Families

How can we heal our relationships?

As a family therapist and mother of two pre-adolescent daughters, I understand that parenting represents a constant challenge that crosses all stages of life. Many parents face issues related to illness and disability, intergenerational relationships, families of origin, the impact of relational and social problems, or critical events such as bereavement or the loss of financial stability. It is therefore natural that misunderstandings and communication problems can arise, provoking tensions and patterns of interaction that cause suffering among family members. Children and young people in particular are affected by dysfunctional dynamics established unconsciously as an attempt to resolve and manage the emotional burdens of parents.

Furthermore, parents and children can often both have the feeling of not receiving the respect necessary to maintain a healthy relationship.

As a family therapist, I can help you discuss the broader challenges that affect your family life and find new, more effective ways to face them together. I will create a climate of emotional safety, precisely because every family member needs to feel welcomed, heard, understood, and validated in order to overcome their difficulties and draw on their internal and relational resources.

Parenting Support

“To understand a child, one must understand the bond with their parent.”

Salvador Minuchin

Support for parents of adolescent children

Support for parents of young children

Why family therapy… because it addresses the pain of the entire family.

Virginia Satir

How can I help my child feel better?

A single event or interactive problem cannot decisively influence the developmental trajectory of the child toward psychological health or its impairment. It is the child’s chronic exposure to the parent’s mental state over thousands of daily events and interactive exchanges that determines the way in which the child constructs developmental and relational strategies.

Today we know that children and young people are strongly motivated to adapt, for better or for worse, to the relational strategies of their parents, in order to maintain the bond with their caregivers that is so fundamental to their growth and security.

How I can help you…

Starting from the premise that all human behaviours have a meaning, and that beneath all of your child’s negative behaviours there is a legitimate need, my intervention aims to facilitate the shift from “What does he/she want from me?” to “Now I understand what he/she needs!”

The strategies I use are designed to help you recognise the context, purpose, and function of your child’s behaviour that seemed negative, unacceptable, harmful, or unmanageable.

We will then understand together the needs that this behaviour communicates, how they are masked on the child’s part, and how they are misunderstood by you. After that, we will begin to work on your difficulties in managing the emotions that the situation arouses in you, and on your sensitivities that inhibit you from being an emotionally responsive and normative parent when necessary.

At the end of our work together, you will have acquired tools both in terms of knowing how to do and knowing how to be, making you more competent in meeting your child’s needs and in creating a bond between you based on security, even when you are going through difficult times.