Family Counseling Services in Montclair, NJ.

When a family doesn’t work well together there’s little peace, contentment or fun at home. I work with families to help identify the non-working dynamics that may be repetitively occurring and causing ruptures and resentments. Family therapy can help strengthen the resiliency of a family after a crisis, as well as break long-standing destructive patterns. Sessions allow for everyone’s voice to be heard and often include defining each individual’s role and responsibility.

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 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.

In working with families and conflicts, I approach it more as an organic facilitation process rather than traditional therapy. Utilizing new human technologies, we come to understand that there is no right or wrong or good and bad. Yet, there are insidious unconscious dynamics that are powerful and can cause blind spots. Our process together will tease apart these dynamics while working on resolving them, thereby uncovering new fields of possibilities.

Family therapy is an extremely rewarding area of my practice. If one or more members of a family are hurting, everyone is affected. Fortunately, healing to those family members also brings healing to everyone. By examining the underlying issues that may be affecting family relationships, I am able to address longstanding difficulties and bring resolution and growth to a family.

Families are complicated. Each person in a family plays his or her own role, and the way each person behaves when the whole family is together is not necessarily the same as when they are apart. At the Lukin Center, we use emotionally focused therapy to help families understand the complex dynamics among all family members and to help each individual in the group feel heard, supported, and understood.

Sometimes families lose their way in this busy world and need a place where they can come together and communicate and listen in a safe place. With the use of family systems therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness, play therapy (for children) and solution-focused techniques we will work together to increase your family functioning to be able to withstand the many demands on todays families.

When there is dysfunction in a family, going to therapy can be a very effective way for the entire family to learn how to communicate and express themselves in a way that the other members can hear them. They will also learn how to listen and hear each other. There is often an "identified patient" assigned by other family members but it is generally the family's dynamics that need to be explored rather than focusing on one member. I will help you to see, understand and change those dynamics.

I focus on specific relationships , rather than the entire family. Like I do in couples work, I would see the two of you both together and individually. I evaluate these cases carefully to make sure that I would be able to be of service to both of you. Usually whatever is going wrong has a long history, and we will unravel that. It may take a bit of time, but can be done if you are willing and patient.

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)

Dr. Vaughan has helped families to enhance connections and heal wounds for 15 years. Working with the entire family or particular members, Dr. Vaughan provides a non-judgmental setting in which individuals can openly express needs and concerns. She helps individuals gain the skills needed to foster understanding by and for other family members. Family therapy with Dr. Vaughan improves family bonds and mutual acceptance among family members, and provides families with the tools needed to sustain meaningful connections.

When there are difficulties in our family, they tend to also affect other areas of our lives. With everyone participating (or just the couple if that is the prime area of the situation), it is possible to move to better ways of working together as a family. When this is done, you will find that your family again becomes the rock on which everything is built, allowing you to experience a sense of wholeness and peace. Christopher will guide your family as you explore what is going on and though the journey to wholeness.

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 deregulated (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 dysfunction. Kevin@kevinflemingphd.com or 877-606-6161.