All humans have the need to belong and fit in. The family is the first and most significant factor in human development and identity. Family is the first social group we are exposed to. We learn how to fit in and feel a sense of belonging as a child within our family system, or for those who do not experience that important first sense of belonging often struggle through life always searching to belong and fit in. As a family therapist I will meet each person individually in the family before meeting together. Though it is important for me to understand and see how the family system operates it is equally important for me to get a sense of who each person is and the different dynamics happening within the family.

• I am an interactive therapist and will actively challenge the rigid, repetitive transactional patterns by which some families attempt to organize themselves and deal with stress.
  

• I help to create an opportunity for the family to structurally reorganize by "unfreezing" or "un-sticking" useless patterns.
  

• My therapeutic effort includes a push for clearer boundaries, increased flexibility in family interactions, practice more empathy toward others in the family, and most importantly to teach modifications of the dysfunctional structure.

• In a family struggling with dysfunction and problems there is often an identified problem person, identified patient (such as the black-sheep of the family or the "crazy one") who may actually have this role out of necessity in order to have some place in the family, or to keep the family together. The identified patient may be no sicker than anyone else in the family. The person may also be the family scapegoat.

• Family therapy also includes helping those individually within the family system, working with the more troubled relationships for example; parents relationship, mother and daughter/son, father and son/daughter, parents struggling with one particular child and also working within the sibling system since sibling rivalry plays a significant role in every family.

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