Families

We work with families in many ways, to help to create healthier, happier relationships and to reduce distress. Here are a few examples of how we do this - but don't feel like you need to fit into one of these sections in order to speak to us. 

Childhood Anxiety – Supporting Parents and Families

Anxiety is a normal part of childhood, but sometimes worries and fears can begin to take over family life. A child might struggle to attend school, become distressed when separated from a parent, need frequent reassurance, avoid particular situations or find everyday activities increasingly difficult.

As parents, it can be hard to know how best to respond. You may find yourself making changes to family routines, providing repeated reassurance or helping your child avoid situations that cause distress. These responses come from a place of care and are often understandable ways of getting through difficult moments. However, sometimes the things we do to help children feel less anxious in the short term can unintentionally make it harder for them to develop confidence in managing anxiety over time.

At Altogether Human, we work with parents and families to understand these patterns and find compassionate, practical ways forward.

How Can Parents Help an Anxious Child?

Our approach draws on SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), an evidence-based, parent-focused treatment developed by Professor Eli Lebowitz at Yale University, alongside other approaches including Non-Violent Resistance (NVR), attachment-informed practice and systemic family therapy.

SPACE focuses on changes that parents and caregivers can make to help their children become more confident in coping with anxiety.

Two central ideas are:

• Support and acceptance: Helping children feel understood and accepted, while communicating confidence in their ability to manage difficult feelings.

• Reducing accommodation: Gradually changing the ways family members adapt their behaviour to prevent or relieve a child's anxiety, while maintaining warmth, connection and support.

Importantly, children do not need to attend therapy themselves for parents to begin making helpful changes. This can be particularly valuable when children are reluctant to engage with professionals, are unable to leave the house or do not recognise their anxiety as a difficulty.

Our work is not about forcing children into frightening situations or withdrawing comfort. It is about helping parents respond with both compassion and confidence, supporting children to develop their own capacity to manage uncertainty and distress.

Support for Parents of Anxious Children

We offer individualised psychological support for parents and families experiencing difficulties associated with childhood anxiety. This may include school attendance difficulties, separation anxiety, fears and phobias, reassurance-seeking, avoidance or anxiety that is affecting everyday family life.

We also recognise that parents may need support with their own emotional responses, particularly when anxiety has become a longstanding source of stress or conflict within the family.

New: Online Child Anxiety Course for Parents – £39

We have developed a practical, self-guided online course for parents who would like to begin supporting their anxious child at home.

Created by clinical psychologists at Altogether Human CIC, the Child Anxiety Course for Parents draws on SPACE principles alongside other psychological approaches to help parents understand childhood anxiety and make manageable changes in how they respond.

The course includes:

• Five video modules that you can watch at your own pace.

• Practical examples of common childhood anxiety difficulties.

• Guidance on responding supportively to anxiety.

• Strategies for recognising and gradually reducing unhelpful patterns of accommodation.

• Downloadable worksheets and exercises to help you put the ideas into practice.

The course costs £39 per family, offering an accessible option for parents who would like practical guidance without committing to individual therapy.

Find out more about our Child Anxiety Course for Parents (£39)

For families who would prefer individualised support, or whose circumstances are more complex, we also offer psychological therapy and parent consultations. Please contact us to discuss what might be most helpful for your family.

Becoming a family

The transition to parenthood can bring lots of challenges. There is a huge amount of change to make sense of physically, practically and in relation to our identity. For many parents there are also experiences of profound loss and trauma along the perinatal journey itself. And then we enter into a new relationship with our bump or baby and this often awakens big, complex and sometimes unexpected feelings from our own early experiences that can have a profound impact on our sense of self and on this emerging relationship, as well as with the others around us. Unsurprisingly, many parents describe emotional experiences in this period that are more intense and overwhelming than any that they have previously experienced.

Our work with new or 'becoming' families aims to help people make sense of these experiences and to tune into and respond to their own and each others' needs.

Reducing family conflict

Not all conflict is unhealthy, but some patterns of family conflict can be hurtful and damaging. If you're worried about conflict within your family, whether that is heated arguments between parents or other family members, or a child or teenager acting aggressively, or potentially an adult who struggles to communicate with others in non-violent ways, then we think that we could offer you something useful. Our work on reducing family conflict is informed by the Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) model, which is based in non-violent principles including peaceful protest. NVR has a good evidence base for families where children are showing aggressive behaviours or are taking risks that are unacceptable to the parents, like using drugs or becoming involved with gangs. Using this model, parents are encouraged to increase their presence, make stronger links with supportive others, make a clear announcement to the child about standing up to the aggression, demonstrate compassion and caring gestures to the child, conduct sit ins and engage in self-care practices. NVR does not need to be limited to these kinds of difficulties though - the evidence base is expanding rapidly to include other relational difficulties and conflicts. NVR is usually a method used for parents rather than the whole family together, although clinicians often meet the children in the family at some point during the therapeutic journey.

Separated families

We provide work with families who have separated and might have been involved with the family courts. We provide therapeutic interventions that are tailored to the family's needs and might include what is sometimes known as multimodal family work, meeting with different people and pairs or groups of people within the family system at different times. The focus on the child's needs and really understanding the child's experience is held at the centre of the work, although it is often the case that we meet with parents for several sessions before involving the child, particularly if there has been a period of separation between the child and one parent. Through this work we aim to repair ruptured relationships, to reduce conflict and to promote healing.