Family Counseling Services in Rising Sun, MD.

I primarily work with families who have been impacted by chronic health or medical conditions. Managing the burden of a medical condition can be overwhelming at times, and it can have an impact on the whole family. The families I work with benefit from parent support, increasing confidence in the medical setting, and improving interactions around symptoms. This work results in an overall improvement in quality of life not just for the person who has the medical condition, but for the family as a whole.

Family relationships are hard and demanding and frustrating. We strive for peace and harmony in our homes and often find ourselves angry, in tears and feeling powerless. I work with nuclear families, blended families and adoptive families who are living in chaos. I educate parents on setting appropriate limits and boundaries and STICKING TO THEM while also teaching kids how to have respect, follow rules as well as having an appropriate voice and getting their needs met. You WILL see positive results; bringing structure and balance into the home is the bare minimum you will experience, when you find yourselves laughing together as a family, you will know you have arrived.

I cannot imagine a family out there that does not want to be happy. But life happens. Things can become dysfunctional as family members come and go (planned or unexpectedly), structure and hierarchy change, illness strikes, conflict escalates, addiction is discovered, careers are earned and lost, and communication comes to a standstill. Through mutually agreed upon ground rules, therapy will be the place for each family member to share their experience without fear of retribution and to have the opportunity to be heard without interruption. Then, through a variety of strategies, we work together to reorganize the family's energies and move towards a positive outcome.

Oftentimes, one person will be identified as the problem in a family system, but, oftentimes, they are simply the one who has been showing the symptoms of the dysfunction in the family, rather than themselves having an individual issue. Families can address this by sitting down and talking with each other, with an impartial third party, to discover what is happening within the family and what can be done to fix it.

I love when children/teens and their parents all come in together. Some worry it will be awkward but I make a point to have it be relaxed and conversational. I help parents understand the social culture and stressors impacting their kids' lives, as well as help them express their concerns in ways that don't feel like lectures to their kids. In turn, I help kids to articulate their struggles in ways that their parents can appreciate and empathize with. Respect and responsibility is an important part of any work I do with families, and helping parents to balance their expressions of compassion with their need to hold their kids accountable is always part of the conversation.