Relationship Issues

We are made from our relationships, even from our earlier interactions with our caretakers in infancy.  I believe our selves are made up of the millions of social exchanges we take in over the course of our lives.  The way we move through relationships with our partners, children, friends, and coworkers carries traces of all of those relational pathways.  Even the way we are with our selves comes from those outside relationships. 

“They just don’t get me.”  “Why doesn’t she see how wrong that is?”  “He won’t talk to me.”  “I’m so scared they hate me.”  “I’m just no good for them.”  You may find yourself hearing the same phrases in your head over and over.  You may notice patterns in different relationships repeating over and over.  Maybe you keep having the same conflict.  Maybe you can’t let go of a past hurt or error that’s haunting you.  Therapy can help you slow down and examine what’s happening in these relationships, with others and yourself.  Relationship problems are complex and link back to our life histories and traumas. 

I have training in relational psychotherapy, which means I pay close attention to what is happening between us in the therapy room.  Relationship issues get close care because we get to live them out together by using the therapeutic relationship as a laboratory.  The development of our relationship under the task of therapy becomes the treatment itself as we encounter feelings together about the relationship - fears of intimacy or being seen, self-consciousness, anger, desire, curiosity, and more.