Family Therapy

Who family therapy fits

Adult families: parents and adult children, sibling systems, blended households. We work with the household as the unit, with the person in recovery (when consent and clinical judgment support it), and with families where the person using is not in care — the work is still real and still helpful for the rest of the family.

Pasadena Clinical Group is an adult outpatient practice; we do not see minors as primary clients. For families where minor children are involved, we focus the family work on the adult relationships and refer to a child or adolescent specialist when minor-specific care is needed.

What a session looks like

Sessions are 75–90 minutes. The first session is usually an assessment with whichever family members are willing to come; subsequent sessions may include different combinations depending on what's being worked on. Confidentiality and what gets shared with whom is established explicitly in the first session.

What we draw from

• Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) — an evidence-based approach for families of people with substance use, focused on what the family can do that actually changes outcomes.
• Family-systems therapy — multi-generational patterns, roles, and the way change in one part of the system shifts everyone.
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) applied at the family level — making space for the parts of each member that have been protecting and over-functioning.

What it can help with

• Households where one member is in early recovery and everyone is recalibrating.
• Adult children of parents with long substance use histories.
• Parents of adult children with substance use.
• Re-entry after residential treatment.
• Multi-generational alcohol or substance patterns.