Family therapy in Los Angeles that heals the whole system.
Even with all the love in the world, family is complicated. Our family therapists provide a nurturing environment for parents, children, and siblings to connect, communicate, and grow together — and we hand-select your therapist from our small, boutique roster.
Family therapy for:parent–child conflictsibling conflictbehavioral or school problemsdivorce & blended familiesa member’s illness or addictionmajor life transitionsestranged adult childrenadult siblings
“In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past, bridge to our future.”
— Alex Haley
FAMILY THERAPY IN LOS ANGELES
Family therapy that heals the system, not the scapegoat.
A few minutes with our founder, Brooke Sprowl, LCSW — on how My LA Therapy approaches the work, and why we treat the pattern between people rather than one person’s problem.
More from Brooke
Help Is Just A Free Call Away
Important Qualities to Look for In A Therapist
What is living with a purpose?
Does this sound like you?
Everyone in the house is hurting. No one can say it out loud.
“We love each other. We just can’t talk without it turning into a fight.”
“Somehow every argument ends up being about one of us.”
“Nobody modeled this for me, and I can feel myself repeating it.”
“Our kid is acting out and I can’t tell if it’s them, us, or both.”
“Since the divorce, nobody knows what the rules are anymore.”
“My adult kids barely call. I don’t know how we got here.”
If you’re nodding — that’s exactly where we begin.
Most family therapy fails because it focuses on content, the surface issues you are arguing about, rather than process, the way you argue. The content changes from fight to fight. The process repeats. Nervous System-Based Family Therapy interrupts the repeating cycles and unconscious defenses underneath, so the change carries into every argument you have not had yet.
✓Developed by our founder Brooke Sprowl, LCSW
01
Real-time Autonomic Tracking
Anxiety rises in both of you at once, and each family member’s nervous system reads the other’s as the threat. We track both systems in real-time and teach you to co-regulate and meet each other with love rather than fear.
02
Unconscious Defense Interruption
By bringing awareness to each person's blind spots and unconscious defenses, we map how they interact with one another to perpetuate the cycle. We interrupt this cycle in the moment, practicing tangible tools to forge new ways of relating.
03
Nervous System-Based Communication
Once you can both stay regulated, we teach you to say what you need and hear what your family member needs in a way that lands. The needs underneath the conflict get met, and the cycle resolves in repair instead of disconnection.
Not the next name in a directory — the right therapist chosen for you.
Every therapist on our roster is personally vetted and trained by our founder, Brooke Sprowl, LCSW, who brings 20 years of clinical practice to every hire. When you come to us as a family, we get to know all of you — your history, your dynamics, and what each of you needs — then hand-select a therapist who specializes in families like yours.
✓Personally vetted by Brooke Sprowl, LCSW
✓Family therapy specialists
Family therapy in Los Angeles that heals the whole system.
Even with all the love in the world, family is complicated. Our family therapists provide a nurturing environment for parents, children, and siblings to connect, communicate, and grow together — and we hand-select your therapist from our small, boutique roster.
parent–child conflictsibling conflictbehavioral or school problemsdivorce & blended familiesa member’s illness or addictionmajor life transitionsestranged adult childrenadult siblings
“In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past, bridge to our future.”
— Alex Haley
From our founder
What family therapy here actually sounds like.
A few minutes with our founder, Brooke Sprowl, LCSW — on how My LA Therapy approaches the work, and why we treat the pattern between people rather than one person’s problem.
Does this sound like you?
Everyone in the house is hurting. No one can say it out loud.
“We love each other. We just can’t talk without it turning into a fight.”
“Somehow every argument ends up being about one of us.”
“Nobody modeled this for me, and I can feel myself repeating it.”
“Our kid is acting out and I can’t tell if it’s them, us, or both.”
“Since the divorce, nobody knows what the rules are anymore.”
“My adult kids barely call. I don’t know how we got here.”
If you’re nodding — that’s exactly where we begin.
Family therapy that heals the system, not the scapegoat.
A family is a unique social system with its own structure and patterns of communication. When one member struggles, the problem is rarely theirs alone — it is usually a symptom of a larger pattern the whole system is running.
Often we can’t see how our own behavior is creating the very behaviors in our family members that hurt us. Treating only the person identified as “the problem” is like treating the symptom of a disease and not the disease itself: new problems emerge until the system heals.
The cycle
Each step feeds the next.
1One family member struggles
2Anxiety risesspreads through the household
3Unconscious defensesare activated
4One member gets scapegoatedno one sees their own part
5Every member’s needsgo unmet
↺and the cycle starts again
The good news
Family therapy is a loving choice, not a last resort.
At My LA Therapy, we hand-select your therapist from our small, boutique roster — someone who can guide your whole family back to closeness, communication, and peace.
Family specialties
Specialized family therapy for every stage and every kind of family.
Family therapy focuses on the roles, rules, and patterns between all of you — not one person’s problems. Sessions may include the whole family, the parents alone, or one parent and one child, depending on what the system needs.
The focus
What we focus on
See how each of you plays a role in the problems
Talk openly in a safe environment
Identify the pain points in your relationship
Learn how to change the dynamics together
The method
Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP)
Explore how past experiences shape your expectations
Notice the assumptions you each carry into the relationship
Understand your different approaches to communication and conflict
Create new expectations you both understand and support
Who it’s for
Who family therapy is for
Take responsibility for your own behaviors
Heal the trust within your relationship
Feel free to express your love again
Build a deeper, more satisfying relationship
As the system heals, each member’s needs can finally be met — and the family’s sense of closeness and peace is restored.
Why our family therapists
Not the next name in a directory — the right one, chosen for you.
Every therapist on our roster is personally vetted and trained by our founder, Brooke Sprowl, LCSW, who brings 20 years of clinical practice to every hire. When you come to us as a family, we get to know all of you — your history, your dynamics, and what each of you needs — then hand-select a therapist who specializes in families like yours.
✓Personally vetted by Brooke Sprowl, LCSW
How we treat families
Family therapy backed by clinical research.
Our therapy methods for families are supported by the latest research in fostering emotional well-being, behavioral improvement, and stronger family connections. Your therapist draws on the approaches below to fit your family’s unique dynamics.
Your family’s ability to solve problems and express thoughts and feelings — and the roles, rules, and patterns that contribute to conflict.
✓Family roles, rules, taboos, and behavior patterns that contribute to conflict
✓Your family’s strengths, such as caring for one another, and weaknesses, such as difficulty confiding in one another
✓Goals the family and the therapist set and pursue together, with assignments between sessions
02Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP)
A relationship-based, evidence-based treatment for parents and young children (0–5) after a traumatic event in the family.
✓Most sessions include both the child and their parent or caregiver, to restore the attachment relationship the event disrupted
✓Play-based and developmentally appropriate
✓Trauma affects the whole family unit, so healing happens inside a safe, empathic relationship
03Who family therapy is for
Families where one member’s struggle has become everyone’s.
✓Conflict between parents and children, or between siblings
✓A child with behavioral or school problems
✓One family member with a long-term mental illness or substance-use problem that impacts everyone
✓Families anticipating a major change — divorce, a blended household, adult children leaving or returning
04How the work happens
Family therapy runs alongside individual therapy when one member needs it — the two reinforce each other.
✓Sessions may include the whole family, the parents alone, or one parent and one child
✓In person at our LA offices or online across California — many families mix the two
Our founder’s signature approach
Nervous System-Based Family Therapy.
The original framework our founder developed over twenty years in practice, and the backbone of how we work with families: most conflict is several nervous systems reading threat at once. We work with those alarms directly, not just the words exchanged at the table.
01
Co-regulation in real time
Anxiety rises in everyone at once, and each nervous system reads another family member as the threat. We track the whole system as it happens in the room and teach you to settle each other before the cycle moves to its next phase.
02
Defense system mapping
Criticism, withdrawal, over-functioning, and shutting down are protections that once kept each of you safe. We help you recognize them as they switch on and interrupt them at the point where activation would otherwise turn into escalation.
03
Repair and felt safety
Once the system can stay regulated, we teach each of you to say what you need and hear what the others need in a way that lands. The needs underneath the conflict get met, and the cycle resolves in repair instead of disconnection.
You tell us what’s going on at home — one parent, or all of you. We listen for the pattern the family is stuck in, and who on the roster fits it.
02
Your first session
Less history-taking than you expect. Your therapist maps the system — who over-functions, who withdraws, who gets blamed, and where the conversation breaks down.
03
The work itself
Weekly sessions that interrupt the pattern in real time. You leave with something to practice — a workout for the whole family.
04
What changes
The disagreement still comes. The spiral doesn’t follow. Most families notice repair happens faster — and the house feels like home again.
The match
Tell us what's going on.
Let's find you the right therapist. We'll hand-select your family therapist from our small, boutique roster.
Free 30-minute consult
Matched to your family’s dynamic
Love your therapist, or your money back
The standard we hold
Twenty years of clinical experience behind every match.
★ 4.9average rating
100%match guarantee
Hand-matched, on us
Stop searching. We'll do it for you.
Tell us what's going on and we'll hand-select the right therapist for you from our small, boutique roster of highly vetted clinicians.
1
You share what's going on
A few details — that's this form.
2
We hand-match you
Our therapist matching specialist personally matches you — usually the same day.
3
You meet, and decide
Love your therapist or get a full refund on your first session.
★★★★★
"I was in therapy on and off for 20 years. Brooke did more in one session than years of work with my previous therapists."
Let's find you the right therapist.
✓Every therapist vetted by Brooke Sprowl, LCSW· 20 years in practice
How can we help? *
Which locations are most convenient for you?
Free & confidential · Love your therapist — or your money back
★★★★★
"I was in therapy on and off for 20 years. Brooke did more in one session than years of work with my previous therapists."
Client reviews
When the house felt like home again.
★★★★★Verified client reviews
★★★★★
You did more in 45 minutes than my last therapist did in a year!
★★★★★
I am blown away! Brooke has the true gift of great insight and compassion while also getting straight to the heart of your blind spots in a way that has truly changed my life.
★★★★★
Thank you for yesterday’s learning opportunity about how I can communicate more effectively. You made me feel comfortable with the idea that expressing confusion or even doubt can serve as valuable conversation assets.
★★★★★
Brooke goes directly to the source of the issue while keeping a very gentle and kind energy. I felt very seen, understood, and supported.
★★★★★
There are people who are good at their work, and there are people like Brooke: who are born to do it. Brooke knew exactly what tools and questions would work for my particular psychology. No other therapist has been able to do that, or anything close.
★★★★★
Yesterday’s session with you, and a long, productive conversation with my wife last night, started to uncover a huge gap between perception and reality in my understanding of the status I held in our marriage.
★★★★★
Brooke is kind and warm, but not afraid to challenge you. Caring, authentic, and compassionate, as well as wickedly smart.
★★★★★
I have worked with many therapists in the past, but this is the first time I feel that I am making real changes. Brooke’s counseling has helped me become free, even from things I wasn’t aware were affecting me.
★★★★★
I’m so thankful for this journey we are taking together, with your help, towards deeper, more productive understanding.
✓Your family’s ability to solve problems and express thoughts and feelings
✓Family roles, rules, taboos, and behavior patterns that contribute to conflict — and ways to work through them
✓Your family’s strengths, such as caring for one another, and weaknesses, such as difficulty confiding in one another
✓Goals the family and the therapist set and pursue together, with assignments between sessions to keep everyone active
02Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP)
✓A relationship-based, evidence-based treatment for parents and young children (0–5) after a traumatic event in the family
✓Most sessions include both the child and their parent or caregiver, to restore the attachment relationship the event disrupted
✓Play-based and developmentally appropriate — trauma affects the whole family unit, so healing happens inside a safe, empathic relationship
03Who family therapy is for
✓Conflict between parents and children, or between siblings
✓A child with behavioral or school problems
✓One family member with a long-term mental illness or substance-use problem that impacts everyone
✓Families anticipating a major change — divorce, a blended household, adult children leaving or returning
04How the work happens
✓Family therapy runs alongside individual therapy when one member needs it — the two reinforce each other
✓Sessions may include the whole family, the parents alone, or one parent and one child, depending on what the system needs
✓In person at our LA offices or online across California — many families mix the two
HELP FOR YOUR FAMILY STARTS HERE
Start with a free call.
Our therapist matching specialist knows every therapist on our roster personally and can match your family with a specialist who fits your dynamics, your history, and your preferences.
✓30 minutes free with no charge or no commitment.
✓We hand-select your family therapist from our small, boutique roster.
✓We guarantee you’ll love your therapist or you get a full refund on your session.
Our therapy methods for families are supported by the latest research in fostering emotional well-being, behavioral improvement, and stronger family connections. Your therapist draws on the approaches below to fit your family’s unique dynamics.
Our warm and experienced LA family therapists offer in-person sessions at 7 office locations across the city, plus online therapy anywhere in California, or a mix of both.
Where we work
Eastside, Westside, and everywhere in between.
Eight offices around the city, plus online sessions anywhere in California. Tap a neighborhood to place it on the map.
*Available within a certain radius — get matched to find out more.
7 LA offices
A NOTE FROM OUR FOUNDER
You are not the problem. Neither is your child.
Even with all the love in the world, family is complicated. Members of a family have different temperaments, sensitivities, and communication styles, and it is hard to honor your own needs and one another’s at the same time — especially when nobody modeled that for us as parents.
When you’re that close to something, it’s hard to see clearly. It becomes easy to scapegoat one family member as the cause of everyone’s pain. But in family therapy we focus on the system as a whole — the complex dynamics between all of you — rather than one person’s problems.
As the system heals, each family member’s needs can finally be met, and we can restore the family’s sense of closeness and peace.
Brooke Sprowl, LCSW
Founder & Clinical Director
20 yearsin practice
Free resource for families & communication
Learn to speak so your family can hear you.
Learn the principles of Nonviolent Communication — how to express what you need without blame, and hear what your family means underneath the words.
✓ Check your inbox — your guide is on its way.
6 pages · no charge, no commitment.
Your family has been stuck in this for long enough. Let’s heal the whole system.
Tell us what’s going on at home, and Brooke will hand-select a family therapist from our roster who fits all of you. You’ll start with a free 30-minute consult.
Still deciding? The free 30-minute consult exists for exactly this — no charge, no commitment.
What is family therapy, and how does it work?▸
Family therapy treats the family as a system — a unique social structure with its own patterns of communication shaped by the parents’ values, each member’s personality, and the wider extended family. Rather than focusing on one member’s problems, we examine how the whole system needs to heal so that each member’s needs can be met.
Our child is the one with the problem. Why does the whole family need to come?▸
Because a problem in one family member is usually a symptom of a larger family pattern. Treating only the person identified as having the problem is like treating the symptom of a disease but not the disease itself — new problems emerge if the system isn’t treated. Any change in one member affects the structure and every other member.
Does everyone have to attend every session?▸
No. Depending on what your family needs, sessions may include everyone, the parents alone, or one parent and one child. Your therapist will set the structure with you, and family members are often given assignments between sessions to stay active in the work.
We’re divorced. Can we still do family therapy?▸
Yes — divorce and blended families are one of the most common reasons families come to us. We work with co-parents, step-parents, and the children caught in between, whether the households are merging or learning to run in parallel.
What if one of us also needs individual therapy?▸
Family therapy runs alongside other treatment, especially when one member has a mental illness or addiction that also calls for individual therapy or rehabilitation. The two reinforce each other, and we can hand-select both therapists from our roster.
Can we do this online, in person, or both?▸
All three. Our family therapists see families in person at offices across Los Angeles and online anywhere in California, and many families mix the two. Tell us what’s convenient in the form above and we’ll factor it into your match.
Client reviews
When the house felt like home again.
★★★★★4.9 average
★★★★★
Brooke has the true gift of insight and compassion — getting straight to the heart of your blind spots in a way that's truly changed my life.
★★★★★
I felt very seen, understood, and supported — Brooke went right to the source of the issue while staying so gentle and kind.
★★★★★
I'd been in therapy on and off for 20 years. Brooke did more in one session than years of work with my previous therapist.
A NOTE FROM OUR FOUNDER
You are not the problem. Neither is your child.
Even with all the love in the world, family is complicated. Members of a family have different temperaments, sensitivities, and communication styles, and it is hard to honor your own needs and one another’s at the same time — especially when nobody modeled that for us as parents.
When you’re that close to something, it’s hard to see clearly. It becomes easy to scapegoat one family member as the cause of everyone’s pain. But in family therapy we focus on the system as a whole — the complex dynamics between all of you — rather than one person’s problems.
As the system heals, each family member’s needs can finally be met, and we can restore the family’s sense of closeness and peace.
Free resource for families & communication
Learn to speak so your family can hear you.
Learn the principles of Nonviolent Communication — how to express what you need without blame, and hear what your family means underneath the words.
✓ Check your inbox — your guide is on its way.
6 pages · no charge, no commitment.
Your family has been stuck in this for long enough. Let’s heal the whole system.
One conversation is all it takes to know whether we're the right fit.
Family therapy treats the family as a system with its own patterns of communication. Rather than focusing on one member’s problems, we examine how the whole system needs to heal so that each member’s needs can be met.
Our child is the one with the problem. Why does the whole family need to come?▸
Because a problem in one family member is usually a symptom of a larger family pattern. Treating only the person identified as having the problem is like treating the symptom of a disease but not the disease itself.
Does everyone have to attend every session?▸
No. Depending on what your family needs, sessions may include everyone, the parents alone, or one parent and one child. Your therapist will set the structure with you.
We’re divorced. Can we still do family therapy?▸
Yes — divorce and blended families are one of the most common reasons families come to us. We work with co-parents, step-parents, and the children caught in between.
What if one of us also needs individual therapy?▸
Family therapy runs alongside individual therapy when one member needs it. The two reinforce each other, and we can hand-select both therapists from our roster.
Can we do this online, in person, or both?▸
All three. Our family therapists see families in person across Los Angeles and online anywhere in California, and many families mix the two.
Explore My LA Therapy
Take a look around.
Get to know us at your own pace, or skip the research and let us match you.
