Family Counseling Services in Fort Belvoir, VA.

In addition to marriage counseling, I have also helped with parenting issues, relationships between aging parents and their adult children, as well as between twins (I'm a twin). I see family conflict as normal and inevitable part of a growing and changing family. The key is how we communicate and resolve our tensions. Using Bowen family systems and emotionally-focused family therapy, I facilitate safe and open communication while being sensitive to the family hierarchy.

Our team of therapists can help you face your specific family issues and tailor a treatment plan specifically for you. Our team of counselors come from a wide variety of backgrounds, so we're confident we can find you help that's best suited for your unique challenges and goals. Working with us, you'll get results. Please don't wait, we're ready to help you today.

As a new mom myself, I know how challenging the adjustment to parenthood can be. No matter the age of your children, family therapy is a helpful way for each member to express their concerns and learn to work together toward common goals. Parents will leave feeling more united as a team, and children/teens will leave feeling understood and loved. Family therapy is also beneficial for siblings and extended relatives.

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.

I would say that about 25% of my coaching is in the family scope. This area sometimes takes the most time. It has so many fascist. I ask each party for the one "big" problem and we start at that point. Resolving one step at a time. In any area of the home, there is commonly layers of bad thinking that brings things people to the edge. In the past I did testing, but I have found by the 38 years of history that you and I must get in the middle of the "stuff". Testing can really be a cop-out for the lack of experience in a field.

If your family is experiencing conflict and misunderstanding, I can help. By sitting down together, learning to listen to one another and allowing me to help you sort out your differences, you can begin to relate to one another in a new way. My goal is to provide a calm and safe environment where each family member expresses his or her point of view and conflicts are resolved through understanding and consensus.

As you learn more about yourselves as a family, you will also begin to better understand yourselves as individuals and a collective unit. You can identify your own needs and learn how to express them more honestly and respectfully. You can become a stronger and happier family, while increasing understanding and love for your family. Although you may be feeling hopeless right now, with guided support and a willingness to change, itis possible to re-build your family dynamics and have it be even better than it was before.

Did you know that not everyone who claims to practice family therapy was actually trained in family therapy? It's true. Only licensed marriage and family therapists are specifically trained to deal with the complex issues that can arise in families. Not surprising - you know your own family and how complicated it can be! It takes a therapist with experience and training to know how to balance the needs and wants of each family member, all while making sure everyone is heard and understood. Add to that the difficult tasks of helping the family as a whole achieve its goals for better communication and closer relationships, and it's clear it takes a professional to make lasting changes for you.

As a Marriage and Family Therapist I strongly believe that there is no one way to handle a problem. I work with my clients to highlight what works and use that knowledge to help improve what seems to not be working. I genuinely enjoy seeing the entire family in session since it provides rich information on how a family interacts and provides insight on the resources they have to tackle whatever problems come their way.

Life can present you with difficult situations which are hard to process and move past. These challenges are not on your timeline and affect everything. Having worked in many healthcare settings, I am familiar navigating life-changing events and grief. I understand the territory of encountering loss, coping with trauma, the complexity of the medical system and living with illness. These issues can have ripple effects on your relationships, sense of self and perceptions of the world. I know how complex things can get, and I will support you during this process.

The focus of my family therapy work is the family as a whole. Working on the relationship between family members is more effective than just treating the person that is supposed to be in need of treatment. From my perspective, family therapy work sees individuals in relationships to others. As a result, the attention shifts from the symptomatic individual and problem is seen as the family as a whole. The goal of my family therapy work is to help establish a “functional family” – one in which needs and the desired goals of closeness, identity, self-expression, and meaning are met.

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.

Parents and teenagers must navigate a difficult process as the teenager begins to separate from the parents and form his or her separate identity. I work with both parents and teenagers to help in this process in terms of developing strategies for communication, conflict resolution and ways to begin connecting more effectively. I help both the teenager and the parent find ways to better understand and to develop greater tolerance for one another. More than any other developmental stage, the teenage years necessitate that parents alter their typical ways of parenting, become more flexible, more patient, more emotionally attentive.