Family Counseling Services in Alameda, CA.

Parent-Child therapy focuses on bringing awareness, attunement, and empathy into the family system. As a mother I know it can seem as if problems at home are because of one individual, but this is never the case. We are all part of a greater system. The goal of family systems therapy is to create a peaceful and harmonious space where everyone in the system can feel heard and understood. In addition to working towards creating more space for loving each other and less time for unproductive conflict, I also provide psychoeducation and practical parenting tools for lasting and dynamic change.

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.

When working with children and youth, the therapist cannot ignore the family system in which the child lives. I work with parents in multiple ways to help support youth in treatment, which may include separate parent sessions, co-parenting sessions, systemic family therapy, or Filial Therapy, a play therapy practice that coaches and guides parents in special play sessions with their child to decrease unwanted behaviors, improve relationships and communication, increase the child's emotional vocabulary, and increase the child's self-esteem.

Our family lives can be tremendously gratifying and enriching and a source of invaluable support and belonging. They can also become tense and chaotic at times, especially when under the influences of acute or chronic stress. Such responses are understandable, but you may need the support and guidance of a skilled therapist from time to time, especially if you are experiencing persistent conflicts that you cannot resolve or mediate on your own. Psychotherapy can help you relate to your family with more ease or resolve even long-standing problems. If you wish to explore how I could help with your particular situation, please call me at 415-533-9724. I would be happy to talk with you.

Imagine a family as a tree with branches, roots, trunk representing parts of the immediate and extended family. When working with families, all elements are considered. Usually there is a request for family therapy due to one of it's members in crisis, often a child. However, when an analysis of need is done it becomes apparent that more than one member of the family needs help in adjusting, growing and learning new behaviours. Clients contact me for a variety of reasons: to improve communications, solve family problems, support in special situations such as death, divorce, marriage, illness, child or adolescent issues.

Let me guess. One partner feels alone and like they don't matter and the other feels they are always being criticized and can't get anything right. The more one asks for the other to show up, the more the partner disappears physically and emotionally. You both bicker and fight and the idea of sitting and just hanging out seems elusive, if not impossible. Something like this? Often we crave connection but are blocked by the pain and the history that gets in the way. Small fights about little things become battles that highlight our struggle to have our basic relational needs met. I can help you get under the bickering to the parts crying out for connection- to an enriching relationship.

I use a family systems approach in my therapy, so having family members in the room, in my opinion, is the most efficient route towards healing and growth in individuals. I encourage clients to address relationships that are causing distress in their lives and work towards healthy differentiation of self. This can be done in individual therapy as well, but is more effective when all members of the relationship are present.