Family therapy

Who needs to be in the room?

Whoever the work involves. Sometimes that is everyone under one roof. Sometimes it is a parent and one child, or two adult siblings deciding how to care for a parent. We can also start with part of the family and widen it later.

Nobody is dragged in as the problem. If a family arrives with one person identified as the reason for the appointment, that is usually the first thing we look at together.

What if we just end up arguing in front of you?

That is useful. I would rather see the real thing than a polite version of it. What matters is what happens next: we slow it down, look at who was trying to say what, and find the sentence that got lost.

Two things are usually true. Everyone in the room is protecting something that matters to them, and the way they are protecting it is costing the family something.

What changes at home?

We work as a team on goals that are specific and achievable, and they are usually ordinary. One evening a week where phones go down. A way to disagree that does not end with a door. A repair that happens the same night instead of three days later.

Small, repeatable changes are what hold when the week gets hard.

Reasons families come in

• A separation, a remarriage, or a household that has just changed shape
• A parent returning from service or long stretches of shift work
• Grief that everyone is carrying privately and nobody is naming
• A teenager who has gone quiet, and parents who do not know how to reach them

Ready when you are.

Therapy starts with a conversation. Send a short message and tell me what is going on, in your own words. We meet in person in Omaha, and online across Nebraska and Rhode Island.