Family Counseling Services in Melville, NY.

In this day and age there is a lot that families have to contend with. At Family Guiding, we bring a fresh perspective and use a collaborative approach to helping families. We can help you use effective parenting techniques, manage challenging behaviors, increase healthy communication with your spouse and children and experience more peaceful interactions at home.

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.

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.

If you’re struggling with the effects of family conflict or dysfunction, we’re here to help. By exploring patterns from your past, you can begin to break free from cycles that may be affecting your current relationships. With compassionate support, you’ll learn to set healthy boundaries, improve communication, and heal from the emotional toll of family struggles. Our goal is to guide you toward stronger, more fulfilling connections with yourself and those around you, fostering a deeper sense of peace and resilience.

Families experience developmental stages, just like people do. Families are made up of individuals that require love, respect and must also exhibit a certain amount of cooperation to work together successfully. When families stop growing together and grow apart, there are many reasons why this might occur, and it is time to see a therapist experienced in the challenges of working with families. I will seek to restore the hierarchy - parents in the executive role and children learning and growing using the love and respect they receive from good parenting. I will work with the values and rules you prescribe for your family, and increase communication and cooperation.

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.

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.

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.

Growing together with our loved ones can be an amazing gift. Somewhere along the line we sometimes struggle with those closest to us. We may bring our old emotional issues into a new relationship or perhaps we find our old ways of communicating with our loved one is no longer working the way it used to. Change is difficult but taking steps to increase communication and sort out our old beliefs that no longer serve us, can bring new light and joy to the relationships we cherish.

I leverage a solution-based approach to clearly outline your primary challenge, work through an exercise to meditate on and define your future state and then work over 8 sessions to achieve it via homework and 1:1 sessions. Clients have experienced great success with this approach, my goal is to empower you - YOU have the answers and I want to help you find them.

In my 30+ years of clinical practice, I have served as the emotional and verbal connection between family members. Modeling healthy dialogue and building emotional trust and intimacy, I facilitate family exercises. Having each member describe how their brain works, neurotypical or neurodivergent, and their emotional temperament, allows family members to know each other from the inside out. Each person describes what they need from the other to feel more understood, approved of, and loved. Pairing family members up to become partners in change to work collaboratively and collectively in building a healthy family culture for ongoing comfort and unity, has been a primary focus of my practice.

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.

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