Specialties · Family Conflict
Family Conflict
Most families in conflict are not actually fighting about the dishes, the curfew or the tone of voice at dinner. They are running the same argument through a different subject each time, and no one in the house agreed to the roles they are now stuck playing.
60-Minute Sessions · $250 · In Person or Telehealth in Utah
The Household as a System
No One Person Is the Problem
A family that keeps having the same argument is usually not lacking information; everyone already knows how the fight goes before it starts. What is missing is a view of the whole pattern from outside it. Systemic family work treats the household itself as the unit of attention: who says what first, who gets pulled in, who goes quiet, and what happens afterward that quietly rewards the pattern for repeating.
Triangulation is one of the most common shapes this takes. Two people in conflict pull in a third — a parent complains about a partner to a child, or two parents both try to win a teenager to their side of a disagreement. The third person did not choose that job, and carrying it usually costs them, whether through anxiety, loyalty binds, or acting out behavior that has nothing obviously to do with the original conflict.
A great deal of family work is simply making the unspoken rules of a household explicit: who is allowed to be angry, whose opinion counts on which topics, who has to apologize first, who is treated as the responsible one and who as the difficult one. Families rarely vote on these roles. They accumulate, one incident at a time, until they feel permanent.
Blended Families and Teens
Where Conflict Tends to Concentrate
Blended families carry a particular version of this problem. A stepparent is often expected to hold authority in a household before trust has had time to build, and a biological parent is often pulled between defending a new partner and defending a child who feels displaced. There is rarely a villain in this setup, but there is almost always confusion about who is supposed to discipline whom, and how much loyalty a stepparent has actually earned yet.
Conflict between teens and parents has its own logic: a teenager developmentally needs more autonomy than a household has been structured to give, and a parent reasonably wants more safety and information than the teenager wants to provide. Escalating fights over curfew, screens or friend groups are often a proxy for that larger negotiation about how much independence is due and how it will be earned.
Sibling conflict, too, is rarely just sibling conflict. Comparisons made by parents, perceived favoritism, and differing ages and temperaments all shape how brothers and sisters fight, and the fighting often intensifies or eases depending on how parents respond to it, not just on what the siblings do to each other.
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The Work
What Changes When Everyone Is in the Room
Getting more of the household into session changes the work in a specific way: instead of hearing one person’s account of an argument, the pattern shows up live, in real time, and can be interrupted as it happens rather than reconstructed afterward from memory. Early sessions usually focus on identifying the recurring sequence — the trigger, the escalation, the roles each person plays — and giving it a name the family can refer to together.
From there, the work moves toward renegotiating roles and rules that were never actually agreed upon: who has authority over what, how disagreements between parents get handled in front of kids, what a stepparent’s role actually is, and how much say a teenager has earned. This is slower than it sounds, because roles that formed silently over years do not change in a single conversation, but families often notice the intensity of arguments easing well before every underlying issue is resolved.
Athena works with preteens, teens and adults, and sessions run 60 minutes at $250, in person at the Salt Lake City office or by telehealth for family members located in Utah.
Athena treats the family as a system rather than assigning blame to one member. She does not treat substance abuse, grief, or OCD, and will discuss referral options if one of those is the central concern for a family member.
Common Questions
Family Conflict Questions
- Does the whole family need to come to every session?
- Not necessarily. Sessions might include the whole household, a parent pair, or a parent and a teen, depending on what the week's work calls for. The household as a system is always the frame, even when only part of it is in the room.
- Our conflict is really between two of our kids. Is that family therapy or individual therapy?
- Sibling conflict is usually best understood in context, since roles, comparisons and parental responses often keep it going. That makes it family work more often than it looks at first, though individual sessions can be part of the plan.
- What ages does Athena see for family work?
- Athena works with preteens, teens and adults, individually and as part of family sessions. Younger children are generally discussed through their parents rather than seen directly in session.
- How long are sessions and what do they cost?
- Family sessions are 60 minutes at $250. Select Health, BCBS, UBH and University of Utah Health Plans are accepted.
Start With the Contact Form
Family work is shaped around who needs to be in the room for a given stage. Send the contact form before anything is scheduled.