Would you know if a family member was in crisis?
Would you hear their cries for help, no matter how silent?
And even if you could, would you be able to help?

No matter how close knit the family unit, sometimes only an outside professional can help. It is often easier to confide in a trained therapist without fear of judgment or disapproval.

But this is not to say that the presence of family isn’t important and this is where Robyn differs from the conventional family therapist. Robyn believes that seeing family members together produces more positive and lasting results.

By getting the whole family involved, individuals are forced to be more truthful and accountable and the core issues of the disorders are revealed much sooner. Robyn’s extensive research and training in family therapies has also revealed that people recover much faster in their natural social groups too.

Robyn’s family therapy sessions address both –

• Blended families and
• Intact families

Case Study

Jane*, 21, seemed to have everything. Youth, beauty, an international career as a ski-instructor – what more could a girl want? But what her mother wanted, was for Jane to stop self-harming.

Jane’s mother brought her to me for family therapy. The self-harming began after Jane’s breakup with her boyfriend. She became numb and stopped ‘feeling’. She had no appetite for food or for sex and the only way she could tell that she was still alive was the sensation of pain from cutting herself.

During the course of the therapy, I realised that Jane’s career attributed to her lack of ‘feeling’. Her jetsetting lifestyle left her rootless and her work in numbing, frozen environments were merely a metaphor for her life. I suggested that she change profession and establish a home base near her family which would give her an anchor and a sense of community.

This enabled Jane to learn how to connect with people again, rather than just to make acquaintances with people that she would never meet again, travelling the world following the ski seasons. Once she began to create ‘real’ relationships, she began to feel again and her emotions and appetites returned. Jane no longer feels the need to self-harm – she has ‘unfrozen’.

(* Name has been changed to protect the patient’s identity and privacy)