Understanding relationship problems
When relationships work well, they bring us joy and happiness. When they don't work, they bring us feelings of loneliness, sadness, rejection and anger.
You might be struggling with a relationship at home with your partner, your children, your parents or someone else in your family. Or perhaps a difficulty with one of your friends. or work colleague. There might even be struggles in more than one relationship which might or might not be connected.
Supportive and fulfilling relationships do not come easy. They require hard work and tenacity. Things often go wrong when one or more of the following happens:
- Failure in communication
- Loss of trust
- Conflicting messages given and received
Mismatched expectations intensifies problems, polarises opinion and arguments can increase.
What help is available?
Counselling is a good way of understanding the problems you might be experiencing. There are two ways that you can engage in counselling.
- Individual Counselling: Get counselling for yourself. You can explore the relationship and gain insight into your own pattern or behaviour and how you might be relating to the other. You might discover the reasons for what you are experiencing, understand their impact on you and increase your awareness. This will give you a fresh new perspective and empower you to work with the problems.
- Couple or Family Counselling: You can seek relationship counselling with the person you are experiencing the problem with. This could be couple counselling if your struggles are with your partner or family counselling if it is someone else in your family.
Which path is best for you
Which path you choose is dependent on what you want from therapy, the kind of problems you are experiencing and willingness of the other person to work through these issues with you.
It is possible to be in personal counselling and relationship counselling at the same time. This should not be with the same counsellor due to conflict of interest.
You can call me to discuss this further or book the first appointment to explore it at length in a session.
How I can help you improve your relationships
I can work with you individually in Personal Counselling through one to one session or together as a couple in Couple Counselling.
In Individual Counselling, I would help you understand yourself better, explore your pattern of behaviour and help you understand your relationships. The focus would remain on the relational context that you bring to therapy but would take a more holistic approach to counselling for the individual.
In Couple Counselling, I would help you explore your feelings for each other, how you both relate to each other and where the gaps are. This will help you improve communication with each other, develop trust and have a better relationship.