Family Counseling Services in Salem, CT.

Understanding your family, understanding the roles each family member plays as well as what your role is within your family can be some of the best work a person can do in order to be a more cohesive family unit. Most families struggle with how to make their families work in a more cohesive and harmonious manner. It takes work but it is well worth the investment.

In professional counseling, we pride ourselves in specializing in many forms of counseling. During my time at my graduate school, I took two marriage and family courses. The most notable as being the Metaframeworks model under systems theory. Think of a family as an engine of a car, you hear a ticking. Is it the timing belt? What made this part break in the first place? Can there be more than one influence in any maladaptive behavior or pattern... The answer is yes.

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.

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.

Research shows trying to just “fix the kid” does not generally work. The family should be involved if at all possible. I made it a special point to learn the specific strategies and techniques for this population as I went through my schooling. To this day I have approx. one decade of experience in working with this population, and I look forward to continuing to work with children of all ages, particularly with family involvement.