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Family Therapy

Never sacrifice these three things: your family, your heart, or your dignity.

— Unknown

Even with all the love in the world, family is complicated. Often members of families have different temperaments, sensitivities, and communication styles. Navigating those differences can be challenging. It’s difficult to honor our own and one another’s needs at the same time— especially when we as parents never had our own parents model how to do so.

When you’re so close to something it’s hard to see things clearly. Family therapy can help parents, children, and siblings learn to communicate and understand one another. A family therapist can help family members see how they influence one another’s behavior. Often we can’t see how our behavior and communication is actually creating the very behaviors of our family members that hurt us.

It can be easy to scapegoat one family member as the cause of all the family’s problems. But in family therapy, we focus on the system as a whole— the complex dynamics between all family members that create a broken system. Rather than focusing on one member’s problems, we examine how the entire system needs to heal. As we heal the system, each family member’s needs can be met and we can restore the family’s sense of closeness and peace.

Family Therapy Principles

Family therapy is based on the following principles:

  • The family is a unique social system with its own structure and patterns of communication. Many factors determine these patterns including the parents’ beliefs and values, the personalities of the family members, and the influence of the extended family (grandparents, aunts, and uncles). As a result of these variables, each family develops its own unique personality which is powerful and affects all of its members.
  • Problems in one family member may be a symptom of a larger family problem. To treat only the member who is identified as having a problem is like treating the symptom of a disease but not the disease itself. New problems will emerge if the entire family system is not treated.
  • Any change in one member of the family affects both the family structure and each member individually. Health/Mental care professionals who use the family systems model in caring for people always consider the whole family. They view any problem in one member as a symptom of change or conflict in the group.

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The Purpose of Family Therapy

Family therapy can:

  • Teach family members about how families (in general and their own) function.
  • Help you improve troubled relationships with your spouse, children, or other family members.
  • Help the family focus less on the scapegoated member and more on the family as a whole.
  • Strengthen all family members so they can work on their problems together.
  • Help to identify underlying conflicts and anxieties as well as provide strategies to resolve them.
  • Provide family members with tools to handle conflicts and changes within the family differently.
  • Teach family members communication skills to deepen family connections, understand one another better, and bring you closer together, even after you’re done going to therapy sessions.

Anyone who has an emotional problem that interferes with his or her life and the lives of family members may benefit from family therapy. Often family members are inadvertently creating or exacerbating the mental health issues of that member. Usually the better the family functions, the lower the stress level for the person with the mental health problem.

Family therapy may include all family members or just those able or willing to participate. Not all members of the family attend each session. Your specific treatment plan will depend on your family’s situation.


Research-based, personalized therapy.

At My LA Therapy, our warm and experienced therapists specialize in anxiety, depression, trauma, & relationships.

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Family Therapy Treatment

Family therapy has been used successfully to treat many different types of families in many different situations, including specific issues in which:

  • The parents have conflict within their relationship (marital or financial problems).
  • There is a conflict between parents and children.
  • A child has behavioral or school problems.
  • Children or teens have problems getting along with each other.
  • One family member has a long-term (chronic) mental illness or substance abuse problem, such as severe depression or an alcohol use problem which impacts the whole family.
  • When families anticipate a major change in their lives (for example in divorce and blended families).

Family Therapy Focus

In family therapy we will focus on:

  • Your family’s ability to solve problems and express thoughts and feelings.
  • Family roles, rules, taboos, and behavior patterns to identify issues that contribute to conflict — and ways to work through these issues.
  • Your family’s strengths, such as caring for one another, and weaknesses, such as difficulty confiding in one another.
  • Family’s strengths are used to help handle problems and all members take responsibility for problems.
  • Family members are often given assignments to remain active in therapy (for example, parents may be asked to delegate more responsibilities to their children).
  • The family and the therapist set goals they hope to accomplish together.
  • The family can pursue other types of adjunctive therapy treatment, especially if one member has a mental illness or addiction that also requires individual therapy or rehabilitation treatment.

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At My LA Therapy, our highly-vetted Family Therapy experts are selected not only for their clinical acumen but for who they are.

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Resources

  1. Mayo Clinic
  2. WebMD
 

What Our Clients Say

"With your help, I've finally started to understand that while my vivid imagination often wants to create terrifying monsters under the bed, in a lot of cases those monsters are nothing more than a heap of decidedly less-terrifying laundry I've avoided for too long that just needs to be aired out and put away. Which is definitely a lot easier than monster slaying. Thank you for shedding light in the dark places I was too afraid to face alone."
Anonymous Client
"After every session I come away feeling better prepared to start shining light into shadows I've hustled past for a long, long time... some rational ones, but a lot more aren't. Shame is such a stealthy master; He's been the monkey on my back for a long time. You totally called it. I'm so grateful for your guidance and skill and although sometimes I may shuffle and others I may leap, after our sessions I always feel like I'm moving forward."
Anonymous Client
"I want to thank you again for your continued help and expertise, and more specifically for yesterday's learning opportunity about how I can communicate more effectively. After your ultimately appreciated prodding you made me feel comfortable with the idea that expressing confusion or even doubt can serve as valuable conversation-assets, and I look forward to moving forward without those those self-inflicted parameters."
Anonymous Client
"Just wanted to share that yesterday's session with you, and a long, productive dinner table 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. Our session opened my eyes to the fact that the inequity I've long felt comes from a place of assumed unworthiness. I'm so thankful for this journey we are taking together, with your help, towards deeper, more productive understanding."
Anonymous Client
"I have worked with many therapists in the past, but this is the first time I feel that I am making changes that are deep and lasting. Her counseling has truly helped me become free, even from things I wasn’t aware were affecting me. Brooke integrates many different approaches to provide balanced and effective therapy."
Anonymous Client
"You are truly an amazing person. I am so grateful for your sincerity and kindness– big-hearted and deep soulfulness. You are incredibly intuitive, insightful and wise. You are a gifted listener and a powerful speaker, passionate and genuine."
Anonymous Client
"Brooke is kind and warm, but not afraid to challenge you. She is caring, authentic and compassionate as well as intelligent and clinically skilled. Brooke possesses great wisdom and intuition, which she balances with knowledge and skill."
Anonymous Client
"Brooke has really helped me to overcome the problems in my life that I was starting to believe couldn’t change. I now understand where my depression and anxiety came from and they are no longer a part of my life. I now feel a sense of peace and purpose."
Anonymous Client
"I’ve recommended Brooke to so many of my friends and colleagues, I’m starting to feel like her personal cheerleader. But it can’t be helped. When I look back on the past year, without a doubt the most difficult year of my life, I can’t believe how far I’ve come."
Anonymous Client
"Brooke has been an incredibly positive influence in my life. I first came to Brooke in the midst of a divorce from my high school sweetheart and best friend. With Brooke’s gentle guidance and supervision, I began the most intense period of personal growth in my life."
Anonymous Client

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LMFT

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AMFT

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My LA Therapy - Lorie Nguyen (featured)

Lorie Nguyen
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Sydney Shaevel
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Tanya-Mailander-Therapist (featured)

Tanya Mailander
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My LA Therapy - Brooke Sprowl (slider)

Brooke Sprowl
LCSW

Clinical Director, Founder, Therapist

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My LA Therapy | Family Therapy
Our warm and experienced therapists offer research-based, personalized therapy that addresses the root cause for your symptoms to create lasting change.
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My LA Therapy | Family Therapy

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127 Broadway Suite 205
Santa Monica, CA 90401

My LA Therapy | Family Therapy

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Santa Monica, CA 90405


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16055 Ventura Blvd.
Encino, CA 91436. 

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Los Angeles, CA 90025

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Los Angeles, CA 90064

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