Teen and Family Therapy in Los Angeles, CA
LGBTQ-Affirming · Evidence-Based · For Every Kind of Family · In-Person & Online
Something has shifted in your family — and you’re not sure how to reach through it. Maybe your teenager has pulled so far away that getting more than three words out of them feels like a win. Maybe the tension in the house has turned loud, or gone unnervingly quiet. Maybe you just know, with that particular parental instinct, that your kid is struggling in ways that go beyond what you can fix on your own.
That instinct is right. And acting on it is one of the most loving things you can do.
Teen and family therapy with David Strah, M.A., LMFT is where families find their footing again — and where teenagers find a space that actually belongs to them. David brings not just clinical expertise, but genuine lived experience in LGBTQ+ family life, gay fatherhood, and the beautifully complicated terrain of raising and being a teenager in Los Angeles.
What Is Teen Therapy?
Teen therapy — also called adolescent therapy, adolescent counseling, or teen counseling — is psychotherapy specifically designed to support young people between roughly 12 and 18 years old as they navigate the emotional, psychological, social, and developmental challenges of adolescence. Sessions are typically 50 minutes, held weekly, and conducted in a confidential space where the teenager can speak and explore without the social pressure of peers or the relational complexity of a parental conversation.
Unlike therapy for adults, effective teen therapy requires a therapist who can genuinely connect with young people — someone who knows when to push, when to hold space, and who understands the specific developmental stakes of the teenage years. Adolescence is not just a difficult phase to get through. It is a foundational period in which identity, attachment patterns, coping strategies, and core beliefs about oneself are actively being formed. Therapy during this window doesn’t just help teenagers feel better right now. Done well, it shapes who they become.
At David Strah Therapy, teen therapy sessions are 50 minutes, available in person at 321 N. Larchmont Boulevard, Suite 808, Los Angeles, CA 90004, or via secure telehealth for any teenager in California. Parental involvement is discussed openly and calibrated carefully — in a way that protects the therapeutic trust that makes the work actually effective.
What Is Family Therapy?
Family therapy — also called family counseling or family systems therapy — is a form of psychotherapy in which multiple family members participate together with a licensed therapist to improve communication, resolve conflict, strengthen relationships, and understand the patterns that shape how the family functions as a whole.
Unlike individual therapy, which focuses on one person’s inner world, family therapy treats the family itself as the client. It examines how members interact, communicate, and influence one another — and works to shift the patterns generating pain, conflict, or disconnection for everyone involved. Family therapy is not a mediation session, and it’s not about figuring out who is right. It’s a supported process in which every person gets to be genuinely heard — often for the first time in a very long while.
Research consistently supports the effectiveness of family therapy. Studies show it significantly improves adolescent depression, reduces substance use in teenagers, and produces lasting improvements in family communication and functioning.
At David Strah Therapy, family sessions are 50–60 minutes, held weekly or biweekly, and available in person in Los Angeles or via telehealth throughout California.
Why Families Choose David Strah?
- Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT) — California
- Openly gay therapist with deep, personal LGBTQ+ family experience
- Published author — Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood (Penguin/Putnam, 2003)
- Specialist in adolescent therapy, family systems, and LGBTQ+ affirming care
- Psychodynamic, narrative, and attachment-based approaches
- In-person in Los Angeles | Telehealth throughout California
- Free 15-minute consultation — no pressure, no paperwork
What Brings Families and Teenagers to Therapy?
Most families don’t show up at a therapist’s door because everything suddenly collapsed. They arrive when the slow erosion — the growing distance, the escalating arguments, the worried 3 AM thoughts — has reached the point where it can no longer be ignored. Wherever you are in that journey, you’re in the right place.
Your Teenager Has Pulled Away — And You’re Losing Them
They used to tell you things. Now you’re lucky to get eye contact over dinner. You know something is wrong — you can feel it — but every attempt to reach them ends in a shrug, a shut door, or a fight. The distance is growing, and you’re terrified that the harder you try, the wider it gets.
Anxiety and Depression Are Stealing Their Life
Your teenager is struggling in ways that go beyond typical teenage moodiness. The anxiety is affecting their schoolwork, their friendships, their sleep — the things that matter most at this age. The depression has flattened the spark you used to see. You’ve tried everything you know how to try. It’s not enough on its own anymore, and that’s not a failure — it’s a signal.
Your Family Is Stuck in the Same Argument on Repeat
Every dinner, every car ride, every attempt at a normal conversation finds its way back to the same tension. Nobody feels heard. Everyone feels blamed. The harder everyone tries to fix it, the more stuck it gets. Here’s the thing: the argument is rarely really about what it appears to be about. That’s exactly where family therapy begins.
You Need Someone Your Teen Will Actually Talk To
This is the practical concern every parent has and almost nobody says out loud. You can find a therapist. Getting your teenager to actually show up — and then let someone in, rather than sit in stone-faced silence for 50 minutes — is a completely different challenge. David has spent years building genuine connections with teenagers who were absolutely certain they didn’t want to be there. Meeting them where they are, without agenda and without lecture, is the whole art of it.
Your Teen Is Exploring Their Identity — Including Who They Are Sexually or How They Identify
Adolescence is already one of the most intense periods of identity development a person goes through. For LGBTQ+ teenagers — young people who are gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, nonbinary, or still figuring it out — that process carries additional weight. Family reactions to navigate. A world that doesn’t always feel safe. An internal experience that can feel profoundly isolating.
For families navigating this together, working with a therapist who genuinely understands the LGBTQ+ landscape — from the inside, not just in theory — can make all the difference. David is that therapist.
Your Family Structure Is Different — And Most Therapists Don’t Get It
Gay and same-sex parent families. Families formed through adoption or surrogacy. Single-parent households. Blended families. Each of these configurations has its own specific dynamics, its own particular strengths, and its own particular challenges. Generic therapy from someone unfamiliar with your family’s specific reality can create more friction than it resolves.
David is a gay adoptive father and a nationally published author on LGBTQ+ family life. He doesn’t just say he’s affirming. He has lived it, written about it, and built a practice around it.
The Approach: Going Beneath the Surface
The most effective teen and family therapy doesn’t treat the symptom as the problem. It treats the symptom — the argument, the withdrawal, the outburst — as a signal pointing toward something deeper that hasn’t yet had space to be understood. David’s approach integrates multiple evidence-based frameworks, always tailored to your teenager and your family.
Psychodynamic Therapy — Tracing the Pattern to Its Source
Families develop patterns. The way conflict plays out, who gets heard and who goes quiet, how love gets expressed or withheld — these dynamics rarely emerge from nowhere. They have a history, often going back generations. Psychodynamic therapy helps illuminate those patterns, understand where they came from, and — with that understanding — begin to change them. For teenagers especially, understanding the why behind their emotional reactions is often the single most transformative insight in the entire therapeutic process.
Narrative Therapy — Rewriting the Story Your Family Tells About Itself
Every family develops a narrative: who the “difficult” one is, who the “good” kid is, what the family is and isn’t capable of. Narrative therapy helps families separate the people they love from the problems they’re experiencing — and begin co-authoring a different story. One that has room for everyone’s full complexity. This approach is especially powerful with teenagers, who are actively constructing their own identity stories and often fighting against the ones that have been handed to them.
Family Systems Therapy — Seeing the Whole, Not Just the Parts
A teenager’s behavior doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a larger system — the family, the school environment, the social world, the broader cultural context they’re navigating. Family Systems Therapy looks at the entire relational ecosystem and explores how each member’s behavior influences and is influenced by everyone else’s. When you shift one part of the system meaningfully, everything else shifts with it.
Attachment-Based Therapy — Rebuilding the Bond That Makes Everything Else Possible
For teenagers who have pulled away, or for families where the parent-child connection has genuinely frayed, attachment-based therapy works to rebuild the fundamental sense of safety and connection that makes all other growth possible. This is especially powerful when the distance in the family feels deep — when trust has been broken, or when a teenager’s behavior seems designed (consciously or not) to push their parents away.
LGBTQ-Affirming Therapy — For LGBTQ+ Teens and Their Families
For LGBTQ+ teenagers and for families navigating a teen’s coming out or identity exploration, affirming therapy isn’t one approach among several — it’s the foundation. David is an openly gay therapist, a published author in LGBTQ+ family life, and a gay adoptive father. He doesn’t just create a safe space for LGBTQ+ teens and their families. He brings personal, published, decades-deep understanding of what that experience actually feels like — for the teenager, and for every member of the family navigating it together.
Who This Is For
David works with couples across Los Angeles and throughout California — at every relationship stage, navigating a wide range of challenges. Here’s a closer look at who he works with and the specific issues that bring couples through his door.
Gay Couples and Same-Sex Partners
For gay couples looking for a therapist who is not just “LGBTQ-friendly” but genuinely of the community — David is one of the most experienced gay male therapists offering couples counseling in Los Angeles. He understands the particular dynamics of gay male relationships: navigating open or non-monogamous agreements, processing the residual effects of internalized homophobia, dealing with families of origin who may not fully affirm the relationship, and the unique pressures and joys of building a life together as two gay men in a city like Los Angeles.
LGBTQ+ Couples of All Identities
David works with queer, bisexual, transgender, and gender-nonconforming partners, as well as couples navigating ethical non-monogamy, polyamory, and other relationship structures. This is a fully affirming space — no explaining who you are, no educating your therapist about your relationship. Just the work.
Gay Dads and Same-Sex Parents
Few things in a relationship are as destabilizing — or as profoundly rewarding — as becoming parents. For gay couples who came to parenthood through adoption, surrogacy, or co-parenting arrangements, the emotional complexity is layered in ways that require a therapist with genuine expertise. David’s own experience as a gay adoptive father, and his nationally recognized authored work on the subject, make him uniquely positioned to support same-sex parents navigating both the joy and the strain of that journey together.
What Teen and Family Therapy With David Actually Looks Like?
One of the biggest reasons families wait too long to get help is simply not knowing what to expect. Here’s how it works — from the first call to real, lasting change.
Step 1 — Your Free 15-Minute Consultation
A no-pressure phone or video call, usually with the parent or parents first. You’ll share what’s been happening, ask any questions you have, and get a genuine sense of whether David is the right fit for your family. No commitment, no paperwork, no judgment. Just a real conversation.
Step 2 — Building a Full Picture From the Start
Early sessions are about understanding the whole situation. David will typically meet with the full family together and then with the teenager individually to understand both what the family is experiencing and what the teenager carries that isn’t always visible from the outside. There is no assumed formula. The structure follows what the family actually needs.
Step 3 — Individual Teen Sessions, Family Sessions, or a Blend
Depending on what emerges in the early work, ongoing sessions may focus primarily on the teenager’s individual experience, on the family as a whole, or on both in parallel. The format is flexible and evolves as progress is made. This is not a packaged program — it’s real, responsive clinical work.
Step 4 — Keeping Parents Informed Without Undermining the Teen’s Trust
One of the most important and delicate balancing acts in teen therapy is the relationship with parents. A teenager who doesn’t trust that their confidentiality is protected will not open up — which makes the work worthless. David navigates this transparently from the first session: parents receive meaningful updates on progress without the specific content of sessions being disclosed in ways that compromise the therapeutic relationship. This is discussed openly with both the teenager and the parents at the outset.
Step 5 — Skills and Insights That Last Past the Last Session
The goal is never permanent dependence on therapy. David equips teenagers with insight, emotional vocabulary, and real coping tools: strategies for managing anxiety, navigating conflict, communicating needs, and building the resilience that will serve them long after the last session ends.
Families Formed Through Adoption or Surrogacy
Adoptive and surrogacy families carry their own emotional terrain — questions of identity, belonging, and attachment that surface at different developmental stages, often most intensely during adolescence. David’s personal and clinical experience with adoption makes him uniquely equipped to hold this work with both genuine expertise and lived empathy.
Issues Addressed in Teen and Family Therapy
- Teenage anxiety, depression, and mood challenges
- Adolescent identity exploration, including sexual and gender identity
- LGBTQ+ teens and the coming-out journey within the family
- Parent-teen communication breakdown and escalating conflict
- School stress, academic pressure, and perfectionism
- Social struggles, friendship difficulties, and social media effects
- Self-esteem, confidence, and identity challenges
- Grief and loss affecting a teenager or the whole family
- High-conflict family dynamics and communication breakdown
- Blended families, divorce, and co-parenting challenges
- Families formed through adoption, surrogacy, or foster care
- Life transitions: new schools, college preparation, moving, “launching”
- LGBTQ+ parent families navigating identity conversations with children
Why Work With David Strah?
There are thousands of therapists in Los Angeles. Here’s what makes families — especially LGBTQ+ families and parents searching for a therapist who genuinely understands their world — choose David and stay.
He Has Lived the LGBTQ+ Parent Experience From the Inside
David is an openly gay man, a father through adoption, and a nationally recognized author on the experience of gay fatherhood and LGBTQ+ family life. When he works with gay families, LGBTQ+ teenagers, or families navigating a child’s coming out, he is not consulting a training framework. He is drawing from a lifetime of personal experience that no clinical education can replicate — and that makes him a fundamentally different kind of therapist for these families.
His Published Work Makes Him a National Authority in LGBTQ+ Family Life
David authored Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood (Penguin/Putnam, 2003) — a mainstream-published, nationally recognized book that established him as one of the first and most prominent voices on gay fatherhood and LGBTQ+ family building in the United States. This level of public, published expertise is exceptionally rare among family therapists in Los Angeles, and it informs every session he has with families navigating similar terrain.
He Actually Connects With Teenagers — Not Just the Parents Who Bring Them
The single most common reason teen therapy fails is that the therapist never genuinely connects with the teenager. David’s approach with adolescents is relational first — building real trust before diving into anything heavy, earning the right to be heard before asking to be listened to. Many of David’s teenage clients arrive skeptical, reluctant, or outright hostile to the idea of therapy. The ones who stay leave those defenses at the door and do genuinely transformative work.
He Works With the Whole System, Not Just the Presenting Problem
When a teenager is struggling, it is almost never the teenager alone who needs support. The family system — the communication patterns, the unspoken rules, the inherited dynamics — is almost always part of the picture. David holds the full context of a teenager’s life in view and works at the level that will actually produce lasting change, not just short-term symptom management.
You Work Directly With David — Every Session
David does not run a group practice with a rotating roster of associates. When you bring your teenager or your family to David Strah, you work with David Strah — every session, for the full duration of your work together. That consistency is especially critical in teen and family therapy, where trust — for both the teenager and the parents — takes real time to build and is easily fractured by inconsistency.
Centrally Located in Los Angeles — Accessible for Busy Families
The office is located at 321 N. Larchmont Boulevard, Suite 808, Los Angeles, CA 90004 — in Larchmont Village, one of the most central and accessible neighborhoods in the city. Easy to reach from Hollywood, Hancock Park, Koreatown, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Mid-City, West Hollywood, and beyond. Secure telehealth is available for any family or teenager in California.
Gay Therapy and LGBTQ Counseling Reviews
Session Details & Practical Information
In-Person Sessions in Los Angeles
321 N. Larchmont Boulevard, Suite 808 Los Angeles, CA 90004 Located in Larchmont Village — centrally accessible from Hollywood, Hancock Park, Koreatown, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Mid-City, West Hollywood, and all of greater Los Angeles.
Online Therapy Throughout California
Secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth sessions are available for teenagers and families anywhere in California. Research consistently shows that online therapy is equally effective for most adolescent and family concerns — and for busy families with multiple schedules, telehealth removes one more barrier to consistent, meaningful care.
How to Get Started
Phone: (917) 922-2650
Email: davidstrah@aol.com
Address: 321 N. Larchmont Blvd, Suite 808, Los Angeles, CA 90004
Hours: Monday – Friday: 11:00 AM – 8:00 PM
Frequently Asked Questions About Teen and Family Therapy in Los Angeles
What is teen therapy and how is it different from therapy for adults?
Teen therapy — also called adolescent therapy or adolescent counseling — is psychotherapy specifically designed for young people between roughly 12 and 18 years old. It differs from adult therapy in both its goals and its methods. Adolescence is a distinct developmental stage in which identity, coping strategies, attachment patterns, and core self-beliefs are actively being formed — meaning the stakes of the therapeutic work are particularly high and the approach must be tailored accordingly. Effective teen therapists adapt their communication style to genuinely connect with young people, carefully balance confidentiality with appropriate parental involvement, and deeply understand the specific pressures teenagers face today: academic stress, peer dynamics, social media, identity development, and family conflict. The goal is not just symptom relief. It is equipping a young person with the self-awareness and tools to navigate life well beyond the last session.
What is family therapy and who participates in it?
Family therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which multiple family members participate together with a licensed therapist to address relational challenges, improve communication, resolve conflict, and understand the patterns shaping how the family functions as a system. Family therapy treats the family itself as the client — examining how members interact, influence, and respond to one another, rather than focusing exclusively on one person’s behavior or struggles. Participants typically include parents and the teenager or child at the center of the concern, though the configuration is flexible and determined by what will be most helpful. Importantly, not every family member needs to be present at every session. The structure follows the need, not a preset formula.
How do I know if my teenager needs therapy?
Common signs a teenager may benefit from professional support include: persistent anxiety, worry, or panic that interferes with daily functioning; depressed mood or loss of interest in activities they used to enjoy; significant withdrawal from family or friends; dramatic changes in sleep, eating, or academic performance; difficulty managing emotions or frequent intense outbursts; any expression of feeling worthless, hopeless, or not wanting to be here; risky behaviors including substance use; and any significant behavioral change that persists for more than a few weeks. Importantly, teenagers do not need to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. Proactive support during periods of identity exploration, life transitions, or identity-related stress — including coming out as LGBTQ+ — can prevent more serious challenges from developing.
My teenager refuses to go to therapy. What should I do?
This is one of the most common challenges parents face — and one of the most under-addressed concerns in teen therapy content. A teenager’s reluctance is almost never a reason to abandon the idea of therapy. It is usually a signal that they need it. A few approaches that consistently help: frame therapy as a neutral space rather than evidence that something is wrong with them. Offer the teenager some agency in choosing which therapist they see — having even limited control significantly reduces resistance. Consider beginning with a parent consultation to get specific guidance on how to approach the conversation most effectively. And know this: many of David’s most impactful teenage clients arrived at their first session determined not to speak a word. The ones who stayed changed that quickly.
Do you offer therapy for LGBTQ+ teens in Los Angeles?
Yes — and it is one of the most personally important and clinically deep aspects of this practice. David is an openly gay therapist, a published author in LGBTQ+ family life, and a gay adoptive father. He offers fully affirming, deeply understanding therapy for LGBTQ+ teenagers — those who are gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, nonbinary, questioning, or navigating identity in any form. For LGBTQ+ teens, having a therapist who genuinely understands their experience from the inside removes the exhausting burden of having to educate or justify themselves to the person they’ve come to for support. David also works with families navigating a teenager’s coming out, helping parents respond in ways that protect and deepen their relationship with their child through one of the most significant conversations a family can have.
What is the difference between teen therapy and family therapy?
Teen therapy is individual therapy focused specifically on the adolescent — their inner experience, emotional development, coping strategies, and personal goals. The teenager is the primary client, and that therapeutic space belongs entirely to them. Family therapy involves multiple family members and focuses on the relationships, communication patterns, and dynamics between them. In practice, many situations benefit from both: a teenager may work with a therapist individually while the family also participates in sessions together. These formats can run in parallel or transition from one to the other as the work evolves. At David Strah Therapy, the structure is determined collaboratively based on what will actually be most helpful — not a predetermined model.
Is teen therapy confidential? Will the therapist share what my teenager says with me?
Confidentiality is one of the most important and most misunderstood elements of teen therapy. In California, therapists are legally required to maintain session confidentiality, with specific exceptions: if a teenager is at imminent risk of harming themselves or others, or if there is a disclosure of abuse, the therapist has a legal obligation to act. Beyond those legal limits, the approach to confidentiality in teen therapy requires open communication with both the teenager and their parents from the start. A teenager who doesn’t trust that their therapist will protect what they share will not open up — making the therapy ineffective. At the same time, parents need a meaningful sense of how the work is progressing. David navigates this clearly and transparently, ensuring both the teenager’s therapeutic trust and the parents’ need for appropriate involvement are genuinely respected.
How long does teen and family therapy typically take?
Therapy timelines vary based on the nature and severity of the presenting challenges, how long patterns have been entrenched, and both the teenager’s and family’s engagement with the process. For more focused issues — a specific life transition, a communication breakdown that hasn’t yet become deeply entrenched — meaningful progress can often be made in 10–20 sessions. For more complex situations — longstanding family conflict, significant adolescent mental health challenges, LGBTQ+ identity navigation within a family — the work may extend over six months to a year or more. At David Strah Therapy, progress is reviewed openly and regularly with both the teenager and the parents, and the frequency and focus adjust as the work evolves. The goal is always to reach the point where both the teenager and the family feel genuinely equipped and connected.
Do you offer family therapy for gay families and LGBTQ+ households in Los Angeles?
Yes — and this is an area of particular personal depth and published expertise. David is a gay adoptive father and the nationally recognized author of Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood (Penguin/Putnam, 2003). He works with gay and same-sex parent families on the full range of family therapy concerns — and brings specific, genuine understanding of the unique dynamics in LGBTQ+ households: identity conversations that come earlier, navigating a world that may not always reflect the family’s structure, and the extraordinary love alongside the particular challenges that define these families. For gay families and LGBTQ+ households seeking a family therapist who understands their reality from the inside, David’s combination of lived experience, published authority, and clinical expertise is exceptionally rare in Los Angeles.
How do I get started with teen or family therapy in Los Angeles?
Getting started is simple. Call or text (917) 922-2650, or submit a contact request through davidstrah.com to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. The consultation is typically with the parent or parents first — to understand the situation and confirm that David is the right fit — though teenagers are welcome to be part of that conversation if they’re willing. From there, the first full session is scheduled at the Larchmont Boulevard office in Los Angeles, or via secure telehealth anywhere in California. The first step is always the hardest. Once it’s taken, everything that follows gets clearer.
Your Teenager Deserves Real Support. Your Family Deserves to Feel Like Itself Again.
Teenagers are not problems to be managed. They are people in one of the most vulnerable and formative periods of their lives, navigating pressures that are genuinely unprecedented — and they deserve a therapist who sees all of that clearly.
And families don’t fail when they need help. They are being honest about what they need to thrive — and that honesty is the beginning of everything.
Wherever your teenager is right now, and whatever is happening in your family, there is a path forward. Therapy doesn’t fix people. It gives people the insight, the tools, and the emotional space to find their own way through — with the right guide alongside them.
Don’t wait for things to get worse before you ask for support. The best time to start is now.
