Family
Family Therapy
Families develop their own rules about what can be said, who holds things together, and what gets quietly absorbed. Those arrangements usually formed for good reasons and often outlive their usefulness. Family therapy is a place where the pattern itself can be examined — with everyone present, and with enough structure that the conversation goes somewhere different than it does at home.
Work with the family as a system — roles, loyalties, generational differences, and the conversations that have never quite been possible.
15 minutes, free, no obligation. Scheduling via Headway.
- Format
- Telehealth
- Available in
- New York State
- Languages
- English & Spanish
- Telehealth throughout New York State
- Therapy in English & Spanish
- Sessions 45–60 minutes
You may be here because
Some of this may sound familiar.
The same conflict resurfaces at every family gathering.
One person has become the one everything runs through.
A change — an illness, a separation, a move — has shifted everyone’s footing.
Parents and adult children are speaking across a cultural or generational gap.
There is something the family has never talked about directly.
An older teen is struggling and the whole household feels it.
Who this may help, and what therapy may explore
Who this may help
- Parents and their children aged 17 and older
- Adult siblings navigating caregiving, inheritance, or old roles
- Immigrant and first-generation families bridging different expectations
- Blended families working out roles and loyalties
- Families adjusting to illness, loss, separation, or relocation
- Adult children and their parents rebuilding a strained relationship
What therapy may explore
- Roles — who mediates, who is the responsible one, who is left out
- Communication rules, spoken and unspoken
- Generational and cultural differences in what respect and care look like
- Repair after conflict, distance, or rupture
- Boundaries between households, generations, and extended family
- How stress in one part of the family travels through the rest of it
- Grief, secrets, and things that were never given language
Karla’s approach
How I work with families
I treat the family as the client rather than treating one person as the problem. Even where one member is clearly struggling most, the pattern around them is usually part of what maintains it.
Everyone should leave the first session feeling that their version was heard. Family sessions can otherwise become a hearing with a predetermined verdict, and nothing changes after that.
Cultural context sits at the center of this work, particularly for immigrant and first-generation families. Differences about independence, obligation, privacy and respect are often read as disrespect in one direction and control in the other, when both people are operating from coherent frameworks that were never made explicit to each other.
Sessions are practical. We work on what gets said at the dinner table on Sunday, not only on insight about why it is difficult.
On scope: I work with families that include members aged 17 and older. For younger children, I am glad to help you find an appropriately specialized clinician.
Approaches that may be drawn on
- Systemic and structural family therapy
- Culturally responsive family work
- Solution-Focused Therapy
Not every approach is used with every client. What we draw on depends on what you are working through and what you find useful — and we talk openly about whether it is helping.
Questions
About family therapy.
More general questions about fees, insurance, scheduling and telehealth are answered on the FAQ page.
Does everyone have to attend every session?
Not necessarily. Composition often varies — sometimes the whole family, sometimes a particular pair. We decide together based on what the work needs, and I explain the reasoning rather than rearranging things without discussion.
We speak different languages at home. Can that work in session?
Yes, and it is a common situation in bilingual families. I work in English and Spanish, and sessions can move between them. Being able to say something in the language it belongs in — and having it understood without translation — often matters a great deal.
What if a family member refuses to attend?
Useful work is still possible with those who are willing. Family systems are interconnected enough that a genuine change in one part tends to shift the others, even without everyone in the room.
Related
Other ways we might work together.
Couples Therapy
For two people stuck in a conversation they keep having — slowing the cycle down enough to understand it, and building a better way through.
Bilingual Therapy
Therapy in the language your experience actually happened in — with a clinician who speaks both, so nothing has to be translated or explained twice.
Trauma-Informed Therapy
Careful, paced work for people whose past still shapes their present — understanding what survival asked of you, and what it costs to keep doing it.
Start with a short conversation.
A 15 minutes consultation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. We can talk about what has been going on and whether this is the right fit.
15 minutes, free, and no obligation to book a session afterward. Scheduling continues on Headway.
- Therapy in English & Spanish
- Telehealth across New York
- Response within two business days