North Star Families is known for the quality of our work with the whole family. We work with children and teens of all ages, some who are experiencing loss, depression or anxiety due to changes in family life, struggles with peers, social media and technology related stressors, or challenges with academic performance. Many of the children and teens in our practice are neurodivergent, and we believe that neuro-affirming therapy, coupled with unconditional acceptance, is essential to the development of life-long tools, including self-advocacy and self-regulation. We believe that parents are an integral part of treatment and we provide a variety of education and advocacy support services for parents. Some of our evidence-based interventions include Mentalization Based Play Therapy, DIR/Floortime, Trauma-Informed CBT and EMDR.
Grounded in attachment science, our team offers trauma-informed therapy which integrates psychodynamic theory, neuroscience and somatic approaches, focusing on emotional regulation. These approaches include Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT), EMDR, psychodynamic psychotherapy and Mentalization Based Therapy. We also offer specialized CBT approaches for OCD.
Our North Star Community offers parents workshops and seminars on everything from Digital Safety, support and advocacy for parents of neurodivergent children, what to know about drugs in the teen years.
Our parent and baby/toddler groups, facilitated at homes across the city, focus on connection and emotional regulation through storytelling, music and sensory materials.
A higher reflective capacity has been demonstrated to be a significant protective factor against the intergenerational transmission of trauma. It is also crucial in the development of secure parent-child relationships.
A secure attachment with a parent or caregiver provides the best possible foundation for healthy physical, emotional, intellectual, and social development. A securely attached child is curious and outgoing, able to freely play and explore, and also able to ask for help when they need it. They demonstrate increased resilience in the face of stress and difficulty.
‘Enter into children’s play, and you will find the place where their hearts, minds, and souls meet’ – Virginia Axline
Deciding to bring a child or adolescent to therapy can be a very vulnerable experience. Parents often feel stressed, ashamed, exhausted and fed up when they reach out to us. We absolutely understand how hard parenting can be at the best of times, and if there are challenges due to different temperaments, different neurotypes, or differences in parenting styles that create conflict it can make the parenting experience almost unmanageable.
With our younger children, we often start with a parent in sessions, as a way to help children feel safe and as a way to spend special, slowed down time with their parent. Children’s work is play, and our therapy rooms are set up to provide play materials that can be used creatively and symbolically to work through challenging feelings and experiences. We are trauma-informed, and are trained to identify play themes and use play-based skills to work through more complex experiences. We our children and our teens, we also provide tools to support building awareness of the connections between feelings and behavior, educate about the brain-body connection, and primarily, help our children learn to regulate their feelings and their bodies.
Our work with children increases their ability to self-regulate, helps them understand their unique brain and body connection, and reduces anxiety and depression.
At North Star, the guiding force in every action and decision we make are our core values. What sets our group practice apart are our values and our expertise.
Feeling stuck, depressed, anxious? Dealing with these emotions on our own can be difficult. Many of our thoughts and feelings get ignored and pushed away, but they can lead to repetitive, negative patterns in our work and family lives.
Working with a skilled therapist gives you the support and encouragement to explore and heal those stuck places. The more practiced and capable you are at reflecting on thought and interactions, the better able you are to transform actions and improve relationships.
Importantly, growth and healing through reflective capacity can be occur in ANYONE willing to reflect on their experiences.
Our North Star is the guiding force in every action and decision we make and we articulate these principles in our core values. What sets our group practice apart are our values, along with our expertise.
For us, it’s always parents first. One of the most important pieces of information to come from developmental research over the last forty years is that child security is not related to parent behavior as much as to whether a parent has been able to process early childhood experiences. If they have, they are more likely to have formed a narrative in which feelings match events or experiences, what we describe as a congruent narrative. This is where we come in.
All life experiences include the full range of feelings, including the hard ones – anger, grief, and guilt. No-one tells you that parenting, particularly in the early years, is full of a lot of kids distress, and very intense feelings.
The more we are able to tolerate those feelings from our own personal histories, the more we can connect without reactivity to those feelings in our children, our partners, our extended family. Even if we have experienced childhood trauma, if we have reflected on and processed that trauma, we will be able to manage these hard feelings that come up as a parent.
Also, no parent is perfect and no relationship is without misunderstandings and conflict. In fact, repairing ruptures creates incredible connection because true repair involves understanding and reflecting the other person’s experience.
We also believe in the power of parent community, and offer parent groups, seminars on important topics by experts within and outside of out community, and also parent and baby/toddler groups to offer connection to the youngest of our community.
