the acting out (or acting in sometimes) and help them more appropriately express their needs and wants. I can help!

I specialize in working with families through a process of designing the family you've always wanted. When each family member is given the opportunity to describe what they need or like that helps them feel valued in family it becomes the beginning of lasting change. I help families design their system in such a way that produces happiness. I will take your family through a 6 step process of design which gives shape to the kind of family you would like to be in.

Each person in a family has a voice and each person in a family has an impact. I am careful to make certain that the family looks at all the members and how they all interact as a family unit. It is important that each member is respected. We look at how the family is not in a state of health due to choices that the family is making. We work together toward connection, understanding, and growth for all memebers. Unhealthy alliances and interactions are acknowledged.