Complex Family
Dynamics Therapy
Sydney
Individual therapy for complex family dynamics with Chauncey Sjostedt, PACFA certified Gestalt Therapist in Surry Hills. I work with people navigating difficult family histories, inherited patterns, estrangement, enmeshment and the particular weight of carrying something no one in your family talks about.
PACFA Certified Practicing Member #29367 · Individual Therapy Only · Surry Hills & Online
Family histories are rarely simple. Even families that look functional from the outside often contain dynamics that have left their mark: things that were not said, roles that were never questioned, love that was conditional in ways that were never acknowledged. Many people carry the effects of these dynamics for decades before having a space in which to look at them honestly.
You do not need to have had a dramatic or obviously harmful childhood to benefit from this work. Subtle and pervasive dynamics, the quiet but relentless message that your needs were inconvenient, or that keeping the peace was more important than the truth, can leave marks that are just as significant as more overtly difficult experiences. Therapy offers a space to look at what actually happened and what it cost you, without minimising or dramatising.
Family patterns
that follow you
The family we grew up in shapes us more thoroughly than almost any other experience. The ways we learned to seek care, manage conflict, express or hide emotions, understand our own worth, and navigate authority and intimacy: all of these were largely formed in our earliest relationships, long before we had the language or the agency to choose differently. Most of us carry these patterns into adulthood without realising how deeply they shape what happens in our present relationships and in our inner lives.
Therapy offers a space to see these patterns clearly, to understand where they came from and what purpose they once served, and to develop a more conscious and less compelled relationship with them. This does not require family members to be present, and it does not require your family to change, acknowledge anything or even know that you are in therapy. The work is entirely yours, and the changes you make are yours to keep regardless of what your family does or does not do.
Roles You Were Given, Caretaker, Peacekeeper, Scapegoat
Families often organise themselves around implicit roles that absorb anxiety and maintain a particular equilibrium. Common roles include the caretaker who keeps everyone else's needs in mind while neglecting their own, the peacekeeper who smooths over conflict at the cost of their own truth, the golden child who carries the family's hopes, and the scapegoat who carries its unacknowledged difficulties. These roles can be deeply identifying and very difficult to step out of, particularly when leaving the role disrupts the stability of the family system or triggers significant pressure to return to it.
Enmeshment and Boundary Violations
Enmeshment is the condition in which the emotional lives of family members are not properly differentiated from one another. Your feelings are treated as belonging to the family rather than to you. Your choices are experienced as reflections on others rather than as your own. Your individuality can feel threatening to the family's sense of unity or safety. Enmeshment can feel like love, and it often involves genuine love, but it makes it very hard to develop a clear and solid sense of your own needs, preferences and right to exist as a separate person. Therapy helps you develop, often for the first time, the internal and relational boundaries that enmeshment prevented.
Estrangement and Disconnection
Estrangement from family, whether you chose it actively or it gradually happened, carries its own complex grief. There can be relief alongside the loss, clarity alongside the guilt, and a persistent difficulty in explaining or justifying the estrangement to people who do not understand why anyone would distance themselves from their own family. The social expectation that families are and should be sources of connection and support can make estrangement feel like a failure or an aberration rather than a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances. Therapy offers a space to hold all of this honestly, without being pushed toward reconciliation or closure you are not ready for.
Intergenerational Patterns
Some patterns in families span multiple generations. Trauma, emotional unavailability, particular relational styles, characteristic ways of managing anger or grief or love, unspoken rules about what can and cannot be said: these are transmitted in ways that are sometimes explicit and sometimes entirely unconscious. Coming to understand that you are living out a pattern older than yourself can be both liberating and painful. It places your experience in a larger context, makes sense of things that may have puzzled you about your family, and offers a clearer view of what might be genuinely available for you to change.
Navigating Family as an LGBTQ+ Person
For LGBTQ+ people, family dynamics often carry an additional dimension: the experience of being loved conditionally, of not being fully known by the people who raised you, or of having had to manage family members' responses to your identity at a cost to yourself. This is a particular and significant kind of family complexity. I bring personal community experience and genuine understanding to this work. See also the LGBTQ+ affirming therapy page.
Individual therapy for
family issues, not family therapy
I work with individuals only. I do not offer family therapy, family mediation, or sessions that include family members. If family or couples therapy is what you are looking for, I am happy to suggest a suitable referral to a qualified colleague.
Working individually on family dynamics is often more effective than people expect. You cannot change your family of origin, and you cannot control what other family members do or acknowledge or understand. What you can change is your own relationship to what happened, your understanding of the patterns you carry, and the degree to which those patterns continue to drive your present behaviour, choices and relationships. This work can be profound and deeply liberating without requiring any involvement, awareness or cooperation from your family.
Many people find that working individually on family patterns creates changes that ripple outward into the family system in ways they did not anticipate. Not because other family members have changed, but because they themselves have, and they now show up differently in those relationships. They respond rather than react. They hold their ground with less effort. They feel less compelled to maintain dynamics that no longer serve them. This is what genuine change in this area looks like.
How I work with
family dynamics
Family dynamics work is some of the most personal and often the most surprising therapy work there is. People frequently discover things about their family histories that reframe their entire understanding of themselves. This can be disorienting and also deeply clarifying.
Family dynamics work requires patience and a particular kind of care. The patterns we carry from our families are deeply embedded, often not consciously recognised, and defended for good reason, they were once protective. Working with them directly requires a combination of genuine curiosity, somatic attunement and a respect for the pace at which change can safely happen. I bring all of this to the work.
I approach family dynamics work primarily through a Gestalt lens, which means we work with how the family history is present right now in your experience, your body, your relational patterns and the dynamics between us in the room, rather than working from a distance through narrative analysis alone.
All of my work is trauma-informed, which matters particularly in family dynamics work because difficult family histories often have a trauma dimension, whether or not the experiences would be formally classified as traumatic. I pace the work carefully, attend closely to your nervous system's capacity, and never push faster than is genuinely safe. Learn more on the trauma-informed therapy page.
Many people find that family dynamics work touches on grief, on anger that has been long suppressed, and on moments of genuine surprise at what they have been carrying. There is often something clarifying and eventually freeing about seeing clearly the conditions under which you developed, even when what you see is painful. You did not choose your family. You do get to choose what you do with its legacy.
For those navigating difficult family relationships alongside challenges in other current relationships, the relationship and interpersonal therapy page explores that interconnection in more depth. Sessions are available in person in Surry Hills on Saturdays and online on Wednesday afternoons (Glebe) and Saturday mornings (Surry Hills). No GP referral required. Full details on the appointments page.
Book a Session
Common questions
Questions about family dynamics therapy. More on the full FAQ page.
Book a session
- Family dynamics therapy explores how the patterns, roles and relational structures within your family of origin shape your present-day experience. In Chauncey's individual approach, this work happens one-to-one. It explores how the family you grew up in lives on in how you relate, what you expect from others, and how you understand yourself.
- No. Chauncey works with individuals only. Family dynamics therapy with Chauncey means working individually to understand and shift the patterns from your family of origin, not joint sessions with family members. If family or couples therapy is what you need, she is happy to suggest a referral to a suitable colleague.
- Yes. Estrangement from family is a significant loss that is often minimised or misunderstood by others. Whether you are the person who has distanced yourself or the person who has been cut off, estrangement carries real grief, guilt, confusion and sometimes relief alongside pain. Therapy offers a space to process this honestly, without being pushed toward reconciliation you are not ready for.
- Intergenerational trauma refers to patterns of trauma, behaviour and emotional experience transmitted across generations within families. This can happen through direct behaviour, through parenting styles shaped by unprocessed pain, through the stories and silences families carry, and through epigenetic pathways. Therapy can help you identify these patterns and begin to work with them more consciously.
- Yes. LGBTQ+ people often carry particular family dynamics including experiences of rejection, conditional acceptance, or the grief of families that love them but do not fully know them. Chauncey brings genuine understanding and personal community experience to this work and can hold its complexity with care and without judgment.
Take the first step
towards feeling better
Book a complex family dynamics therapy session in person in Surry Hills on Saturday mornings, or online via secure video on Wednesday afternoons (Glebe) and Saturday mornings (Surry Hills). Sessions are 50 minutes. No GP referral or Mental Health Care Plan required. A free introductory call is available before the first session if you would like to speak briefly before committing. I respond to all enquiries within 48 hours.