Supporting Children, Youth, and Families in Greater Vancouver since 1990

Family Counselling

The goal of our family counselling services is to work with all members of your family to improve relationships and create a consistent and balanced home life for everyone. Family counselling sees the unit as a whole and not as counselling for individual members. There are many different reasons to seek family counselling. Common reasons for seeking family counselling are:

  • substance abuse and the impact on family members
  • caregiver stress (with ill or aging family members)
  • sibling conflict
  • changes in the family structure
  • parent and teen mediation
  • living with your adult child
  • parenting in the digital age and limiting devices and social media

Our counsellors provide family counselling to support you in achieving balance in your home. Our family counsellors can help you to identify stressors in your family life and build strategies that work for everyone. Our family counsellors root the cause of individual and relational problems back to family dynamics. Family counselling can address these gaps in family dynamics and help you work towards improving relationships and the daily life of every family member.

Family Counselling and Supporting Parents in the Digital Age

Our counsellors can support you to navigate an ever-changing digital world. Children have more exposure to devices than ever before, and many parents are not comfortable with or clear on how to set limits. Our counsellors can work with you and your children to navigate the difficult conversations. Parenting in the digital age includes: screen-time for young children, navigating social media with your teen, leading by example by addressing your own screen time, and many more difficult conversations. It is common for parents to disagree on screen time for children, and family counselling can help to establish boundaries and practices that everyone supports.

Family Counselling and Supporting Parents in the Digital Age

If it is increasingly difficult to address screen time in your home, a family counsellor can help you uncover different feelings (such as disconnection, resentment, fear) or other beliefs such as personal freedom that are contributing. Our family counsellors are here to support you and create healthy digital media habits for your entire family. Family counselling and couples counselling can support both parents in setting limits within the home.

Family Counselling and Parenting a Child with Special Needs

Parenting a child with special needs is difficult and complex. Parenting a child with special needs can be exhausting, stressful, emotional, and isolating. Parents may face unique challenges with the education system, relationships, and other elements of normal child development. It may often feel like no one around you can understand these challenges. Our family counsellors are here to support you in navigating these challenges while you continue to build a strong relationship with your child.

New parents of children with special needs may experience a complex emotional response, such as feelings of grief or loss for the hopes they had for their child. Our family counsellors can help you express and address how these emotions impact your family dynamic.
Parenting a child with special needs can take much of a parent’s time. This can cause other members of the family to feel neglected. Parenting a child with special needs can impact both couples and families. Family counselling can help to repair these relationships and unite the family as a whole to support each other. Family counselling can help parents and children to understand how their emotions and behaviors impact other members of the family.

Family Counselling and Sibling Conflict

Family counselling addresses problems within the family unit and not just with individuals. If you are consistently navigating conflict between your children, a family counsellor can help to mediate conflict and involve the entire family in creating an effective solution.

Family Counselling and Living with your Adult Child

With the rising cost of living in North Vancouver, children are continuing to live in their family homes and finding it more difficult to move out. This may feel like family roles are shifting from parent and child to a roommate relationship. This change in family dynamic can often be stressful and strain the parent-child relationship. A family counsellor can support you and your child to establish boundaries and create a balanced home environment for everyone.

Family Counselling and Transitions in Family Life (Divorce, Separation, Death)

Family counselling is most helpful and relevant at transitions in family life. These transitions can include separation and divorce. Also, changes in family structure can include normal life stages like launching children into adolescence and young adulthood or adjusting to demands when a baby is born. Family counselling can also be helpful if a parent or child becomes ill and changes the family dynamic.

Family counselling can help you navigate unexpected, traumatic, or normal changes in your family dynamic.

Family Counselling and Transitions in Family Life (Divorce, Separation, Death)

Family Counselling with Emotion-Focused Family Therapy

Many of our family counsellors are trained in Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT). Emotion-Focused Family Therapy is rooted in the belief that families have a healing power that plays a significant role in the mental health of each family member. In the process of Emotion-Focused Family Therapy, your therapist will empower you and your family members to address different emotional blocks that interfere with your family’s ability to heal. Emotion-Focused Family Therapy will help you to understand how your behaviors and emotions impact the other members of your family and how you can adapt to support them.

Emotion-Focused Family Therapy is effective when delivered to individuals, couples and families. EFFT is also effective for families with children with mental health difficulties. EFFT can improve parenting skills and enhance the quality of life for all members of your family.

Family Counselling and Parenting Children with Mental Health Conditions

Many parents struggle to understand the different conditions that induce anxiety and other mental health conditions in teens and youth today. Family counselling can unite the parent and child to navigate the child’s mental health and create coping strategies in the family. Stress and anxiety related to school and societal pressures are different for children today. Family counselling can aid parents in understanding how these different influences impact their children. With your child, your family counsellor can help you discuss different societal pressures and changes that impact their mental health.

Parents are the architect of their child’s at-home environment. A family counsellor can work with you to ensure your behaviors and emotions reinforce stability, reliability, and predictability in your home. 

Online Counselling Intake Form

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