All About Relationships

 

Individual Counseling

  • You may be questioning if you want to stay in the current relationship that you are in. You can explore your patterns and how you show up in relationships. We can also look at your values and what you want in your relationship.

  • You may want to understand codependency and why you worry about your partners feelings more then your own. You can see this happen when you notice that you feel uncomfortable to share your feelings with your partner because you are “afraid of how they will react”.

  • You want to learn how to become better about learning how to create healthier boundaries in your relationship. You may also not know what to do because your partner does not respect your boundaries.

  • You want to learn how you can improve on your communication skills.

  • You may be struggling with intimacy issues that you would like to work on without your partner.

  • You may want to heal past hurts, limiting beliefs, or fears that are getting in the way of your relationship.

  • You want to learn more about yourself and how to respond and show up differently in your relationships.

  • You would like to work on yourself with any items under the Couples Counseling section.

Couples Counseling

  • Couples therapy is successful for many couples. However, that doesn’t mean that I can fix your problems or change your partner. In order for couples counseling to work, both partners must be completely committed to it and be willing to practice the skills that they learn.

  • The hardest part of couples therapy is accepting that in order for your relationship to change, you will need to improve your response to a problem (how to think about it differently and how to behave differently). This is very difficult because it’s much easier to focus on why your partner should do the improving. Even if we think that are partner is 95% responsible, we need to look and focus on our 5%.

  • You job is to commit to your individual growth. You can’t change your partner but you can influence each other. Becoming a better version of ourselves is the most efficient way to influence your partner and change your relationship.

  • Each partner is committed to owning their own s#*t. In relationships, and as with life in general, all emotions will exist at different times. This means that at times you will be triggered, feel abandoned, trapped, rejected, overlooked and any other difficult feeling that arises when we are closely bonded with another imperfect human being. We need to examine our own faulty beliefs and triggers as well as work with our partners to understand how we are showing up in the relationship. We recognize that we want to understand and work with our partners to show up in helpful ways AND we are not responsible for how our partners feel.

  • When bad feelings surface, that doesn’t always mean that something is terribly wrong in the relationship. Our job is to examine where those thoughts and feelings are coming from.

  • All feelings are welcomed, not judged, condemned, or criticized. Relationships are about two subjective realities, not one objective truth. Can each person feel safe to be totally honest, and allow two truths to exist equally, without one dominating the other and being “right”.

  • Are you ready to explore and challenge some faulty assumptions, beliefs, and expectations about how our partner or our relationship “should” be? The more you believe your parnter should be different, the less initiative you will take to change the patterns between you.

  • Trust is the foundational building block of relationships. You build trust by showing up everyday and doing what you say you will do - consistently.

  • You can learn a lot about yourself by understanding what annoys you and how you handle it.

  • Therapy isn’t only about creating the knowledge about yourself and the patterns of interaction between you. The real work comes in when you use this new knowledge to break ineffective patterns and develop better ones.

  • A relationship is a place to practice love. Love is a daily practice. A practice of acceptance, being present, forgiveness, and stretching our hearts to vulnerable territories.

  • Change takes time and A LOT of practice.

The Stages of a Relationship

  • The Honeymoon

    This stage can last anywhere from 6 months to two years. In this euphoric stage, unconscious factors like attraction and the activation of the reward system take over. Brain scans show high levels of dopamine, the chemical that activates the reward system by triggering an intense rush of pleasure

  • The Trigger Stage

    This stage is often the make it or break it stage for relationships. Relationships experience a drifting apart. You begin to individuate. Couples may notice more arguing, conflict, and feeling triggered by each other.

    You decide if you are going to work together to fix core problems, have honest conversations, reset priorities and begin to feel more satisfied.

  • The Deep Attachment Stage

    A couple has learned tools, how to communicate and learn each other. They have learned how to navigate conflict.