04Connected
Everyone's under one roof. Nobody feels at home.
When a family gets stuck, it's rarely one person's fault — it's a pattern everyone feeds and nobody started on purpose. This is family therapy for the version of that pattern living in your house: parents and teens, adult families, blended families finding their shape.
You're in the right place if…
- Every conversation with your teenager becomes a negotiation or a standoff.
- One person's mood sets the temperature for the whole house.
- You've become a family that manages logistics and avoids everything else.
- Two families are becoming one, and it's harder than anyone wants to admit.
- Something happened — a loss, a diagnosis, a move — and you never really talked about it.
- You keep having the same fight about the same person, just in different rooms.
Not everyone in the house has to agree there's a problem. One person picking up the phone is how this usually starts — bring what you see to the free fifteen minutes.
What working together looks like
No mystery, no long intake process. Four steps, and you can stop at any of them.
01
A free fifteen minutes
Usually one or two of you, not the whole crew. Tell me what home feels like right now, ask whatever you need to, and we'll decide together who should be in the first session. No charge, no obligation, no forms.
02
A first session
Whoever we agreed should come. What's happening, how long it's been happening, and what each person wishes were different. Everyone gets the floor — including the quiet one.
03
The work
Sessions in the combinations that serve the work — everyone, parents on their own, one teen at a time. We change how the pattern runs, not who gets blamed for it.
04
Checking in
Every few sessions we step back and name what's shifting at home, not just in the room. You should be able to feel the difference at the dinner table.
How I work
We work on the pattern, not on the problem child.
Most families arrive with a person in mind — the teenager who won’t talk, the parent who explodes, the sibling everyone tiptoes around. Usually the person is real and the diagnosis is wrong: what a family is caught in is almost never one member, it’s a pattern everyone feeds and nobody chose. The work is changing the pattern, which is why nobody has to be the problem for things to get better.
We work with parents and teens, adult families, and blended families finding their shape. We are trauma-informed, which matters here more than almost anywhere: family patterns usually have a history, and we go at the pace the room can actually hold. Drawing on internal family systems and attachment work, we pay attention to what each person is protecting — because most of what looks like attack, from the inside, is defence.
Sessions happen in whatever combination serves the work — the whole household, parents on their own, one person at a time. And if what surfaces is really couples work, or one person’s individual work, I’ll say so and we’ll set it up properly rather than making the family carry it.
- Canadian Certified Counsellor
- Trauma-informed practice
- Attachment work
Who you'll work with
Lauren Harnett
Counselling & coaching · EMDR, Gottman, SYMBIS
Shey Balzer
Individual counselling · Family Counselling
More than one of us does family therapy, and Shey is my first call for it. Book with Shey directly, or take the free fifteen minutes with me and I'll match you.
“She is so incredibly gifted and anointed that she has literally changed the way I think. Her coaching, countenance and wisdom are spot on.”
Questions people ask first
Does everyone have to come?
No — and it's often better that they don't, at least at first. We start with whoever is willing and work outward. Families change when the pattern changes, and the pattern is in the room even when some people aren't.
Whose side are you on?
The family's — which in practice means nobody gets to be the designated problem, including the teenager everyone is worried about. I'll be direct with each of you rather than careful with none of you.
My teen refuses to come. Now what?
Come without them. Parents changing how they respond is the most reliable way to change what happens at home — and teens often get curious once the sessions stop being about delivering them somewhere.
Is this couples counselling with kids in the room?
No. Couples work is its own room — and if the real work turns out to be between the two of you, I'll say so and we'll change rooms. Family sessions are about the household's patterns, and children are never made witnesses to marriage repair.
What does it cost, and are we covered?
Current fees are on the About page — family sessions run 75 minutes. Some extended health plans cover a Canadian Certified Counsellor, and coverage for family sessions varies more than for individual work — worth a call to your provider before we start.
Start with fifteen minutes, before you try to get everyone on board.
It's free, and it's a conversation rather than a session — usually just one or two of you. By the end we'll both know whether this is the right room and who should be in it first, and I'll tell you honestly if it isn't.
Not quite it? The other three doors: