Online Couples Therapy for Parents Struggling with an Adult Child’s Addiction in New York, New Jersey, & Pennsylvania

Ayla Fleming, LCSW, LCADC

Freedom, hope, & healing after experiencing extreme marital stress due to an adult child’s addiction.

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Parents cannot heal from years of chronic, devastating trauma due to an adult child’s addiction with traditional therapy.

After parents experience the emotional fallout of repeated crises, emotional immaturity, narcissism, gaslighting, and downright dangerous situations, only specialized couples therapy can help you to:

  • Reconnect with your partner

  • Set & hold boundaries

  • Quit repeating yourself

  • End 2am spirals

  • Stop questioning if you’re crazy

  • End oscillating between cutting everyone off & enabling toxic behavior

  • Remember you actually have a personality (hobbies, interests, friends)

  • Stop swinging between raging at everyone &  feeling guilty toward them- especially your partner & kids

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Authenticity

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Self-Worth

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Healthy Boundaries

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Authenticity ‣ Self-Worth ‣ Healthy Boundaries ‣

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The two of you have spent so much time caring (read: obsessing) about what your addicted kid needs that you’ve lost sight of what you (& your partner) need.

Are you asking too much?

Constantly walking on eggshells?

How can you predict the next relapse?

Extreme fear that you got to them in time last time, but what about next time?

  • Do you or your partner find yourself saying "yes" when you want to say "no," yet the thought of setting boundaries (or even knowing what “boundaries” are) feels overwhelming?

  • Do you dream of setting limits with your addicted adult child with clarity and confidence, but self-doubt, guilt, and sheer terror of “what’s next” hold you back?

  • Are the echoes of past traumas (overdoses, hospitalizations, crises, or even your own unhealthy habits learned in your childhood family system) holding you hostage?

  • If you are a parent of an addicted or mentally ill adult child, it’s likely that have trouble trusting your own instincts.

Sound familiar?

Transformative Relief with Family Systems Therapy for Couples

Learn more about family systems therapy for couples

Hi, I’m Ayla Fleming

You deserve to have clarity, and a strong, steady voice.

Whether you want to:

A. Remain in the relationship/ in contact with your family

B. End the relationship/ contact with your family

C. Explore and finally clarify what feels “right” to you

It is still key in all these situations that you learn the emotional skills to feel justified in your boundaries and let go of the anxiety or sense of over responsibility for other adults’ responses, reactions, or behaviors.

Therapy with me is a collaborative journey where we build a strong foundation of trust and mutual respect, creating a skills-based, safe, and accepting space for your transformation.

I specialize in helping people in addicted or dysfunctional relationships shift over-functioning, people pleasing, and perfectionism into authenticity, calm, and clarity by strengthening the Self.

I get it, because I have been there too.

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Begin Healing Today

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Begin Healing Today ‣

Why patients claim they’ve never experienced therapy like this before:

I help couples understand patterns that keep married couples, addicted adult kids, and the rest of their families stuck, including but not limited to:

  • Codependency

  • Differing attachment styles

  • Over-functioning/under-functioning relationship dynamics and tendencies

  • Trauma bonding

  • Generational childhood abuse/neglect

  • Rigid family roles/responsibilities

It can be deeply frightening to experiment with showing up to disagreements or relapses differently.

You and your partner may fear if you do things differently, you’re abandoning your addicted adult child (called “Survivor’s Guilt”).

Therapy can help you finally let go of inappropriate guilt and shame.

Despite popular belief, research shows that if evenone person in the system changes, it naturally has an impact.

Therapy can also help you learn to side-step previously automatic patterns such as responding with irritability, anxiety, trauma, immaturity, or reactive behaviors, and respond from a place of calm, confidence, and vulnerability (read: real love).

I cultivate a warm therapeutic relationship to help you achieve meaningful, lasting change both within yourself and your relationships.

Regardless of whether others want to change, you can learn to feel comfortable doing what is healthy and sustainable for you.

As a micro-boutique practice, I offer personalized attention and care far beyond what larger clinics can provide. I provide highly specialized, in-depth support to a small caseload of clients on a weekly basis.

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How it works

Starting our work together is easy.

  • You or your partner fill out my simple contact form in less than a minute.

  • Share your story with me and what you hope to achieve in therapy.

  • Begin your healing journey in individual, couples, or family therapy with me as your coach and guide.

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Frequently asked questions

  • I work with couples who are struggling in their marriage due to an adult child’s addiction. They often struggle to set boundaries in their own lives, with their adult child, and partner.

    If you would like to understand and transform your challenges with avoidance, anxiety, depression, shame, guilt, people-pleasing, codependency, or break generational cycles (become “cycle breakers”), Family Systems Therapy can be an extremely impactful experience.

  • Sessions are via video through a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform.

  • Couples Sessions: $500/ 50 min

    Longer Sessions or “Intensive Programs” are prorated. Upon request, an “Intensive” is short term therapy, intentionally designed for you and your partner. Intensives are extended sessions, for a defined time, and focus on a very specific therapeutic goal (e.g., 3 hours per week for 3 weeks to make a decision to remain together or not, or how to handle boundaries with you as a couple and your adult child’s relapse this time). Programs are designed exclusively for couples upon request.

    Also, if scheduling is a challenge or you and your partner are trying to achieve quicker results, I am happy to develop a plan with you to execute the goal on a timeline that works for you. 

    I meet with couples at a minimum of one 50 minute session per week.

  • I do not accept insurance nor communicate with insurance companies. However, I am happy to inform you about “out-of-network” benefits. Many insurance plans offer those to help offset the cost of going to an OON provider. Many OON providers (such as myself) have highly specialized training, therefore are not “in-network” with insurance companies. If you have OON benefits included with your insurance plan, I am happy to provide you with a receipt you can submit the insurance company for possible reimbursement.

  • Submit a quick form now on my Contact page.

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