Relationship Counseling
Is It Hard To Have Intimacy And Connection With Others?
Are you struggling to find your footing in relationships? Do you keep showing up the same way in relationships but never getting better results? Does unresolved trauma from the past prevent you from getting close, building trust, or feeling safe with others? Despite the same unhealthy dynamics cropping up in your relationships over and over, are you uncertain how to avoid them or struggle to recognize when a relationship has run its course?
Perhaps from an early age, relationships have been challenging for you. Whether it’s with family members, friends, coworkers, or romantic partners, you might feel frustrated by the lack of connection, intimacy, and vulnerability you cultivate with others. You might find that you’re often in relationships where you end up giving more than you’re getting.
Your Past Influences Your Relationships
If you didn’t have the best experience with your caregivers, chances are it’s been difficult for you to form close or appropriate relationships as an adult. You may have an avoidant or more confrontational style to conflict that doesn’t serve your well-being. You could also struggle with letting your walls down and being vulnerable, or, perhaps, you tend to self-sabotage by entering controlling relationships that lead to chronic stress, destructive behavior, and unmet emotional needs.
Without grounding, stable relationships you may feel isolated and unfulfilled. Perhaps you’re trying to recover from a romantic breakup, falling out with a friend, or estrangement from a family member and looking for a way to restore and heal yourself. If you could take a step back and gain some perspective on what has led you here, you may avoid making the same choices over again.
Seeking therapy with a relationship counselor can help you identify the what and why of relational patterns. Whether it is guidance after a breakup or to resolve issues with friends or family, therapy can provide you with insights that can improve your relationships, healing the heart and giving you applications to pivot toward healthier relationships. Therapy can help heal your heart by showing you how to pivot toward healthier relationships.
Relationships Are Imperfect
Although we all need relationships, they’re inherently imperfect. In every relationship, two flawed humans come together to share lives. And although our primary relationships with caregivers are not our choice, they become the blueprint for all future relationships we experience thereafter. If those early relationships lack a secure attachment that makes us feel safe and unconditionally loved, there will be consequences that impact us as adults.
We may feel like we are on an uphill battle striving for secure relationships yet having no idea of how they look in reality. Despite being wired for connection and craving closeness and authentic expression with others–in any type of relationship–we may experience relationships that lack intimacy, vulnerability, and connection.
Cultural Norms Can Further Challenge Our Relationships
In today’s highly individualistic society, it’s become easier than ever to become disengaged from meaningful connections with others. Sadly, the relationships we do have are often negatively impacted by the never-ending demands of our hectic lives. But it's easy to make the mistake of never slowing down long enough to examine what may be the underlying cause of your relationship dissatisfaction. Or maybe we know what’s causing our dissatisfaction but aren’t yet ready to do something about it. In the meantime, we get further away from what we know is best for ourselves.
However, it’s beneficial to understand what your story has been so far and, more importantly, ensure you take an active role in how it will be written from here. Making time for counseling provides you with an objective perspective that can help you nurture more meaningful relationships.
In Relationship Counseling, You Can Be Known To Yourself And Others
Connection with others is essential. If relationships aren’t stable, grounded, and reciprocal, we are the ones who ultimately suffer. Even if you’ve experienced success in other aspects of your life, without strong and secure emotional, committed bonds with those you love, life can feel shallow and meaningless.
Counseling can be a big step toward cultivating healthier, more fulfilling relationships. As a therapist devoted to helping clients discover how it feels to show up in relationships and be fully known by others as well as themselves, I want to help you achieve your full potential. As we work through the issues that keep you stuck in unhelpful cycles, relationship therapy not only offers valuable insight but also provides you with effective tools to have wellness and influence wellness in the relationship.
What To Expect In Sessions
Throughout counseling, our focus will be to support and foster your wellness—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually if relevant—to enhance the quality of your relationships. Introducing you to new ways of thinking about how you relate to yourself and, in turn, to others will open you up to healthy, sustainable and mutually fulfilling relationships.
Getting curious about how much your past, learned patterns, your perspectives, and your subconscious impacts your present circumstances, you can identify what has been missing and learn strategies and tools that will lead to healthier interactions. This allows you to repair existing relationships and build stronger, more resilient relationships moving forward.
Therapy Provides You With The Skills To Improve Your Relationships
In addition to encouraging self-support and holistic wellness, relationship counseling may also include:
Tangible tools to help build and nurture trust and empathy with others;
Explore and better your relationship with concepts like trust, vulnerability, worth, shame, guilt, resentment, and others that often show up.
Establishing healthy boundaries and learning how to assertively express your needs and wants without fear of being shut down or misunderstood;
Effective communication tools that promote active listening, problem-solving, and conflict resolution;
Exploring the stories you tell yourself and how they may either hurt or heal your current relationships;
Identifying attachment styles that influence how you relate to others as well as healing emotional wounds;
Ways to improve emotional regulation, foster self-confidence, and build resilience.
In addition to providing psychoeducation to better understand the influence of neurobiology and neuropsychology on how you’re wired to you think, feel, and behave, we may incorporate such modalities as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), attachment-based therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), mindfulness, and narrative therapy into relationship counseling. Each approach offers skills and insight to enhance self-understanding that can improve how you relate to others.
Being known authentically is transformational. When you realize you are in charge of writing and bettering your story you feel capable of cultivating fulfilling relationships that will spark fulfillment satisfaction in your life.
But Maybe You’re Not Sure If Relationship Counseling Is Right For You…
Can the relationship issues I’m having be improved in individual therapy?
Attending counseling can help you address personal issues or traumas that may be affecting any relationship you’re experiencing problems in, whether it’s with a family member, romantic partner, coworker, or friend. Therapy provides a space for you to build self-awareness and experience emotional growth, leading to stronger, more deeply connected relationships.
What if I want to go to couples counseling to work on our relationship but my partner doesn’t want to join me?
If your partner is reluctant to attend therapy with you to work on your relationship together, perhaps you can initiate an open and honest conversation to let them know why it’s important to you. After hearing their reservations and easing their concerns, they may be more willing to give it a try. However, if they still don’t want to attend counseling, I encourage you to go alone. Even without your partner joining you, you can still benefit greatly from individual relationship counseling.
Is there anything I can do to prepare for my first session of relationship therapy?
If you are new to the process, therapy offers a structured time in a safe place to unpack thoughts and feelings you may not feel comfortable bringing up elsewhere. To prepare for your first session, it’s helpful to consider what your goals for therapy are as well as identify what concerns you may have. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the process to ensure that relationship counseling meets your expectations. I would also encourage you to arrive with an open and honest mindset, ready to engage in the process.
Relationships Matter. Therapy Can Help You Be Known.
A healthier you leads to healthier relationships. To find out more about individual relationship counseling at Be Known Wellness Group, email, call 857-505-1856, or visit our contact page to schedule a free 15-minute call.
[1] https://www.nami.org/mhstats#:
[2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/gen-z
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