Family Therapy

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT)

Families can often face challenges, changes in life circumstances, conflict, overwhelm, miscommunication, moves, fears, and the strain of daily stressors. These pressures can create patterns that keep members stuck in cycles of disconnection and frustration. Family therapy offers a collaborative space to identify and reshape these underlying dynamics, fostering healthier ways of relating and coping together.

Every family is different, and through guided family work, members can enhance resilience, empathy, and stronger bonds. Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is particularly effective in helping families move beyond surface-level conflict to uncover and address underlying patterns and needs that drive misunderstandings and conflict. By working together, families so they can break cycles of disconnection and strengthen trust, learn to recognize and respond to each other in ways that reduce tension, strengthen trust, and support lasting change.

Structural Family Therapy (SFT)

Structural Family Therapy is used to help families reorganize unhealthy interaction patterns, clarify roles, and strengthen boundaries. It is effective when families are experiencing conflict, miscommunication, role confusion, or difficulty adapting to life changes (such as blending families, relocation, or shifts in caregiving).

At JL Psychotherapy, we utilize SFT to observe how family members interact in real-time and to shift patterns that keep the system stuck. By restructuring dynamics, whether that means strengthening parental leadership, improving communication, or reducing enmeshment, families build healthier connections, increase resilience, and create space for each member to thrive.

We integrate Structural Family Therapy (SFT) with Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) to address both systemic and relational layers of family functioning. SFT helps provide a framework for observing and restructuring family interactions, clarifying roles, strengthening parental leadership, and establishing healthier boundaries, while EFFT helps deepen emotional responsiveness, helping caregivers and family members recognize, validate, and respond to one another’s core needs. This dual approach allows us to shift entrenched patterns while aligning with emotional attunement, creating more resilient and connected family systems.

Each family will receive a thorough exploration and family mapping.