Relationship & interpersonal issues
The importance of safe, healthy relationships
Relationship and interpersonal issues include ongoing patterns of conflict, communication breakdown, emotional distance or mistrust between couples, family members or workplace colleagues. It happens when the natural dynamic or patterns between individuals becomes negative or cold, where people turn away or against each other, instead of towards each other. For some people, they are experiencing coercive or controlling relationships that are traumatic and health harming, and which they may find difficult to deal with or exit from.
Challenges and distress in relationships is one of the most frequent reasons people seek therapy and we may work with individuals, couples and families to support positive change.
The impact of unsafe, health-harming experiences
The level of impact depends on your life situation. We know that ongoing tension at home or work keeps your body's stress hormones constantly elevated, which can lead to high blood pressure, poor sleep, low mood and perhaps feeling depressed. You may experience unhealthy patterns in relationships as constant, circular arguments over the same issues, which may lead to emotional withdrawal, frequent misunderstandings, infidelity, loneliness and isolation even when you are physically together. It may result in you feeling less safe in your environment, your world may become smaller as you see others or go out less often. You may feel that you do less well at work or school and find it difficult to be motivated to do what gives you meaning or stretch in your life.
It can be a very human response to living in a distressful environment that we form unhealthy responses such as an increase in alcohol or drugs, or a change in your eating patterns.
Events from controlling and coercive relationships are in themselves traumatic and can impact on a person’s identity, sense of self, and the safety and confidence in their relationships with others.
Expert facilitation and support
We provide a calm, structured, and neutral environment where you can look at the relationship in a clear thinking way. When people come as an individual, as a couple or family, our role isn’t to take sides, but to help build a shared understanding of the situation, an open discussion about actions, learning and responsibilities, and a clear path forward.
Couples and family work can involve sessions for people as individuals as well as for everyone together. We have a flexible approach, so depending on your situation and preference, an individual practitioner may work in what we call a ‘diamond approach’, providing individual and group sessions. In other situations, it may be two therapists who support you as a whole to provide a degree of separation that would work better for you. In both set ups, we recognise and respect the need for confidentiality and transparency about any information sharing between people relating to sessions.
We use human givens (an understanding of our emotional and physical needs, barriers to meeting those needs and our innate resources) to provide an overarching framework. The framework and our coaching approach helps provide clarity about what to focus on in order to move things forward in line with your goals. Sessions may involve teaching skills, learning new patterns or building greater confidence in emotional self awareness and management. Sessions could also involve discussions about navigating relationships where people have a neurotypical and/or neurodivergent brain design.