Family Counseling Services in Rahway, NJ.

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.

Family therapy will include working together to help improve communication, handle difficult conversations, making changes in dynamics, discuss life transitions that can impact others. Utilizing a Family Systems approach will take place in sessions. Formulating individual and family goals will be explored and a plan of action will take place with concrete goals.

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.

Kids live in the context of their families, and I believe that when you work with kids, the family should be included because this is the best way to create change. As parents, you are the most important people in your children's lives, and I want to strengthen your connections with them. It is important to look at the cycles that families get into, and also to understand what prevents communication between kids and their parents. The therapy is tailored to the needs of your family, so who is present in each session may vary. I want to support individuals as well as restore and improve the connection between parents and their children. This also applies to adult children and their parents.

When a loved one has an addiction or alcohol problem, the whole family suffers. The impact may not be immediately evident, but it is there, festering and creating anger, resentment, insecurity and other emotional and often financial issues. Families often feel beat up by the addict and then beat up by the treatment centers, who offer addict focused education and minimal family treatment. Who is supporting you, the family, when your family weekend is over? You loved one is released from treatment with an aftercare plan. What is your aftercare plan? Living with a newly recovering person doesn’t have to mean walking on eggshells. Compassionate family focused education, coaching and therapy help families heal and create lives worth living.

Our music therapists specialize in reaching children, teens, and young adults, including those with special needs like autism, ADHD, and Down's syndrome, as well as siblings of children with special needs who are working to identify their role or voice in the family. Individualized music exercises conducted by our highly trained therapists can address coping strategies, social skills, functional speech, and more!

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 dynamics are complicated, & when things break down it affects everyone, not just the people in the middle of the conflict. I work with families using Structural Family Therapy, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, & Cognitive Behavioral Family Therapy to help identify what's really driving the tension, improve how you communicate, & build healthier patterns that actually stick. That means looking at roles, boundaries, thought patterns, & emotional bonds that hold your family together or pull it apart. Every member's perspective matters here. The goal isn't to assign blame or pick sides. It's to help your family function in a way that supports everyone in it, individually and together.

We have our closest, longest-lasting, and most complicated relationships with family. When there is divorce, remarriage, addiction, mental illness or other dysfunction it can become even more complicated. With my Family Systems perspective I can help you understand how your family helped to form the person that you are, and help you untangle yourself from the dysfunction and heal the relationships that are important to you.

Family therapy is an active approach that Chris Colasuonno, LCSW-R uses to help bring peace and harmony for the family. There are a lot of dynamics in a family where psychotherapy and counseling can balance out clients and family. A family's culture, dynamics, viewpoint can play a big part in how a family interacts. Many families have issues with mental illness and substance abuse issues that effect each member. Some families benefit from couples therapy, relationship counseling that can lower anger and get individuals to communicate effectively. Chris possesses a lot of experience to balance out a family member's viewpoint using cognitive behavior therapy to find solutions.

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.

I always include parent(s) in all sessions so they can learn how to bring out the best in their children. I reach, teach, educate and motivate children to value and respect their parents. When children show gratitude not attitude it is much easier for parents to praise and show love rather than yelling, punishing, and restricting their children. The resulting harmonious relations improve the atmosphere of the entire household and the benefits extend to siblings.

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.