Family Counseling Services in Port Chester, NY.

The family can be the very foundation of support, comfort, and love, but it can also be the greatest source of stress, strain, and sorrow. Our compassionate and experienced family counselors help family members have a closer, stronger, and more rewarding relationship with each other and teach family members how to resolve conflict in a healthy way. Our counselors can assist parents to address the unique needs of children and adolescents with emotional, behavioral, communicative, and learning issues. They will help facilitate much-needed dialogue between feuding family members. The counselors will assess how best to treat the family. Sometimes, counseling will be conducted with the entire family present and sometimes with just the designated child. At...(view profile to read more)

When conflict arises within the family system it can create severe distress. My approach to family therapy begins with developing an understanding of the needs of each individual and the family unit as a whole. Based on this formulation a practical treatment plan is developed, which enables the family to create a healthy dynamic where conflicts can be resolved and a mutual understanding of the various perspectives of each family member can be recognized.

Dr. Sara Mandelbaum and Dr. Joel Stukalin are expert consultants for short-term interventions with families, specifically related to child-rearing & blended family issues. They consult regularly with concerned parents and grandparents about family related issues that threaten the family health and integrity. Usually a few, comprehensive sessions with Dr. Joel or Dr. Sara lay the groundwork for a better understanding that leads to the resolution of family problems. Where necessary individulal counseling referrals can be made. Clients have stated that the focused, intelligent & solution-oriented approach from our sessions has often helped them derive necessary knowledge for family harmony

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.

The parent-child relationship does not end when childhood ends. These are relationships that last for your lifetime, also as a grown adult. Sometimes conflicts with parents or children that originated when you or they were a child(ren) continue on into adulthood with recognizable themes. If you and your family member are wanting to address and work on improving your relationship, please explore therapy together. It is never too late become more peaceful if you both want to have that with each other.

Families are the most important elements of society. We believe that healthy families form great communities. It all starts with the couple. We do intense couples and family therapy. Our relational skill building approach has helped many couples and families to reduce violence, conflict, miscommunication and anger at home. We are the only ones who give you a two-for-one treatment. We provide couples and family treatment along with anger management treatment at not extra cost.

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.

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.

Originally trained as a family therapist at the Family Institute of Cambridge, Mass., I have evolved as an experienced family therapist. I believe that family therapy is generally the treatment of choice in resolving issues and preventing the problem from going to the next generation. It is useful to see an entire family but can also be beneficial if parts of a family will work together to overcome communication problems, resentments, and misunderstandings that can tear families apart. Family therapy is very helpful to resolving conflicts of adult children after a parent has died. It can also be useful with young children, siblings, as well as teenagers, middle-aged people and older adults.

Keeping the family strong means that you have a strong support system around you. I work with the family to help members better understand the system that they have created, how it is functioning, and how it is serving them. The goal is to understand the system by assessing its strengths and weaknesses to better use it to support and sustain its members.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples focuses on strengthening the emotional bond between partners. Through structured sessions, we explore underlying patterns and attachment needs driving relationship dynamics. Using interventions aimed at fostering empathy and understanding, we facilitate open communication and emotional expression. Couples learn to recognize and address negative interaction cycles, replacing them with healthier patterns of connection and responsiveness. EFT emphasizes creating a secure attachment bond, fostering feelings of safety and trust within the relationship. By deepening emotional intimacy and building a stronger connection, couples experience wellness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What makes working with you as a family different than you as an individual is your family has an identity as well. In fact, the health of your family has a great deal to do with how much you acknowledge the distinction between yourself as an individual and who you are a part of a family. In our work together, you and your partner will begin to differentiate yourselves as individuals from who you are in your family so that you can begin to nurture both.

Nearly all families deal with some sort of stress or conflict at one point or another. In the middle of what can seem like the most difficult time for your family, actually lies opportunity. Through therapy, I can help family members begin to understand one another better, improve their communication, and resolve conflicts, leading to healthier and more secure relationships. Your family is the most powerful resource. Let’s strengthen it together.

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

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.

Each day our practice caters to adults, children, adolescents, and families in mostly individual sessions, though sometimes in couples, or family sessions. Family work can be very meaningful and impactful for all who participate. Our work raises awareness while offering guidance that awakens our clients' abilities to seize the direction of their life-path and the levels of commitment in relationships. We provide a safe and comfortable environment to allow our clients to discuss and evaluate their dilemmas, attain insight and resolve problematic ways of functioning.

Careers and children each place enormous stress on a couple’s ability to be together in an intimate and satisfying way. Every couple has different ways of dealing with the challenges, and counseling can provide the perspective and encouragement to re-create a shared vision for the future. For something as important as this, it is surprising how little training and preparation is provided; family therapy fills in the blanks, and resolves the confusion.

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.

Distressed family members too often exclusively focus their efforts on changing their difficult sibling, parent, grandparent or in-law. This is ineffective. Difficult family members often resist such efforts. I teach each family member how to first work on changing their own self-defeating emotional and behavioral reactions in response to their difficult family members. Once someone calms down and not gets so upset about the other people in their family they can influence other people to find better ways to live with or at least gracefully tolerate each other. I show each family member how to work on themselves in order to have a better chance of influencing others. Think about this.

The journey of life is filled with joy, disappointments, loss and renewal. Integrative Healing Family Therapy@ helps a child, adolescent and adult to find the strength to review life's troubling issues and to form new perceptions and change behaviors. It is essential to view the presented problems and pain as part of a larger system (famly of origin and extended family). The therapist connects with individual issues and personality characteristics to appreciate the individuals as well as the family's contribution to dysfunction. Therapist respects individual and family contexts and works with the family members to resolve issues where new boundaries and healthier interactions are attained.

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.