Family Counseling Services in Edgewater, NJ.

Nearly all families deal with some sort of stress or conflict at one point or another. In the middle of what can seem like the most difficult time for your family, actually lies opportunity. Through therapy, I can help family members begin to understand one another better, improve their communication, and resolve conflicts, leading to healthier and more secure relationships. Your family is the most powerful resource. Let’s strengthen it together.

Family issues can feel daunting. They can cause much inner stress, grief and even illness. Addressing tension in family relationships is key to living a happy, wholesome life. I see each individual as a sub-unit of family life. I have done great systems work in working with the entire family unit, in creating a space to discuss issues, allow anger, and at the same time, finding a space to develop creative solutions and better ways of working through conflict and pain. Together we create a space to process the strained dynamic and work on understanding, respecting and improving connection with one another, allowing space for harmony, compassion and love to be expressed.

Keeping the family strong means that you have a strong support system around you. I work with the family to help members better understand the system that they have created, how it is functioning, and how it is serving them. The goal is to understand the system by assessing its strengths and weaknesses to better use it to support and sustain its members.

In family counseling family members develop healthy ways of communicating and responding to one another to create and establish an atmosphere of trust and emotional safety. Family members learn to identify their own needs, increase sensitivity to the needs of others and interact in ways that build trust. Family counseling is conducted in an atmosphere of respect and dignity for all.

We come from a systems approach when working with families. We teach family members how to communicate more effectively with one another. There is an emphasis on personal responsibility and each family member looking at how their behavior is contributing to the problems. Building empathy between family members is also a main focus for us when working with families. We strive for families to leave sessions feeling more connected and understood by each other with the tools to be more successful in their communications. We do family therapy both in the office and in homes.

The family can be the very foundation of support, comfort, and love, but it can also be the greatest source of stress, strain, and sorrow. Our compassionate and experienced family counselors help family members have a closer, stronger, and more rewarding relationship with each other and teach family members how to resolve conflict in a healthy way. Our counselors can assist parents to address the unique needs of children and adolescents with emotional, behavioral, communicative, and learning issues. They will help facilitate much-needed dialogue between feuding family members. The counselors will assess how best to treat the family. Sometimes, counseling will be conducted with the entire family present and sometimes with just the designated child. At...(view profile to read more)

When conflict arises within the family system it can create severe distress. My approach to family therapy begins with developing an understanding of the needs of each individual and the family unit as a whole. Based on this formulation a practical treatment plan is developed, which enables the family to create a healthy dynamic where conflicts can be resolved and a mutual understanding of the various perspectives of each family member can be recognized.

We help family members work together to reconnect, strengthen existing resources and find solutions to tough problems. Family therapy can be useful in family situations that result in stress, grief, anger or conflict. Issues that may bring a family to therapy could include: a problem a child is having in school, mental, behavioral, or physical illness of a family member, loss of a family member, or dissatisfaction or dissolution in a marriage At Transformation Counseling we focus on aiding families in developing more effective, less stressful patterns of living. If you and your family are ready to take that step please contact us.

The journey of life is filled with joy, disappointments, loss and renewal. Integrative Healing Family Therapy@ helps a child, adolescent and adult to find the strength to review life's troubling issues and to form new perceptions and change behaviors. It is essential to view the presented problems and pain as part of a larger system (famly of origin and extended family). The therapist connects with individual issues and personality characteristics to appreciate the individuals as well as the family's contribution to dysfunction. Therapist respects individual and family contexts and works with the family members to resolve issues where new boundaries and healthier interactions are attained.

Family therapy is often times a necessary extention to individual therapy. Families are supposed to work as a system. Sometimes the system breaks down and one member may be viewed as the broken piece. Until the system comes together to work through what is really happening the problem often persists. In therapy together we can look at your system as a whole. Let's open lines of communication between family members, improve your relationships and begin enjoying your lives together again.

Helping couples and families with relationship issues, parenting, step and blended family issues. Also helping family going through loss, divorce, illness and coping with difficult and painful issues related to a child or other family member. Also help to strengthen family and couple communication with spouse, children, in-laws and other family members.

Families can carry either unhealed wounds or trauma and/or may have unhealthy communication patterns. These issues can be significantly improved with family therapy. I create a safe space for all parties to share their feelings in a healthy way, without blame, focusing on their own personal experience. I then provide exercises and tools to help them gain understanding of one another and validate one another. This has often been markedly lacking and can be very healing to receive. We go back in time to understand how the current dynamic in the family developed and with that understanding, how it can be shifted into a healthier dynamic.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time you looked forward to being with each other. There was trust and you enjoyed each other's company. Now it feels like there is an invisible wall separating you. Hal's soothing wisdom offers you the opportunity to learn the vital building blocks leading to a trusting and loving relationship. Hal is an experienced and highly regarded couples counselor. He is also a published author and was invited to appear as a special guest on David Lettermans Late Night television program on 2 separate occasions. Hal's schedule is flexible and appointments are available days, evenings and Sundays. Since 1975.

We are part of something larger than ourselves and that is why we tend to encounter difficulties in dealing with simple things in life such as learning how to live together, raising children or coping with adolescence. In Family Therapy, as opposed to Individual Therapy, we explore, understand and address issues family members present at their source. Emotional origins of personal conflicts get exposed throughout roles and dynamics; part of my work with families include to question and re-frame them to mobilize stagnation and create room for new experiences.

I teach family members a skill called the Intentional Dialogue to help improve family communication. Often family members don't feel heard, that what they say matters, understood and that others know what they are feeling. The Intentional Dialogue allows each family member to share their 'side of the story' in a safe environment without fearing being judged or criticized. When this happens family members start to work as a team rather than be adversarial.

Family therapy looks at the entire family system—parents, children, extended family members—to identify strengths and problematic behaviours. I collaborate with families on strategies for utilizing their own capabilities for resolving problems, and on developing effective communication and problem-solving skills for preventing conflicts. I specialize in working with families of teenagers, which is an age that can be challenging for both the teenagers and their parents.

We offer therapy to families struggling with communication, boundaries, past trauma, and just feeling completely overwhelmed. We understand, there is no manual, and often we don't have good examples from our own childhood. Do you long to have just one day where home can feel like a sanctuary and not a hellhole? We can help. We're with you and we're here to help your family be able to with each other. Get in touch with us today.

Family can be a wonderful source of strength and love, but the dynamism of so many individuals and their own needs and desires can also create different and new challenges. My goal as a therapist that works with both individuals and couples is to help you understand your family dynamics and needs so that I can provide you with the tools and techniques to thrive within your family life as it is now.

During Family Therapy we deal with: patterns of communication (the way people in the family talk to each other); anger (how that sabotages the family); correcting dysfunctional patters, and negotiation (how to work out things so that everybody feels O.K. about the solutions). During family counseling families learn how to deal with crisis as well conflict management techniques. Also included are effective parenting skills for both children as well as teenagers. Therapy needs to have practical strategies and to be as short term as possible.

Originally trained as a family therapist at the Family Institute of Cambridge, Mass., I have evolved as an experienced family therapist. I believe that family therapy is generally the treatment of choice in resolving issues and preventing the problem from going to the next generation. It is useful to see an entire family but can also be beneficial if parts of a family will work together to overcome communication problems, resentments, and misunderstandings that can tear families apart. Family therapy is very helpful to resolving conflicts of adult children after a parent has died. It can also be useful with young children, siblings, as well as teenagers, middle-aged people and older adults.

I enjoy doing both family counseling. I get to know each member of the family individually and the family dynamic, and how each person perceives the presenting problem. I am careful not to take sides and blame any one family member. All deserve respect. I work to learn more and to help you be more curious about whatever problem you are coming to me to resolve.

The parent-child relationship does not end when childhood ends. These are relationships that last for your lifetime, also as a grown adult. Sometimes conflicts with parents or children that originated when you or they were a child(ren) continue on into adulthood with recognizable themes. If you and your family member are wanting to address and work on improving your relationship, please explore therapy together. It is never too late become more peaceful if you both want to have that with each other.

My approach to family therapy is to look for the source of the family conflict. After over 37 years of practice, I can usually zero in on what is going on. Sometimes one parent is out of control. Sometimes parents are in conflict over child-rearing practices; one is too permissive and one too strict. Sometimes one child is favored over another. I generally meet with the whole family over a period of time, encouraging honest and constructive communication. Through patient guidance, the problems surface and are worked out.

Distressed family members too often exclusively focus their efforts on changing their difficult sibling, parent, grandparent or in-law. This is ineffective. Difficult family members often resist such efforts. I teach each family member how to first work on changing their own self-defeating emotional and behavioral reactions in response to their difficult family members. Once someone calms down and not gets so upset about the other people in their family they can influence other people to find better ways to live with or at least gracefully tolerate each other. I show each family member how to work on themselves in order to have a better chance of influencing others. Think about this.

Careers and children each place enormous stress on a couple’s ability to be together in an intimate and satisfying way. Every couple has different ways of dealing with the challenges, and counseling can provide the perspective and encouragement to re-create a shared vision for the future. For something as important as this, it is surprising how little training and preparation is provided; family therapy fills in the blanks, and resolves the confusion.