Families rarely come to therapy because of one person. They come because something in the household has become hard to live with. A relocation that unsettled everyone. A teenager who has gone quiet, or loud. A blended family still finding its shape. An illness or a loss that each member is carrying differently. Arguments that run in two languages and finish in neither.

Sometimes it begins with a child. A school raises a concern, or behaviour changes at home, and the family looks for help for that child. Quite often, when we listen, the child’s difficulty turns out to be the family’s difficulty — something the whole household is holding, expressed through its youngest member. Family therapy is built for exactly that situation.

What family therapy is

In individual therapy, the client is one person. In child and adolescent therapy, the client is the young person, with parents involved around the edges of the work. In family therapy, the client is the family itself — the web of relationships, roles and patterns that everyone lives inside.

That distinction matters in practice. The therapist is not there to decide who is right, and no one is treated as the problem. The work looks at how the family communicates, what each person has stopped saying, and how patterns that once made sense — protecting someone, keeping the peace, staying busy — may now be keeping the household stuck. When a pattern loosens, every person inside it has more room.

Family therapy at BeyondBleu draws on systemic and attachment-based approaches. In plain terms, we pay attention to how the family works as a whole, and to what each member needs in order to feel secure within it.

Who attends

Whoever the difficulty involves. That might be two parents and a teenager, one parent and an adult child, three generations, or step-parents and half-siblings across two homes. Grandparents are welcome when they are part of daily family life, as they often are in intercultural households.

Attendance is agreed rather than fixed. Some sessions include everyone. Others are arranged for the parents alone, or for a parent and one child, when that serves the work better. We decide this together, openly, so that nobody feels talked about behind their back. Who joins can change from session to session as the work develops.

What an 80-minute online session looks like

Sessions run on a secure video platform. Families join in whichever way suits them: everyone around one screen at home, or each person from their own room, or from different cities and countries entirely. A parent posted to Singapore, a teenager at school in the UK and a parent in Tokyo can all sit in the same session — as can a household divided between Tokyo and Hong Kong. For families spread across countries — common in expatriate life — this is a genuine advantage of working online rather than a compromise.

Eighty minutes gives enough room for each person to speak and to be heard, which an ordinary hour rarely allows once three or more people are present. The therapist keeps the conversation safe and balanced: slowing it down when it heats up, drawing out quieter members, and making sure the session does not simply replay the argument the family already knows by heart.

Children take part in ways that fit their age. Younger children may join for part of a session rather than all of it, and the therapist will talk with parents beforehand about how to prepare them for it. Teenagers are spoken with directly, as people with their own view of the family — they usually see it clearly.

Is family therapy the right fit?

Family therapy tends to suit households where the difficulty lives between people: repeating conflict, long silences, a family event no one can talk about, or a change — relocation, separation, remarriage, illness, bereavement — that the family has not yet absorbed together.

Sometimes another format fits better, and we will say so. If a child or teenager needs a private space of their own before anything else, child and adolescent therapy is usually the better starting point. If the difficulty sits mainly between the two adults in the relationship, couples therapy addresses it more directly. The formats can also follow one another — families sometimes move from one to the other as the work makes clearer what is needed.

Fees, insurance and cancellation

Family therapy is ¥40,000 for an 80-minute session. The fee covers the session itself and the work that surrounds it: the clinician’s preparation, their note-keeping afterwards, and the thinking they do between your appointments. There is no charge for asking questions before you book, and you are not asked to commit to a set number of sessions.

You can book directly. Because BeyondBleu is private pay, no referral or diagnosis is required to begin. Japanese National Health Insurance covers medical consultation at a 心療内科 or 精神科 clinic; it does not cover private psychotherapy, so it does not cover sessions with us. Some international and employer policies do reimburse therapy. If yours might, tell us and we will issue a receipt with whatever details your insurer asks for.

You can change or cancel a session without charge up to 48 hours beforehand. Inside 48 hours, half the session fee is charged. A same-day cancellation, or a missed session without notice, is charged in full. Our fees for every service are set out on the therapy costs page.

Working in your own language

All sessions are offered in English. Family therapy is also available in Japanese and in Italian. In intercultural families, members sometimes prefer different languages — tell us how your family speaks at home and we will think with you about what will work best in the session.

How to begin

The booking calendar shows every appointment currently available, in your own time zone.

Book a family session

If you would rather write first, email info@beyondbleu.com or call 03-4362-0480 and tell us a little about your family and what has been happening. If you are not sure whether family therapy or another format is the right starting point, say so — that is a normal first question, and we will give you an honest answer. Our frequently asked questions cover booking, languages and what happens in a first session.

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