Family Counseling Services in Norwalk, CT.

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.

Many of us feel intense pressure to be perfect. A perfect parent, a perfect spouse, a perfect friend, and a perfect professional. The drive to show up as expected by others can be functional in some cases but this can wreak havoc on your marriage, family and on your emotional balance. When one member of the family is struggling it can feel like the whole family is struggling. Together, we can work to strengthen the family system through individual awareness.

My approach to family therapy begins with using my training to determine who, in addition to the primary client, needs treatment. Sessions may include various family configurations (both parents, one parent and child, members of extended family, or a single individual) and treatment includes strategic family therapy to improve communication and resolve underlying conflict.

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.

Families that work well together as a unit provide healthy boundaries and structure. As a structural therapist, I will help family members and those who are in close relationship with them, to foster change by differentiation of self thereby, reducing emotional entanglements and negative problematic behaviors. Families will learn how to rely on their strengths to reduce internal stress and conflict. They will also learn how to improve their internal family systems and ways interacting between family members. To further promote behavioral changes, I will help the family members to increase their awareness of self and promote family cohesion.

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.

My interest in family counseling came from studying the dynamics which make up a family, sometimes for many generations. Patterns exist as a result of shared beliefs (or rules like in my family of origin). Each family member has their own way of understanding what takes place and by using conjoint family therapy, everyone has a voice from the oldest to the youngest. As a therapist, I provide an environment for exploration, curiosity & opportunity to create better choices and which patterns the family as a whole find beneficial.

My approach explores the family dynamics that keep people from living authentic lives. Unresolved issues from the past may cause the heart to shut down. If left unattended, this disruption in the flow of love is carried across generations, ripples into the shadows of the family landscape, often emerging as illness, emotional difficulties, and broken relationships. All family members are invited to attend and together we work through the issues in a safe caring environment.

We come from a systems approach when working with families. We teach family members how to communicate more effectively with one another. There is an emphasis on personal responsibility and each family member looking at how their behavior is contributing to the problems. Building empathy between family members is also a main focus for us when working with families. We strive for families to leave sessions feeling more connected and understood by each other with the tools to be more successful in their communications. We do family therapy both in the office and in homes.

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.

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

Family can be a wonderful source of strength and love, but the dynamism of so many individuals and their own needs and desires can also create different and new challenges. My goal as a therapist that works with both individuals and couples is to help you understand your family dynamics and needs so that I can provide you with the tools and techniques to thrive within your family life as it is now.

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.

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.

Family therapy is full of richness. All families are different yet very much the same. There are many different dynamics at work with families. There are parent and sibling sub-systems, coalitions and alignments within families. Families can be very complex units yet very enriching to their members. I enjoy working with families, especially the challenges of the developmental life stages, birth, toddlers, young adolescents, young adults, mid-life, old age. Each offers their unique challenges. The benefits come with setting clear goals, objectives, rules, consequences to breaking the rules and developing open and respectful lines of communication.