Individual and Family Therapy for Caregivers in WA State
Therapy for parents, partners, adult children, siblings, friends, or caregivers who are supporting a loved one in crisis or with a chronic mental illness. Learn what to do if someone is having a mental breakdown, how to best communicate, and focus on steps towards healing.
Challenges You Might Face
Do you or your family have a loved one who has a chronic mental illness or is experiencing a crisis, such as a suicide attempt or harm to themselves, a manic episode, or dealing with hallucinations or delusions?
Are they frequently hospitalized and have trouble following through with taking medications, going to appointments, maintaining their mental health, or agreeing to keeping themselves safe?
Has it been challenging to prioritize yourself without feeling guilty, or have you lost a sense of your own identity?
Have you or your family felt emotionally drained and burned out trying to support or communicate with them, set healthy boundaries, and navigate a complex and fragmented hospital and behavioral health system?
Or is that loved one in your life dealing with a new diagnosis or mental breakdown for the first time, and everything feels confusing and overwhelming?
Taking The First Step
It’s a heavy load to carry, and I want to acknowledge your efforts, care, and resilience in doing your best to be there for your loved one going through a crisis. You may feel you want to give up at times, but you are still pushing through. Wherever you are on this journey, it’s crucial to have a safe space for you to feel supported as well. I help individuals and families as we work together towards a sense of peace, healing, and happiness. We can get to a place where you can hold healthy boundaries with your loved one and have tools for better coping now and in the future.
Finding Meaningful Solutions
With over eight years of experience in inpatient psychiatric and behavioral health settings prior to private practice, I regularly coordinated with family, friends, and loved ones of patients on my caseload to support them through a very confusing, frustrating, and difficult time. I gained a wealth of knowledge about mental health and substance treatment options in the community, what is accessible based on financial means, and how to get creative with navigating barriers to care. The system has many gaps and it’s challenging to know all your options. While we can’t change the system itself, I can help you either through individual therapy or in family therapy.
In therapy together, you can expect support with problem-solving around these systems, learning how to set healthy boundaries with your loved one and with yourself about what you have capacity to support them with, learning strategies to effectively communicate with them, building skills to better advocate, exploring recommendations for the best options for treatment, and ultimately, helping you take care of yourself during these distressing times. I also incorporate elements of the LEAP (listen, empathize, partner, and agree) approach into my work with family caregivers.
Ready to get started? Reach out for a free phone consultation here!
