Inside Family Therapy: A Conversation with MCCC Founder Laura Goldstein

What makes family therapy effective?
And how do you know when a family is actually ready to do the work together?

Those are questions MCCC Founder and Executive Director Laura Goldstein, LCMFT has thought about differently over the course of her career as a family therapist.

Laura recently sat down with Saaniyah Tomlinson, LGPC, a recent Pepperdine University graduate beginning her own career in the mental health field, for a conversation about family therapy, parent coaching, building a private practice, and the experiences that have shaped Laura’s approach to her work.

Their conversation touched on everything from interrupting generational family patterns to working with clients who feel resistant to change, along with some of the lessons Laura has learned while building Montgomery County Counseling Center around both clinical effectiveness and organizational values.

Here is their conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.

Saaniyah Tomlinson, LGPC: What inspired you to go into family therapy?

Laura Goldstein, MCCC Founder: My story is pretty roundabout. The shortest version is that my family is cuckoo bananas… and those who can’t do, teach.

It’s a hard way to get into the field because you’re really trying to heal yourself from the inside out, but so many people in this field are drawn to an area of therapy that has impacted them personally. It’s similar to how many substance use providers have been through recovery themselves, or trauma specialists have experienced trauma themselves.

I once heard the phrase, “You become the therapist you needed when you were younger.” An alternative I think about is, “You become the therapist your parents needed, so that maybe you wouldn’t have needed the therapy.”

I think that’s what happened for me. I focus on parent coaching and family therapy so that parents and couples can interrupt generational patterns before they continue affecting their kids down the road.

Saaniyah: Did you always know you would be a family therapist?

Laura: Not exactly. In high school, I took a career aptitude test that said I should be in a helping and enterprising profession, but I didn’t really take it seriously.

I thought I wanted to be a teacher. Then, in college, I was pre-med. Eventually, I discovered family therapy because my college had a great curriculum, and it ended up being a really good fit.

Saaniyah: How has your approach to family therapy evolved over the years?

Laura: I used to think family therapy was always the optimal situation: always the most effective and always the most sustainable approach.

Over time, though, I’ve learned that some families simply aren’t ready for family therapy yet.

Family members may still be developing skills like distress tolerance, self-regulation, validating one another, or sharing their thoughts and feelings in a nonjudgmental way. Without those skills, bringing everyone together can sometimes recreate the same painful or harmful dynamics that are happening at home.

Those skills can absolutely be taught. But trying to teach them in the middle of an explosive family dynamic can be incredibly difficult.

Sometimes, it’s more effective to work on those skills separately first so that everyone is better prepared for family therapy later.

So, the short version is that my approach has evolved to include an important question before we begin: Does everyone in the family have the skills they need to show up effectively in the therapy room?

If not, we may recommend some individual work first. The goal isn’t simply to get everyone into the same room. It’s to create the conditions that make meaningful family work possible.

Saaniyah: How do you handle families or individuals in family therapy who are resistant to change?

Laura: It’s a challenge. I sometimes think of the approach as hiding the vegetables in the mashed potatoes. You’re trying to find a way to integrate what a client wants with what they need in a way that feels palatable.

But the key is really holding empathy for wherever somebody is coming from.

When I catch myself feeling frustrated that a client isn’t open to change, that’s usually a sign to me that there’s something I still don’t understand or something I’m not empathizing with yet.

There may be unexplored grief or other difficult feelings that the client isn’t ready to examine yet, and those feelings may be keeping them locked into a rigid thought process.

My job, then, is to figure out how we can create enough safety to begin exploring what’s underneath that resistance.

Saaniyah: what was it like building your own private practice?

Laura: Well, I come with a mixed bag of both intergenerational trauma, as mentioned above, and financial privilege from my family.

I was fortunate to come out of graduate school without student loans. That gave me the freedom to build my private practice slowly and intentionally, without operating from a scarcity or survival mindset. I continued working a full-time job while I was in the early stages of building my practice. That gave me experience and exposure, but it also gave me the safety net of a consistent income.

As MCCC grew, my priority was to create a practice that was clinically effective for our clients and a good place to work for our staff. That became the framework I used, and still use, to make decisions.

Sometimes that has meant growing more slowly so that we can maintain our standards. Rapid growth can make it harder to protect those priorities.

I’m less concerned about maximizing the bottom line than I am about being able to employ and support great staff who provide clinically effective services for our clients. If that means accepting a lower profit margin so that we can offer better benefits, that’s where my values and vision remain.

And I also think it’s important to acknowledge that I had privileges when I started that made it possible for me to make some of those choices.

Saaniyah: what was most helpful to you in that process of becoming a business owner?

Laura: It was really helpful to see how other people did it and ask myself, “What parts of this model do I want to replicate? What do I want to do differently?”

The other thing that has been incredibly helpful is collaborative care.

As a family therapist, many of my clients also have their own individual therapists. If I’m working with a family of three and each family member has an individual therapist, for example, collaborating with those providers can make the work more effective for everyone.

It also naturally creates professional relationships. Other therapists get to see how we work and the progress their clients are making, and that can lead them to think of Montgomery County Counseling Center when another client needs family therapy or another service we provide.

Building relationships and collaborating with other providers has been key. It’s clinically valuable for clients while also helping us build meaningful connections within the mental health community.

Saaniyah: you’ve really diversified your career, by starting your own private practice, maintaining your own family therapy clients, and also doing public speaking and training. How did you decide to start branching out?

Laura: My first public speaking opportunity was a free talk for parents at a school. Over time, that led to more opportunities, some paid and some not.

What started as pro bono speaking eventually led to paid opportunities, referrals, and new connections.

At the same time, I very much believe therapists should be paid for their time. It’s completely reasonable to turn down pro bono opportunities when they aren’t right for you. But for me, some of those opportunities have been a meaningful way to build relationships in the community and invest in future opportunities.

Ultimately, I really value bringing mental health education into communities, rather than only trying to bring communities into the mental health space.

Is Family Therapy Right for Your Family?

Family therapy isn’t about identifying one person as the problem or simply putting everyone in a room and hoping things change. Effective family therapy considers the patterns, relationships, communication, and individual needs that shape how a family functions together.

At Montgomery County Counseling Center, we work with children, teens, young adults, adults, parents, couples, and families to determine what kind of support makes sense for where they are right now. Sometimes that means working together as a family. Sometimes it means building individual or parenting skills first.

If your family feels stuck in the same patterns, communication keeps breaking down, or you’re wondering whether family therapy could help, we’re here to talk through what support might look like.

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