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Family Therapy Toronto
EFT Couples Therapy or marriage counselling can help you resolve the relationship problems that you can’t seem to sort out together.
EFT Couples Therapy or marriage counselling can help you resolve the relationship problems that you can’t seem to sort out together.
Are These Things Happening In Your Family Too Often?
- Conversations turn into arguments within minutes
- Your teen shuts down, lashes out, or refuses to talk
- You feel like you are walking on eggshells at home
- Limits, consequences, and punishments are not working
- Your child seems anxious, angry, withdrawn, or emotionally overwhelmed
- You and your co-parent are not on the same page
- Divorce, separation, remarriage, or loyalty conflicts are affecting the family
- Your teen is pulling away and spending more time alone or with peers you do not know
- You are losing your temper and saying things you regret
- Home no longer feels calm, safe, or connected
When Family Life Becomes Stressful, the Problem is Usually Deeper Than Behaviour
Many parents come to therapy focused on behaviour including disrespect, silence, arguments, lying, withdrawl and poor choices.
But behaviour is usually not the whole story.
In many families, the real problem is that everyone has become emotionally reactive, protective, and disconnected. Parents feel worried, helpless, or angry. Teens feel misunderstood, controlled, or alone. Everyone is trying to protect themselves, but no one feels fully heard.
That is where family therapy can help.
At New Insights Counselling, family therapy is grounded in Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT). This approach helps families understand the deeper emotional patterns underneath conflict so that parents and children can respond to each other differently, with more clarity, care, and stability.
Family Therapy for Parents of Teens and Young Adults
This work is especially helpful for families with teenagers and young adults when:
- communication has broken down
- emotions escalate quickly
- parents feel they are losing influence
- the family is dealing with separation, remarriage, or blended family stress
- a teen is struggling with anxiety, mood changes, peer pressure, substance use, or identity issues
- everyone in the home feels overwhelmed by the tension
Adolescence naturally brings more independence, stronger emotions, and more pushback. That does not mean your relationship has to keep getting worse.
Family therapy can help you stay connected to your teen while also respecting their growing autonomy.
What Family Therapy Can Help With
Parent-teen conflict
When every conversation becomes a battle, therapy helps slow the pattern down so each person can feel safer, heard, and less defensive.
Emotional disconnection
Sometimes the problem is not only conflict. It is distance. Your teen may seem unreachable. You may feel like you have lost closeness, influence, or trust.
Divorce and separation
Family transitions often create grief, loyalty binds, confusion, and resentment. Therapy helps families navigate these changes with greater care and emotional steadiness.
Blended family stress
New partners, step-parent relationships, and changing family roles can create strain for everyone. Therapy gives space to work through those tensions without making things worse.
Anxiety, shutdown, and behavioural struggles
When a teen is overwhelmed, isolated, angry, or making concerning choices, therapy can help the family understand what is driving those struggles and how to respond more.
What parents often feel, but do not always say out loud:
You may love your child deeply and still feel:
- exhausted
- angry
- helpless
- guilty
- scared about where things are heading
- ashamed that family life feels so hard
- confused about what to do next
You may be trying everything you know, and still watching things get worse.
That does not mean there is no hope. It often means the old ways of handling conflict are no longer working, and your family needs a different kind of support.
What changes in therapy:
Family therapy is not about deciding who is right and who is wrong.
It is about helping each person understand what is happening beneath the anger, silence, control, or resistance.
In therapy, your family can begin to:
- understand the emotional cycle that keeps everyone stuck
- reduce yelling, shutdown, blame, and escalation
- rebuild trust and emotional safety
- help parents respond with more calm, clarity, and confidence
- help teens express what they feel and need more directly
- create healthier conversations at home
- strengthen the family bond without giving up boundaries
The goal is not a perfect family. The goal is a more stable, respectful, and emotionally connected one.
A Therapy Approach Grounded in Emotional Safety at Home
At New Insights Counselling, we understand that family therapy is not about blaming parents, blaming children, or deciding who is right. When family life becomes tense, everyone can become more reactive, protective, and misunderstood.
Our approach is grounded in attachment-based therapy and informed by Emotionally Focused Family Therapy. We help families slow down the negative cycle underneath conflict, shutdown, anger, or distance so each person can begin to feel safer, heard, and more understood.
The goal is not to create a perfect family. The goal is to help the family become more stable, respectful, and emotionally connected at home.
Who Family Therapy Is Best Suited For
Family therapy may be a good fit when home has become tense, reactive, or emotionally disconnected, and the family needs help having safer conversations. Many families come to therapy because the usual approaches, including consequences, lectures, silence, or repeated arguments, are no longer working.
At New Insights Counselling, we work best with families who are ready to better understand the emotional pattern underneath the conflict, not simply label one person as the problem.
- Parents and teens who keep getting caught in the same arguments
- Families where a teen is shutting down, pulling away, or becoming more reactive
- Parents who feel worried, angry, guilty, helpless, or unsure what to do next
- Families dealing with separation, divorce, remarriage, or blended family stress
- Families where anxiety, mood changes, peer stress, or behavioural concerns are affecting home life
- Parents who want to stay connected while still keeping clear limits and boundaries
- Families who want more respectful communication and emotional steadiness at home
Google Reviews
Experienced Toronto Family Therapists
At New Insights Counselling, we help families move through conflict, emotional strain, and disconnection with more understanding and less reactivity.
Allan Findlay, M.S.W. RSW
Christina Abounassar, M.S.W. RSW
EFT Therapist
Individuals and Couples
Online throughout Ontario
Vanessa Leggio, M.S.W. RSW
EFT Therapist
Individuals and Couples
Online throughout Ontario
Do not wait until family life gets even more painful
Many parents wait too long before reaching out.
They hope things will settle on their own. They try to stay patient. They second-guess themselves. They tell themselves this is just a phase.
Sometimes it is a phase. But sometimes the pattern becomes more entrenched, and the distance grows.
When conflict, shutdown, resentment, or emotional instability become the norm, family therapy can help interrupt that pattern before more damage is done.
Seeking help is not an overreaction. It is often the most caring and responsible thing a parent can do.
What You Can Expect From Family Therapy
Family therapy begins by understanding the specific challenges your family is facing and the relationship pattern that keeps repeating. In sessions, each person has space to speak, be heard, and better understand what is happening beneath the conflict.
The process is structured and supportive. It is not about blaming one person or forcing quick fixes. It is about helping family members recognize each other more clearly, communicate more effectively, and respond with less reactivity.
Over time, therapy can help reduce conflict, strengthen emotional safety, and create more trust and steadiness in the home. The goal is not a perfect family. The goal is a more connected and resilient one.
Still Have Some Questions?
When you book your phone consultation you will receive a link to our online calendar. You can then book a free Phone Consultation appointment into our online schedule. We want to know a little about your situation so we know whether we can help you and explain the process if we can.
First Three Family Therapy Sessions.
We prefer to see parents and teen together for the first family therapy session which is 90 minutes long. For separated/divorced parents living in separate homes, together we figure out what is the best way to proceed. It is very important to inform your teen that you are going to attend a family session. Keeping our meeting secret and telling them at the last minute will likely lead to upset and reduce the likelihood that they will attend willingly. Sometimes, you may have to come without the teen because they refuse to attend. On occasion, we will see parents alone, and we talk about how to encourage your teen to come the next time.
During the first 90-minute family therapy session, we will learn about concerns that each of you have about your family relationships. Each will be able to speak freely, and we do all we can to make it as comfortable as possible. We will also ask you each to tell me what you hope to accomplish by coming to family counselling.
It is common to see parents alone and the teenager alone for the second session. This allows each to speak freely about concerns they worry will hurt or upset the other if said in front of them, yet is important for me to know, in order to understand what is going on in the family.
The third session is usually held all together to talk about the focus going forward. Often, the strained relationship is the focus of the two-person sessions. The goals you want to accomplish, shape the course of therapy.
Subsequent Regular Family Therapy Sessions.
All subsequent sessions are 60 or 75 minutes long. We usually see those in the strained relationship together until the goals are accomplished.
Follow-up Family Therapy Sessions.
We are committed to helping families make lasting change. When you have accomplished your goals and end regular family therapy sessions, a follow-up session can be held.
If you think you could benefit from family therapy, please book your free 15-minute phone consultation.
What One Satisfied Family Said
“We came to so see Allan because we had a situation with our 17-year-old son. He was becoming more and more difficult to reason with and was not taking any responsibility for himself. Our collective tempers were rising to the point where matters were becoming almost physical. As his father, I was so angry with him that I was ready to throw him out of the house.
Personally, I had reached a point where I did not know what to do. In counselling we learned better ways of negotiating and how to reach consensus. The process helped us do something different than what we were doing on our own. It allowed me to stop, back up and deal with the situation in a very different way. It reminded me of the things I normally did with all my children but had stopped doing because my son had become so unbelievably belligerent, which led to my growing anger. I felt that he just did not have the right to do what he was doing in our home. The counselling re-framed things for me so I could look at the situation differently. It calmed me down.
A key benefit of the counselling is that we now have a calmer, more respectful family. Allan, as a mediator with the tools to keep things calm, allowed all of us to say and hear what we needed to, from each other. Having finished counselling, we hope that we can NOW proceed with the same process without the need of a mediator. We can now live by a code of fairness. We have the skills to resolve matters without Allan. Since every person shared the counselling experience together, we can help one another if one of us starts to fail.
Allan kept his cool. When calm heads prevail, we’re all encouraged to do the same. When we took the step to go to a counsellor, we were admitting there was a serious problem and acknowledged that we had to do something about it. If we had proceeded on our own, without help, our son could well have been out of the house, and my wife extremely upset with me.
Allan connected with our son. He was firm with each of us so we were clear we could not get away with anything. But the process felt very fair. Allan knows when to speak and when to let things go. He intervenes when things are counterproductive. He is a good listener.
Measuring how I feel about my relationship with my son now, I have to say that I am much more comfortable. I see real change in him and I’m sure he would say the same about me.
I appreciated that Allan spoke up and ended our sessions when the counselling was complete. As a businessman, I know how some situations can be milked. While tentative at first, I came to trust the process. Allan maintains a professional distance while at the same time, shows you that he cares. You don’t need a therapist to be your friend, but you do need someone who is dispassionate. Allan was all of that. We have referred our friends to Allan.”