Family Therapy
Family therapy looks at the pattern, not the villain. A family therapist — in Texas, often a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) — maps how you affect each other: who pursues, who withdraws, who gets pulled in to carry messages, which topics are landmines. Then you practice different moves in the room, so home starts to feel different too.
How it works
Who attends can flex — sometimes the whole household, sometimes parents alone, sometimes one person working on their own side of the pattern, which still changes the system around them. Approaches include structural and strategic family therapy for households with kids and teens, and Gottman-informed work when the conflict centers on a couple inside the family. With teens, expect the therapist to balance family sessions with some individual time, so the teen can speak freely.
What it's good for
- Parent–teen conflict
- Blended family transitions
- Divorce and co-parenting
- A family member's illness or diagnosis
- Communication breakdown at home
- Grief affecting the whole family
Screening tools suggest — they don't diagnose. Only a licensed clinician can diagnose a mental health condition.
Clinical review pending This page was written by the DocSana team and is awaiting review by a licensed clinician.