Relationship Issues
“The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” - Esther Perel
All of us are in a relationship.
You’re a romantic partner, romantic interest, parent, sibling, child, cousin, boss, colleague, friend, workout buddy, stranger, and so on. Everyday you show up to someone and feel the push & pull of that relationship.
On the surface, your relationship looks fine. But inside…
Yearn for more.
Whatever your role is in that relationship, you feel unsatisfied, unfulfilled, bored, and you yearn for more.
Notice a pattern.
You notice a pattern of what this relationship brings out of you and it doesn’t feel good. You wish you could stop but it’s not easy.
Not your best.
You feel like you’re not your best self in that role. In fact, part of you wishes you could avoid being in that relationship altogether.
Lonely.
You feel alone and lonely. Like no one really understands you or even try to understand you. So why try?
Tired.
You’re tired of the sameness of it all - the predictability, and/or the unpredictability.
Scared.
You’re scared of showing your true self because you’re afraid of rejection, judgment, and abandonment.
The reason you feel this way
is because you’re stuck with a set of beliefs and understandings about what your roles should be, what you believe other people expects from you, and what you believe the experience of love and belonging looks like. The blueprint of all of this came from our early relationships with our parents. On top of that, unresolved trauma from a relationship in the past that was supposed to be protective and safe can also impact these beliefs and understandings.
What you witnessed growing up, how your parents treated you, what you were encouraged to do or not do shapes your attachment style, which in turn impacts your experience/quality of the relationships in your life.
Therapy can help you
Become more aware about how your upbringing/past experiences have shaped the way you see yourself and what you believe are expected out of you in relationships. Therapy can help you discover how those set of beliefs are limiting your experiences and how you can expand them so that you can have more fulfilling relationships.
Learn your boundaries so that you can uphold them in the relationships that feels draining and exhausting. If you feel like so much is being asked out of you in a relationship, it most likely means you’re not setting healthy boundaries. In therapy, we can work on finding out what’s holding you back from honoring your boundaries and work on building up your confidence.
Deconstruct and challenge everything you’ve learned about relationships, communication, what’s “normal”, and not normal so that you can discover your true feelings, thoughts, wants, and needs. From there, we can work on creating compassion for yourself, find what feels authentic to you, and learn new ways of showing up in your relationships.
I also work with couples, families, and friends from these lens.
Therapy for Relationship Issues
I can help. Let’s start.