Family Therapy at Breathe Counseling

Family Therapy

Most families don't come in because everything fell apart. They come in because dinner is tense, or the same fight keeps happening on a loop, or one person has gone quiet and nobody knows how to reach them, or the house just doesn't feel like it used to and everyone's pretending not to notice.

Here's the thing you might be afraid of: that a therapist will get everyone in a room, find the problem, and the problem will turn out to be you. That you'll be the one exposed. That the family will finally say the thing they've been not-saying and it'll be about you.

That's not how this works. Most of the time it isn't anybody's fault. It's a pattern that started small and calcified, and now everyone's playing a part they didn't audition for, including you, and including the kid you think is the problem. We're not looking for who to blame. We're looking for the pattern, because the pattern is the thing you can actually change.

If you're the parent who's out of ideas

A lot of the people reading this are parents. Your kid is struggling, or shut down, or angry in a way you can't get underneath, and you've tried the things, and it isn't working, and somewhere in there you started wondering if you broke them. If it's your fault. If you already missed the window.

You didn't, and you haven't. Kids in pain don't come with instructions, and the strategies that worked at seven stop working at fourteen, and nobody hands you the update. We'll help you understand what's actually going on with your kid and how to reach them, and we'll do it without treating you like a suspect.

Sometimes the whole family should be in the room. Sometimes the real work is with you, the parent, learning to reach your kid differently, and their child doesn't need to be there at all; that's parent counseling, and it's its own kind of work. And sometimes your kid needs their own person, someone outside the family they can say things to that they'll never say at the dinner table; that's counseling for kids and teens. We'll tell you honestly which one your situation actually needs, and often it's more than one.

What we work with

The same argument on a loop. A teenager who's disappeared into their room and their phone. Blended families trying to become one family without a manual for it. Parenting you and your partner don't agree on. A family reorganizing around a divorce, a death, a move, a new baby, an addiction. Siblings who can't be in the same room. The quiet kind of distance where everyone's technically fine and nobody's actually okay.

Sometimes what looks like a family problem is really a marriage under strain that the whole house is absorbing. If that's closer to the truth, couples counseling may be the better place to start, and if one of you is quietly wondering whether to stay at all, discernment counseling is for exactly that question.

How we work

We get the relevant people in the room, sometimes everyone, sometimes not, and we find the pattern underneath the fighting, because it's almost never about the thing you're fighting about.

And we do it as people, not referees with a clipboard. Our office has a robot vacuum that's been stuck in the same doorway for a week and an office that's still half-painted. We're not going to sit across from your family performing clinical neutrality while your kid clocks instantly that we're fake. Kids especially can smell a performance from across the room, and they'll never open up to one. What actually gets a family talking is a real person who isn't scared of the mess, who can sit in the room while it gets uncomfortable and not flinch, and who'll say the true thing out loud, kindly, even when it's the thing everyone's been avoiding.

Your therapist won't take a side and won't pretend the problem is one person. If someone's part of the pattern, and usually everyone is a little, they'll name it, to the whole room, without turning it into an indictment. That's the job.

We work with families in our Greeley office and by telehealth across Colorado, including Loveland and the surrounding area.

Frequently asked

Does the whole family have to come?
No. Sometimes the work is with everyone, sometimes it's mostly with the parents, sometimes it starts with one person. We'll figure out who needs to be in the room for what you're trying to change.

What's the difference between family therapy and parent counseling?
Family therapy works with the whole family together as the client, everyone in the room, the relationships between you as the focus. Parent counseling works with you, about your relationship with your kid, and your child doesn't have to be there. Some people do one, some do both. We'll help you figure out which fits.

My teenager refuses to go. Now what?
Common, and not a dead end. Start without them. A lot changes when the parents shift how they're showing up, and sometimes a kid who won't come to "family therapy" will come once the pressure's off and it's not framed as getting fixed.

Is it going to turn into everyone blaming me?
No. We're not running a trial, and we're not looking for a guilty party. The point is to change the pattern, and a pattern is something a family builds together and can rebuild together. Nobody leaves our office having been convicted of anything.

How long does it take?
Depends on what you're carrying. Some families get real traction in a few months, some come longer. We check in on progress out loud and won't keep you past the point of usefulness.

Do you take my insurance?
Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare and Optum, and every Colorado Medicaid plan, with a sliding scale for private pay. Check your actual per-session cost in about thirty seconds, no phone call.