Family Therapy in
Burlington,
Ontario
Registered family therapists in Burlington, Ontario offering attachment-based, systemic, and integrative family counselling in-person at our Harvester Rd clinic and online across Ontario. Support for family conflict, parent-child relationships, blended families, adolescent difficulties, and the family dynamics that shape individual wellbeing. Free 15-minute discovery call.
Our family therapists in Burlington
In-person at 3425 Harvester Rd · online across Ontario
2 practitioners
Alisa offers family therapy in-person at our Burlington clinic and online across Ontario. Her integrative, attachment-informed approach to family work attends to the relational patterns that structure family life — including how anxiety, trauma, perfectionism, and multicultural identity tensions ripple through parent–child relationships and between siblings. She is well-suited to Burlington families navigating transitions, adolescent difficulties, and the particular challenges of immigrant and multicultural family dynamics. Sessions in English, Arabic, and Russian.
Olga brings a Gestalt and relational approach to family work — attending to how patterns of contact, withdrawal, shame, and attachment play out within family systems across generations. She offers family therapy in-person in Oakville and online to Burlington and Halton Region families, with particular depth in intergenerational trauma, relational shame dynamics, and the way early family patterns shape adult and adolescent psychological life.
More family therapists — online serving Burlington
Family & child specialists · online across Ontario
2 practitioners
Lydia is our specialist in child and family therapy, offering online family sessions to Burlington-area families and across Ontario. Her background as a Registered Early Childhood Educator and Child Development Specialist gives her family work particular depth — she understands child and adolescent developmental stages, neurodivergence, and how the family system shapes each child's experience. She works with CBT, Trauma-Informed Therapy, EFT, Attachment Theory, and Internal Family Systems, and also offers direct parent guidance sessions for families navigating a child's anxiety, neurodivergence, or developmental challenges.
Justine is a Registered Social Worker (M.S.W., R.S.W.) offering family therapy online to Burlington-area clients and across Ontario. Her family work draws from CBT, DBT, attachment-based therapy, and mindfulness — with particular experience in family crisis intervention, youth trauma, parenting support, and working with families where Indigenous cultural identity and mental health intersect. She approaches all family structures with warmth, flexibility, and cultural sensitivity.
Our Burlington practitioners offer in-person family therapy at Anytime Anywhere Therapy — private consulting rooms suited to individual and small group sessions.
Family therapy in Burlington, Ontario
Registered family therapists in Burlington, Ontario are available at GestaltReview for in-person sessions at our Harvester Rd clinic and online across the province. Family therapy is a form of psychotherapy that works with the family as a system rather than treating individual members in isolation. It attends to the patterns of communication, connection, conflict, and role-playing that structure family life — and works to shift those patterns in ways that benefit all members of the family, particularly children and adolescents.
Our Burlington family therapists work with a wide range of family presentations: parent–child conflict and communication difficulties, adolescent mental health challenges embedded in family dynamics, blended family adjustment, parenting disagreements between partners, trauma that has affected the family as a whole, grief and loss, and family transitions including separation, divorce, relocation, and the arrival of a new child. All family structures are welcome, including single-parent, blended, LGBTQ+, and multicultural families.
In-person family therapy is available at 3425 Harvester Rd, Unit 213, Burlington. Online family therapy is available province-wide. Sessions from $110, HST exempt, with a free 15-minute discovery call before you begin.
How family therapy works in practice
Family therapy sessions can include all members of the household, a subset of the family (such as parents only, or a parent and child), or individual members working on family-related concerns. The structure depends on the presenting concern, the age and capacity of family members, and the practitioner's clinical judgement about what configuration will be most effective. A common initial structure is joint sessions with the parents, followed by sessions with the full family, followed by individual work with specific family members where needed.
The therapist's role in family therapy is different from individual therapy — they are attending to the system, not only to any one person. This means working with communication patterns, alliances, implicit family rules, and the distribution of emotional labour within the family, as well as the individual experiences of each member.
The free 15-minute discovery call is the right place to discuss what configuration of family therapy is most appropriate for your situation, what the first few sessions typically involve, and whether the practitioner's approach is a good fit for your family.
Family therapy vs individual therapy vs couples therapy
Understanding how family therapy differs from other formats helps identify which approach — or which combination — is right for your situation.
| Format | Family therapy | Individual therapy | Couples therapy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Family system · relational patterns | One person's inner world & experience | Partner relationship & dynamic |
| Who attends | Family members (all or subset) | One person | Both partners |
| Best for | Family conflict, parent–child difficulty, adolescent issues embedded in family | Individual anxiety, trauma, identity, depression | Partner communication, conflict, disconnection |
| Children included | Yes — often central | No | Rarely |
| Can combine with | Individual therapy for family members | Couples or family therapy | Individual therapy for each partner |
Family therapy across Halton Region and Ontario
In-person family therapy in Burlington and Oakville. Online province-wide.
Common questions
What is family therapy and how is it different from individual therapy?
Family therapy is a form of registered psychotherapy that treats the family as a system rather than focusing on any one member's internal experience in isolation. While individual therapy works with a single person's thoughts, feelings, history, and patterns, family therapy attends to the patterns of communication, connection, conflict, and role-distribution that structure the family as a whole. The therapist works with the relationships between family members — not only with any one member — and tracks how the family system itself shapes each person's experience. Family therapy is particularly well-suited when a child or adolescent's difficulties are embedded in broader family dynamics, or when family communication and conflict are the primary presenting concern.
Who attends family therapy sessions?
This depends on the presenting concern and the practitioner's clinical judgement. Some family therapy is conducted with the whole family together in the room; other configurations involve a subset of family members (such as both parents, or a parent and child) with other members joining as the work develops. Some practitioners use a combination of joint family sessions and individual sessions with specific family members running in parallel. Children can participate in family therapy from a young age, with the approach adapted to their developmental stage. The right configuration for your family is worth discussing during the free discovery call, which can involve one parent initially if both are not immediately available.
How much does family therapy cost in Burlington?
Family therapy sessions in Burlington at GestaltReview range from $110 to $190 per 50-minute session, depending on the practitioner. Lydia Kellar, our child and family specialist, charges $110 per session — one of the most accessible rates for specialist family therapy in the region. Sliding scale pricing is available from other practitioners if cost is a barrier. All sessions are HST exempt. Insurance coverage for family therapy varies by plan; many plans cover registered psychotherapy with an identified client — confirm your coverage directly with your insurer before booking.
Can family therapy help with a child who refuses to attend?
Yes — and this is a common situation. When a child or adolescent is resistant to attending therapy, family therapy can begin with the parents alone or with a parent and the willing members of the family. Work at the parental level — helping parents understand the dynamics that may be driving the child's behaviour, and making changes to how they communicate and respond at home — can produce significant change in the child's experience and behaviour without the child ever entering the room. Lydia Kellar offers parent guidance sessions specifically for this kind of situation. Once parents have done some initial work, children often become more willing to participate.
How is family therapy different from parenting support?
Parenting support (or parent guidance) focuses specifically on parents — helping them understand their child's behaviour, develop effective responses, and improve their own mental health and capacity in the parenting role. Family therapy is broader, attending to the relational system as a whole and including the child or other family members as active participants in the work. In practice, many family therapy engagements include both elements: some sessions focus on parenting strategy and parental wellbeing, while others involve the child or the family together. Lydia Kellar offers both parenting support and family therapy and can advise on the most appropriate starting point for your situation.
Does family therapy work online?
Yes — online family therapy is widely used and comparably effective to in-person work for most family presentations, including communication difficulties, parent–child conflict, adolescent mental health issues embedded in family dynamics, and parenting support. All family members can join from the same location on a shared screen, or from different locations — which is particularly useful for separated families where parents want to do joint work despite living apart. Online family therapy expands your choice of practitioner significantly. Alisa Ziad Al Haj and Olga Klimenkova also offer in-person options for Burlington and Halton Region families who prefer face-to-face work.
Family, contact, and relational patterns — editorial context
GestaltReview's editorial library approaches relational and family dynamics from a Gestalt perspective — examining how patterns of contact and withdrawal, shame, attachment, and intergenerational transmission shape the life of a family and the individuals within it. These concepts are directly relevant to family therapy, where the work often involves attending to precisely these dynamics across generations.
The articles below provide accessible, clinically grounded reading for families beginning therapy or for parents and adults trying to understand the relational patterns that have shaped — and are still shaping — their family life.