Tag Archives: Family Therapy

Somatic Psychotherapy Workshop – A Healing Saturday Event

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Join Jennifer Kimmelman, LMFT on Saturday, January 19th, 2013 for this experiential workshop on Somatic Psychotherapy. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of your own somatic experiences that can help you listen to the wisdom of your body.

Somatic Psychotherapy is a dynamic approach to marriage and family therapy that emphasizes the organic or functional relation between the parts and the whole of an individual. This modality explores how the body communicates with our minds through the language of felt sense (such as hunger, disappointment, joy) and it provides a way to understand how our internal structural organization affects our perceptions and relationships. In learning how to identify our needs and desires through our felt sense, we can then gain the power to choose how we want to navigate and embody these needs and desires. The goals of Somatic Psychotherapy are to learn to integrate our sensory knowledge of ourselves and use that knowledge to change patterns in the mind, body, and relationally that are no longer useful or beneficial in our lives.

  • Date: January 19th, 2013
  • Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm
  • Donation: $25
  • Profits go to Donors Choose Program - yoga mats for NY public school
  • Location: Madison MFT, 271 Madison Avenue, Suite 1400, between 39th & 40th
  • Please RSVP due to limited space: email info@maidsonmft.com or call 917.488.6364

Pre-Engagement Counseling: Starting Your Relationship on a Solid Foundation

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Are you and your partner thinking about getting married? How exciting! You are beginning to realize that you have found “the one” and your daydreams about walking down the aisle and creating a family may soon become a reality (not to mention no more blind dates!). But have you and your partner had enough serious conversations to make sure you are compatible in the long-term? For example, do you really know that your partner wants children as much as you do? What if you discover, a month before the wedding, that your partner won’t even consider having kids? Is this issue a deal breaker or just a heart breaker?

Don’t wait until after the question has been popped, the cake ordered, the dress purchased, and the venue secured to start counseling! Pre-engagement counseling is an option for forward-thinking couples who want to make sure their relationship gets started on a solid foundation. Pre-engagement counseling provides a calm space to work through any issues before the whirlwind of wedding planning begins. Think of pre-engagement counseling as a form of preventative medicine. It allows couples the opportunity to examine their compatibility on a long-term basis.  In fact, pre-engagement and pre-marital counseling can reduce the risk of divorce and help couples better understand their compatibility, according to studies by clinical psychologists with the PREPARE/ENRICH pre-marital counseling program.

Perhaps there are ways that you interact now that you’d like to change before the unhealthy patterns become solidified in your relationship. The online assessments in the PREPARE/ENRICH program provide a wealth of information about your current relationship on a variety of topics that can help you and your partner identify trouble spots early on. With divorce rates in first-time marriages hovering around 50%, it might be a good idea to invest time and money in determining if the two of you are right for each other and work through any issues early in your relationship. Why not explore all the facets of each other’s personality with as much excitement as you explore the facets of your new diamond ring?

In pre-engagement counseling based on the PREPARE/ENRICH model, couples work with a trained marriage and family therapist to:

  • Identify strength and growth areas
  • Explore personality traits
  • Strengthen communication skills
  • Resolve conflicts and reduce stress
  • Compare family backgrounds
  • Comfortably discuss financial issues
  • Establish personal, couple, and family goals

At Madison Marriage and Family Therapy in Midtown Manhattan, our therapists tailor sessions to meet the unique needs of each couple and find just the right exercises to strengthen your relationship and guide you on the path toward a healthier relationship. While many religious institutions offer pre-martial counseling, marriage and family therapists are in a unique position to offer secular, nondenominational counseling. We can also help interfaith couples who seek a safe, nonjudgmental space to explore how they will create a new family from their two different traditions. Call today to set up an appointment: 917.488.6364.

Family Therapy: Systemic Knowledge

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To be empty is always to be empty of something. When we contemplate a flower like this, we see the flower is full of everything: the cloud, the sunshine, the Earth, time, space, the gardener—everything has come together to help the flower to manifest. Why do we say it is empty? It is empty of only one thing: a separate existence. A flower cannot be by herself alone. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Like the flower that cannot exist alone, neither can we. In each individual there is their guardian, sibling, elder, social leaders, country men and women, friends, lovers, earth, sky, ocean, farmer, etc… All these things help shape and effect us. And no one object or person does that better than our family.

Our family is the first social setting we experience. As infants our survival is strongly linked to their mental and physical health. We learn very fast when our guardians are in a bad place and are unable to take care of us. We become skilled at knowing what we need to do to make sure their love and support comes our way. We are full of knowledge by the time we are 3 years old and more so with each year that follows.

This systemic awareness is the reason why we have mental health practitioners trained in family therapy. They recognize that one does not exist without the many. Therefore our work asks us to never look at one person as the source of a problem. There is no right or wrong and each individual is interacting the best they can with the knowledge they have and the system they exist in.

Marriage and Family Therapists help individuals, couples and families work with teen anger, unexpected pregnancies, teen substance abuse, domestic violence, parenting skills, relationship struggles, interfaith families, anxiety, depression and more. Facing these challenges with an unbiased trained practitioner can aid in building the techniques necessary to change the damaging patterns that exist.

Good luck on your journey.