You can hold everything together at work, then walk in the door and be 10 minutes into an argument about homework, money, or the tone someone used at dinner, before anyone has said what the argument is actually about.
In Bangkok the friction often has an extra layer. Families here are frequently split across countries, and the ordinary strain of living together arrives with time zones and school calendars attached.
What family conflict can look like
Between parents and teenagers: silence at meals, slammed doors, a 15-year-old who answers everything with “fine”. From the teenager’s side it looks different again, a parent who doesn’t listen, a school and a country they didn’t choose. Both accounts can be accurate, and that’s usually the problem.
Between adult siblings: the old roles never got renegotiated, so the eldest still acts like the eldest at 40. An inheritance, the care of aging parents, a house or a business, and underneath every conversation, 30 years of history.
Extended family adds in-laws with opinions about how you’re living, and grandparents at a distance, who can feel shut out of a grandchild’s life while their questions land as criticism.
Some arguments here are specific to expat life: whether to stay in Thailand at all, which is rarely only about Thailand; the cross-cultural version, where two sets of expectations about respect, money, or parenting collide in the same household; and decisions a family spread across countries tries to make over video calls.
How family counseling works here
Dr. Mason works with structural family therapy (SFT). In plain terms, it looks at the patterns and roles within a family rather than treating one person as the problem. Every family settles into a structure over the years: who defuses, who withdraws, who gets blamed. When the structure stops working, it keeps producing the same fight regardless of the topic.
Families usually arrive braced for blame, either for themselves or for whoever they’ve persuaded to come. That’s not where we begin: nobody is assigned the role of the patient, and the work goes on the arrangement itself.
You don’t need the whole family in the room. If a teenager won’t come, or a sibling lives on another continent, we start with whoever is willing: one parent, a couple, two siblings, or one family member on their own while the others make up their minds. Sometimes the others follow later.
Dr. Mason is an American psychologist licensed in the United States. He has spent 14 of his 20-plus years in practice in Bangkok and speaks English, German, and Thai.
What happens when you get in touch
Usually one family member makes first contact, sometimes before telling anyone else. That’s fine. A first message commits you to nothing: it’s a short conversation about what’s happening and whether counseling might be useful.
If you go ahead, an early session usually includes a conversation about how confidentiality works when several family members are in the same room, so nobody has to guess at the ground rules.
Privacy, plainly stated
What you tell us stays with us.
What you share is protected under the same professional confidentiality standards that govern licensed psychologists and counsellors. We don’t confirm to anyone, including family or employers, that you’re a client here.
If you’d rather not share your full name at first, that’s fine, tell us what to call you and we’ll go from there. Read more about confidentiality
Get in touch
Reach out, at your own pace.
A message here doesn’t commit you to anything. Ask a question, describe what’s going on, or just say hello, we’ll take it from there.