Center for Creative Counseling
Create Clarity & Connection
Center for Creative Counseling
Create Clarity & Connection
Center for Creative Counseling
Create Clarity & Connection
Family therapy is an incredible form of treatment that helps families resolve conflict, communicate better, and improve their relationships.
I have worked with so many amazing families over the years and I am excited to work with yours. I offer structural family therapy via telehealth for residents of Pennsylvania.
Family therapy, aka family counseling, is a type of therapy that focuses on the entire family, rather than just one individual. Through assessments, bonding activities, skills practice, and more, family therapy can reduce family conflict, improve household structure, and increase closeness between family members.
At the Center for Creative Counseling, I provide family therapy and counseling that is tailored to your family’s needs. Read on to learn more about my family therapy approach, as well as the benefits of family therapy.
At the Center for Creative Counseling, families get a chance to give their family unit the structure and attention it deserves, in order to get along better and feel more connected.
The family therapy services offered through the Center for Creative Counseling will help you enhance household structure (i.e. clearer rules, expectations, and routines), reduce family conflict (i.e. improve communication, coping skills, and emotion regulation), and increase family bonding (i.e. develop family rituals, increase closeness, and feel connected as a unit).
The cool thing about family therapy and counseling is that it can treat a number of things that lead to family conflict, including but not limited to the following:
The family life you’ve always wanted is completely possible, and family therapy can help get you there.
As a Pennsylvania certified family-based mental health clinician, I have received extensive training in family systems work. This training includes ecosystemic structural strategic family therapy.
What in the heck is that, you ask?
Basically, it’s a blend of family therapy frameworks that takes into account your family identity, structure, history, and ecosystem in order to support growth, change, and connection.
When I work with families, I draw upon this experience, as well as my art therapy background, to tailor impactful treatment for your family.
This might include structural family therapy, coparenting work, family art therapy, or some combination of these. Sessions can be with individuals, parents, siblings, and of course, the whole family.
Three Areas of Focus:
My approach includes 3 main areas of focus:
Read on to learn more about each, as well as one bonus feature to my work: family art therapy. 😊
In order to get to know your family and figure out how to help, I conduct a thorough assessment over the course of several sessions. This assessment phase allows me to identify areas of conflict, sticking points in your interactions, and family strengths to build on.
During this phase, I will get curious with you and your family and give you regular feedback. I will conduct family assessments and tools to get a clear picture of your family structure.
By the end of the assessment phase (which usually lasts about 4-6 sessions), we will review everything we have discussed to that point, nail down specific treatment objectives, and then really dive into to the work.
You might feel tempted to jump into the treatment right away, but these assessments are crucial to our work together. Think of them as the tests and exams your doctor conducts in order to diagnose your problem.
Just as you wouldn’t want your doc to send you for an operation without doing a thorough work-up, I wouldn’t want to recommend strategies for your family without fully understanding where you are stuck.
When I work with families, I operate from a systemic framework.
If you aren’t familiar with systems theory, don’t worry. When I talk about a systemic frame, all I mean is that I believe that most family conflict stems from interactions between family members, not any one family member.
I believe everyone has a role in the stuckness and everyone has a role in the change. So basically, individual blame is not a helpful focus of systemic work.
I also believe that every family member has a good mission -their behavior is an attempt to solve a problem. Whether it solves the problem is the question.
That’s where family therapy comes in. I use a strength-based approach to honor the good mission and help you change the unhelpful method.
Whether you’re a blended family, a new family with little ones, or a family of seasoned caregivers, family therapy can target your specific struggles.
But regardless of your family’s unique make-up, working on household structure by way of the people in charge is a key focus of the work.
Clear boundaries, a united front, dependable routines, consistent expectations, and modeling of behavior are just a few of the ways we can enhance your household structure through parent work.
Another major focus of my approach is family bonding, attachment, and connection.
It is my belief that in order to truly thrive as a family, you need both consistent structure and secure attachments.
I also believe that without a connected relationship with your child, you will struggle to get them to follow your rules and expectations. When your kids feel bonded to you, they trust you and want to follow your lead. So in order to expect improved behavior, compliance, and respect, you must tend to the relationship and model the respect and behavior you hope to see in your child.
As one of my parenting expert heroes Dr. Jane Nelsen once said, “Kids do better when they feel better.”
That’s why I incorporate therapeutic family bonding activities like games, arts and crafts, and other family fun rituals into treatment. This necessary component of the work will help you tend to those all-important family bonds.
An added bonus feature of my family therapy approach is my use of art therapy. Where appropriate, I love to incorporate family art therapy into the work because of the added dynamic it brings to the process.
The use of art not only enhances communication between family members, but it increases the level of emotional safety in sessions. What’s more, art therapy activities are great for family bonding and they make perfect family rituals.
I am a lifelong fan of family therapy and I have seen first-hand how well it impacts positive change. Here are just a few of the many benefits of family therapy.
Family therapy can:
Family therapy can be a wonderful experience and I highly recommend it. I believe that when compared to other therapy services, family therapy really has a solid shot at impacting change because it’s not just one individual working toward it.
While some issues are best addressed with individual treatment, many problems improve when addressed in the context of the family.
Family therapy may be a good fit for you if you:
NOTE: Most families with typical challenges are a great fit for family therapy through the Center for Creative Counseling. However, though I have a experience working with high-crisis families, the level of care I provide through the Center is often not sufficient to meet the needs of families in major crisis.
For help with more severe issues like substance use, suicidality, intimate partner violence, or chronic self-harm, it’s best to seek emergency care as needed, or schedule an evaluation with a local psychologist or psychiatrist for the most appropriate treatment recommendations.
In this new world, aka the pandemic that won’t end, we’ve got a major silver lining – online therapy! And that silver lining extends to family therapy, too.
The Center for Creative Counseling provides online family therapy in Pennsylvania. Online family therapy shares all of the same benefits as in-person family therapy and has a few of its own, too.
With online family therapy, you get to meet for sessions from the comfort of your own home, settled into the spaces where you are most comfortable. You can gather around the dining table, lounge in the living room, or relax on the back deck. As long as you have an internet connection, and we can hear each other, you are good to go.
I utilize and provide digital therapy worksheets, presentations, therapy games, and workbooks, art activities, and more. I can also ship specific supplies to your door, depending on the situation. Plus, with telehealth family therapy, you get the added benefit of using digital tools as well.
I use a secure telehealth platform to protect your privacy and maintain confidentiality. I also use a secure messaging and email platform that allows for the safe exchange of information to help us do the work with ease.
Finding the right online family therapy in Pennsylvania is important. Just as with in-person therapy, you want to make sure that your family therapist is experienced in family work.
Additionally, it’s super crucial that your online family therapist has experience conducting family therapy via telehealth. There are lots of family therapists in Pennsylvania, but not all of them have experience running family session in a video session format.
As with most things, you get better with practice. When the pandemic hit a couple years ago, the program I worked for was able to quickly pivot family therapy services to telehealth. We developed a database of family therapy activities that could be adapted for online family therapy sessions. So we got a lot of practice working with families via our telehealth platform.
Some therapists say that you miss important family interactions over telehealth. While it’s not always possible to catch everything during video sessions, it’s also not always possible to catch everything during in-person sessions either.
For me, I find that I’m just as attuned to my clients’ emotional energy and nonverbal body language during online therapy sessions as I am in the office.
The key is to slow things down, pause, and check in regularly to process things happening in session. This is easily done in online family therapy.
Online family therapy sessions run similarly to in-person sessions, with the exception of one thing – the camera.
The trick to a productive online family therapy session is getting the right camera angle. Depending on the situation, you could set up the computer at a distance to capture everyone in the frame for the entire session. I’ve also done sessions where the laptop is pointed at the whole family, and they also log in with a smart phone they can pass around for more face-to-face interaction.
I have done sessions with family members in two separate locations, using two or more devices to sign in. This offers a level of convenience for families that in-person treatment cannot.
Thanks to telehealth technology, there are a lot of options when it comes to family sessions and activities.
There are lots of excellent Pennsylvania therapists out there, and you have access to any and all who offer telehealth. And remember, you have every right to make sure they are a good fit, and if they aren’t, it is always OK to find another therapist.
Interested in receiving family therapy through the Center for Creative Counseling? Awesome!
I offer online family therapy services in Pennsylvania. Visit our secure portal to schedule your free consultation.
Hayley is a licensed professional counselor based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hayley has been working with parents, kids, and families for nearly 20 years. Her experience includes work as an outpatient therapist, family-based therapist, and clinical supervisor.
