Family of Origin Therapy in Houston Heights & Online
Support for adults who are ready to work through painful family dynamics and heal from the lasting impact of childhood experiences.
You’ve probably found yourself on this page because…
Your family wasn’t what you needed, and you’re tired of acting like it didn’t affect you.
Maybe you:
Feel anxious, guilty, or small after talking to your parents
Dread holidays, family texts, or phone calls
Became the responsible one, the peacekeeper, or the one everyone leaned on, and you're exhausted
Struggle to set boundaries with family without feeling like a terrible person
Were told you were "too sensitive," "dramatic," or "too much," and part of you still believes it
Don’t feel emotionally close or comfortable with your parents
Are estranged, going low-contact, or unsure what you want your relationship with your family to look like
Most of the time, these experiences can be explained by understanding what happened in your family while you were growing up.
What is Family of Origin Therapy?
Your "family of origin" is the family you grew up in. That includes the people, rules, roles, and unspoken expectations that shaped how you learned to see yourself and relate to others.
Family of origin therapy is individual counseling that explores how those early experiences still show up in your life today. It looks at things like how your family handled emotions, conflict, closeness, and boundaries, and what role you learned to play to stay safe or connected.
To be clear: this is not family therapy. Your parents and siblings don't come to sessions. This is a private space just for you to build insight, heal past hurts, and learn new ways to move forward.
Why The Past Keeps Showing Up In The Present
As children, we are really good at adapting to our family’s needs. If you didn’t have the most supportive environment, you may have learned to stay quiet to avoid conflict, take care of everyone else’s feelings, achieve to earn approval, or shut down your needs to be "easy." Those strategies made sense then, because they kept you safe and accepted within your family.
As an adult, those strategies can show up as people-pleasing, perfectionism, overthinking, shutting down in arguments, difficulty trusting, or a constant feeling that you have to earn your place to be accepted.
Family patterns I often work with include:
Emotionally immature or unavailable parents, where your feelings were dismissed, criticized, or made about them
Childhood emotional neglect, where you had food and a roof but your emotional needs went unseen
Parentification, where you took on adult responsibilities or became a parent to your parents or siblings
Enmeshment, where closeness came with guilt, control, or little room to be your own person
Being the scapegoat, the "problem child," or the golden child
Addiction, mental illness, or chaos in the home, and the unpredictability that came with it
High criticism or conflict, where it never felt safe to be yourself
Cultural or religious expectations that make it hard to separate loyalty from self-abandonment
How I Can Help
Together, we'll slow down and get curious about what you carried, and what you're still carrying. In our work, you can:
Make sense of your patterns. Understand why you react, withdraw, or overextend the way you do, and create compassion instead of self-blame.
Heal old wounds. Process painful memories and beliefs ("I'm too much," "I'm not enough," "it's my job to keep the peace") so they stop controlling you.
Build boundaries that feel doable. Learn to say no, ask for what you need, and handle guilt without abandoning yourself.
Decide what you want your family relationships to look like. Closer, more distant, low contact, or something in between. That choice is yours, and I won't push you toward confronting anyone or reconciling.
Grieve what you didn't get. Make room for sadness, anger, and love to exist together.
Build a steadier relationship with yourself, so you can show up in friendships, partnerships, and work as the person you want to be.
My Approach
I'm not the therapist who hands you a list of coping skills and calls it a session. The work we will do together goes deeper than that.
My approach is warm, trauma-informed, and built around you - not a protocol. My first priority is building a relationship that makes you feel safe enough to be honest and dive into the hard stuff, because that relationship is where the real healing happens.
Some of the approaches I draw on include:
Internal Family Systems (IFS), which helps you get to know the protective "parts" of you that developed in your family (like the people-pleaser or the inner critic) and heal them instead of fighting them. Learn more about IFS
EMDR therapy, which helps your brain reprocess painful memories and beliefs so they stop feeling so intense. Learn more about EMDR
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) tools, for living by your values and changing unhelpful thought patterns. Learn more about ACT and CBT
Many of my clients have already read the books, learned the terms, and tried therapy before. If that's you, we'll take the insight you already have and go deeper, to the part that actually helps things change.
What Healing Can Look Like
Over time, you may notice:
You feel calmer after family contact, and emotionally recover more quickly
You can say no or set a limit without guilt
You stop replaying conversations and picking yourself apart
That inner voice that says "you're too much" gets quieter and kinder
You feel more like your own person, with your own needs, opinions, and choices
Healing the impacts of your family of origin can also help you heal your relationships with others. Often, I see clients start to notice shifts in romantic relationships and friendships as we work together on their family patterns.
What To Expect When We Work Together
Free 15-minute consultation. We talk about what's bringing you in and whether working together feels right.
Getting to know you. In the first sessions, we explore your story at your pace, and start to piece together what you want to change, and what you want your life to feel like moving forward.
Building steadiness. We’ll build tools to help you feel grounded and more confident in your ability to tolerate emotions before diving into the deeper work.
Doing the deeper work. Using IFS, EMDR, and other approaches, we process what's keeping you stuck and practice new ways of relating to yourself and others.
Sessions are available in person in Houston Heights and online throughout Texas and Colorado.
FAQs
-
Nope! This is individual therapy, and your family doesn't attend. We use this space to focus on your experience and how it affects you now.
-
Not if you don’t want to! Therapy is about helping you identify what you need, and I’m not here to force any conversations you don’t want to have. In fact, for some of my clients working through family of origin trauma, the work involves pulling back and engaging less with their families.
If you decide you want to have a hard conversation, we can prepare for it together. If you don't, that's okay too.
-
Absolutely! Two things can be true at once: your parents may have loved you and done their best, and some of your needs may not have been met. You can honor both in therapy.
-
You can still do this work. The patterns, grief, and unresolved feelings stay with us, and they can be explored and healed regardless of whether the relationship is ongoing.
-
There's a lot of overlap. Family of origin work puts your upbringing, family roles, and early relationships at the center, and looks at how they connect to patterns in your adult life.
-
Often, yes, when it fits. EMDR can be especially helpful for painful memories and beliefs rooted in childhood. We'll decide together whether and when it makes sense.
-
I wish I had an easy answer, but the truth is it varies. For some people the work can be very fast, and for others it may take months or years as the work deepens and we heal long-held beliefs and traumas. As we work together, I’ll regularly check in on your goals and progress to ensure we are moving forward.
-
Yes! I offer secure online therapy to clients located in Texas and Colorado, in addition to in-person sessions in Houston Heights.
-
A 50-minute session is $150. Some clients prefer 90-minute sessions, which are $270.