Relationships are central to our human experience. Our relationships can provide us with safety and security, love & intimacy, and physical & emotional fulfilment. Healthy relationships encourage interdependence whilst supporting our personal growth and autonomy, placing value on open lines of communication.
However, even the strongest of relationships can experience breakdowns in communication, & an increase in conflict. Your connectedness may be lost through avoidance and withdrawal, mistrust, or a sense of having no control.
Psychotherapy can help you to become more aware of how you might be contributing to the self-sabotage of your relationships.
We often bring into our relationships patterns that have developed during our childhood, unknowingly carrying them with us into adulthood. Our learnings on how to relate to others emerged through our original relationships with our parents or caregivers.
In childhood, once we have experienced some of life’s inevitable disappointments, we defend ourselves from future pain by making generalisations about life, based on these early experiences. We can create self-fulfilling prophecies by imposing on our wider world, how we think life should be and how we ought to be treated. “Shoulds”, “oughts” and “musts” can become a powerful internal dialogue that doesn’t always serve us well.
Let me support you through the issues that may have arisen in your relationship:
• Infidelity
• Ineffective communication
• Parenting/Co-parenting concerns
• Lack of physical or emotional intimacy
• Grief/loss
• Life transitions