Family Counseling Services in Muscoy, CA.

In today’s culture, having children derived from more than one relationship is common. Divorce and remarriage can lead to a complex view of what is family. With these complexities come pressure, confusion, frustration, anxiety, and depression. These emotions can be experienced by any part of the family; the children, the father(s), or the mother(s) or even with extended family like the grandparents. Often these emotions are advanced as the lines of connection and boundaries are blurred or misunderstood. Counseling can help you to discover the importance of boundaries, understand the need for healthy relationships, and find balance.

Communication, joy, happiness, togetherness, trust, respect, faithfulness, honesty. These are the things we all want and expect in our relationships. Unfortunately, your once happy family is now struggling just to stay together. You don’t talk, spend time together, pray with or for one another… You live separate lives of strangers. You fight, argue and sometimes avoid one another on purpose. You hope and pray every day that today will be the day that God heals your family, brings you closer together and turns all the pain and frustration back into joy and laughter. Let us help you find your way back together and restore/heal whatever is keeping you apart.

As someone trained in family therapy, I see each family member as part of a team. Sometimes, one member is in pain and acting out. The whole family will then feel the effect. I love my work with families to help them get unstuck and see the growth. For the children / teens, family counseling can help sort through the acting out (or acting in sometimes) and help them more appropriately express their needs and wants. I can help!

I am a registered Marriage and Family Therapist Intern and am completing a Ph.D. in Marital and Family Therapy. I focus on building stronger relationship attachments by helping you communicate emotions. I have advanced training in experiential approaches to family therapy (Gestalt therapy and emotionally-focused therapy)--this just means I help facilitate greater emotional contact between family members.

I specialize in online parent coaching with the goal of helping you and your family have a closer more intimate relationship. After 11 years of working with children and families, I have concluded that this is the most effective way I can support families because you parents are the leaders of your home. If I can empower you through my knowledge and experience to implement some strategies at home, you can achieve your goals for your family. The support I provide will be sufficient for many families, but there are some situations that could benefit from the in-vivo coaching and direction that in person family therapy provides. Call me for a free 15 minute consultation about your needs

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.

Said one grieving mother, "Being estranged from your children and grandchildren is harder than surviving suicide. It's like experiencing a funeral, but they are not dead." Said another, "Many of my friends are excitedly anticipating visits from their relatives. They are shopping for them, planning meals and activities. I am truly happy for them. I want the same for myself, but I can't have it..." I work with parents and their adult children who have become estranged. My goal is to bring about reconciliation. If you have a need in this area, please feel free to call me to discuss your situation.

Family counseling is helpful with problems setting limits with children, dealing with grief, divorce, loss that can cause behavior problems, school issues, or family problems. Sometimes parents want help with boundaries for teenagers with anger issues, reblelliousness or entitlement problems. In some cases family therapy involves young adults who need support building an indepentent lifestyle and recovery from drugs or alcohol. Family therapy helps you learn how to help without enabling!

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 offer a balanced approach which gives a voice to each member of your family unit. Validating individual concerns while promoting inter-familial harmony is my specialty when it comes to counseling troubled families. I will teach you and your family how to communicate in productive ways, how to set healthy boundaries with one another and how to respect your differences in an atmosphere of love and understanding.

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.

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.