Private Psychological Consultation for Executives, Physicians, and Complex Partnerships
Shaifali Sandhya, PhD
FAMILY CONSULTATION
INTERNATIONAL AND MULTICULTURAL FAMILY PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSULTATION
Discreet Family Advisory for Global Families
Family is the foundation of legacy — emotional, cultural, and financial.
In internationally mobile, multicultural, and high-profile families, the pressures are often invisible but profound: succession planning, cross-border living, complex personalities, illness, grief, generational wealth, and cultural misalignment can quietly erode relationships.
Even the most accomplished families face private strain.
As Tolstoy observed, “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In global families, that unhappiness may be shaped by immigration histories, multilingual households, blended identities, inheritance structures, or public scrutiny.
The Coach
Dr. Shaifali Sandhya is a Cambridge and University of Chicago-educated psychologist and author of several books. She provides private psychological consultations for high-performing professionals and couples prepared to engage in structured, insight- oriented work. Dr. Sandhya's work has been featured in international media including the New York Times, Fox, CBS, US News and World Report and National Public Radio. Her practice provides confidential, psychologically sophisticated consultation for international and high-net-worth families navigating complexity.
Who This Is For
Dr. Sandhy works with:
• Ultra-high-net-worth and high-net-worth families
• Multicultural and cross-national households
• Globally mobile families with residences in multiple countries
• Family offices navigating interpersonal impasses
• Families undergoing estate transitions or succession planning
• Same-sex and non-traditional family structures
• Public-facing individuals requiring exceptional discretion
Common Challenges in International & High-Complexity Families
• Cross-cultural communication breakdowns
• Succession and estate-planning tensions
• Illness, disability, or end-of-life decision-making
• Divorce within high-asset families
• Parenting conflicts across cultures or legal jurisdictions
• Narcissistic, controlling, or volatile personality dynamics
• Substance misuse within prominent families
• Estrangement and intergenerational cutoff
• Family governance conflicts
• Health planning amidst challenging family personalities
• Grief that reverberates across generations
In families of means, emotional fractures often remain unspoken — until a crisis exposes them.
A Strategic, Systems-Based Approach
It is a structured, evidence-based process grounded in:
• Family Systems Theory
• Attachment Science
• Cross-Cultural Psychology
• Trauma-Informed Care
• Executive-level mediation frameworks
Work may involve the entire family — or begin discreetly with a single member.
The goal is not merely symptom reduction. It is the restoration of:
• Psychological safety
• Functional communication
• Governance alignment
• Emotional accountability
• Intergenerational continuity
Discretion at the Highest Level
Privacy is foundational. Sessions are conducted in a confidential, structured setting designed to support candid dialogue without reputational risk. When appropriate, we collaborate — with consent — alongside:
• Family offices
• Wealth managers
• Estate attorneys
• Divorce counsel
• Private physicians
This integrated model helps prevent emotional conflict from escalating into financial or legal fracture.
Twelve-Session Advisory Engagement
For meaningful transformation, families are encouraged to engage in a structured twelve-session advisory process.
This allows for:
1. Diagnostic mapping of family dynamics
2. Cross-cultural and personality assessment
3. Identification of repeating intergenerational patterns
4. Governance and communication recalibration
5. Implementation of durable relational tools
Every Family Is Unique
There is no formula.
Red flags that suggest the need for consultation include:
• Lingering resentments at family gatherings
• Estranged siblings or children
• “Elephant in the room” dynamics
• Escalating criticism or contempt
• Paralysis around estate or medical decisions
• Emotional volatility surrounding wealth or power
Often, one courageous family member initiates change.
I practice family systems approach to restore your sense of "family." Our approach is free of judgement, support, and emphasizes overall concern for each and every family member's well being. Reconditioning the family space allows for the use of a articulating new healthy goals for each family member. This safe space facilitates growth by further exploring your unconscious motivations, thoughts and feelings. Creating a safe space can also reveal self-sabotaging old behaviors, destructive thought patterns, harmful commitment issues, feelings of insecurity such as feeling ‘not feeling good enough’, or intimacy issues.
Unlearning Old Patterns. Building Enduring Structures.
Therapy at this level is about reconditioning the relational ecosystem.
We create a structured yet empathic space to:
• Surface unconscious loyalties and inherited scripts
• Address shame, insecurity, and identity fractures
• Interrupt destructive communication cycles
• Develop high-functioning conflict resolution skills
• Rebuild trust after betrayal or financial disputes
The objective is not perfection - but resilience.
Request a private consultation
CASE STUDIES
*names/identifying details have been changed
Sarah: Better Emotional Regulation Through Family Therapy
Sarah is a 13-year old Caucasian, heterosexual female who had a previous diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. She had difficulty interacting with her peers, felt like she was “different” from everyone around her, and had a history of binge eating when feeling stressed out or upset. Sarah also had a contentious relationship with her dad following his primary custody of her post-divorce. Their disagreements would culminate with both yelling or screaming at each other. Family therapy sessions assisted in: understanding the ramifications of the divorce on Sarah; clarifying and articulating Sarah's emotions and needs underlying her outbursts; and, in learning constructive coping skills to manage her negative emotions in more adaptive ways.
Ravi: The Suffering Indian Father Who Cannot Help But Blame, Yet Craves Family Happiness
"My father constantly tells me I'm not good enough to be his son," says Manav, Ravi's 17-years old son when his father is not present in the room. "He tells me you're an embarrassment for the family." Rahul describes a father who has been busy with his work life but seldom been around to engage with his two sons while they were growing up. "Every time I open my mouth I am blamed, shares Manav, who has learnt to shut himself off in his room, instead, playing video games.
Ravi, 50-years old, married for over two decades, grew up in India and arrived as an immigrant in the US. He has worked very hard to be a father who provided his sons a private education at good schools and a comfortable life for his family. He also reports strained relationships with his wife, saying "I feel my wife never connected with me." He is troubled that his sons view him as "abusive and controlling." Struggling with depression and hopelessness, Ravi's therapeutic goals are: preventing a further spiraling downhill of his family relationships, and working on family happiness. The family wished to deconstruct their old patterns to afford them newer opportunities to build new blocks for healthy relationships and a greater fulfilling life. Family therapy focused on drawing out the unique perspectives of each of their four family members to design a treatment plan for the family balancing their individual goals with the family goals of happiness.
Family Therapy With An Elderly Parent With Mistrust Issues
When Angela started to notice that her normally kind mother who was in her eighties first start to exhibit bouts of rage, initially she attributed it to her mom's hard life. Gradually, the rage filled tantrums escalated into a firmly held belief that others were deceiving her, harming her or harming someone she cared for. In those instances, no matter what evidence to the contrary anyone provided to her mother, the conviction that she was being harmed was unshakeable. These false perceptions were never sensory but always hard-to-shake beliefs. Also, Angela's mother seemed to exhibit a good memory. Delusions (firmly held beliefs in things that are not real) may occur in middle- to late-stage Alzheimer's. As mom became "impossible," 'verbally abusive," and her family became embroiled in vicious dynamics, Angela and her mother sought therapy to first, diagnose and then, disentangle the pernicious effects of dementia, Alzheimer's and depression to their therapy goal - "just bring about peace, happiness and stability in our home without medication." Therapy revealed factors behind Angela's mom's depression and dementia and provided the family with social skills to alleviate and manage the illness.
Rebuilding the Galvin Family: "We're Different But We Are Close - How Can We Listen Better To Each Other?"
It seemed like things progressively fell apart for the Galvins', an Irish-American family, after their mom passed away following a protracted struggle with cancer. In the three years that followed her death with cancer, the two siblings - Emma, 30-years and Jake, 26-years old drifted away - and their dad, 65-years old and a retired CEO took to alcohol. Things came to a head when one day inebriated, he got into his car, drove half-way across the state and found himself injured with no recollection of all that had transpired. Dad's alcoholism had progressively got worse after mom's death but prior, family issues had been "swept under the rug" shared Emma. Now, 30-years old and pregnant with her first child, she found herself "as the parent in this family" with an "intense fear of losing dad." Jake had been the primary care-giver for mom and as he had watched her deteriorate, he had lost interest in studies and sports in college. He dropped out of college and "failures stacked up." Jake "didn't know how to deal with failures and getting motivated" was very hard for him." He realized that for many years "problems got pushed away" and he also "feared that Emma and he would not be talking anymore if dad were to pass away." The dad, Mr. Galvin, shared in the first session, "This is the best year of my life. It wasn't easy to make the kids' lives perfect but I gave up a lot in order to do so. I don't want anyone to tell me what to do." Each family member it seemed, was on a different page in the first session. "We're different but we're close," shared the Galvins in their first meeting. "Yes we are not a perfect TV family but we want to walk-the-talk with each other. We want to become stronger as a family."
