Relationship Issues

My practice is informed by attachment theory, which stresses our innate desire and need for contact and intimacy with our fellow human beings.

How we Learn to Relate

Our first experiences of relationship are with our care givers. As a baby and young child our foremost task is to form a bond which will keep us safe and get basic needs, which are central to our very survival, met. Our young ones’ job is a simple one - to seek love.

The success of our caregivers in reassuring us and responding sensitively to our needs fashions our understanding of ourselves and what we can expect from others. We learn to trust; that we will be loved as ‘ourselves’. We learn to be confident, autonomous and, as an adult, we can enter the world playfully.

However, for some our caregivers can, for a myriad of reasons, be absent, misattuned, unresponsive or alternatively overbearing. The young baby and child adapts to their caregiver, squeezing themselves into the shape, however uncomfortable, which best keeps them safe. It is a creative adaptation to their family environment, in which patterns of relating are learnt, practiced and cemented.

Sometimes the shape we need to squeeze ourselves into is a painful contortion, so restrictive that we can not breath, we can not grow. Sadly, our learning becomes that relationships are unreliable, confusing or frightening. Instead of love we learn to expect scorn or rejection.

Recognising our Established Patterns of Relating

As adults we have far more choice in relationships and life. However, we sometimes get stuck in our childhood patterns of relating. Our fear of being hurt, rejected, or abandoned may get in the way of the intimacy we seek.

We may hear the words I love you but we may wonder do you love the real me?

We may find it hard to show our feelings and express our emotions.

We may feel the only way to be loved is to please the other.

We may find it hard to ask for support.

We may find it hard to balance our needs with those of our partner.

We may feel overwhelmed, maybe even taken over by our partner.

We may find sexual intimacy difficult.

We may cling to relationships which, we know in our gut, are no good for us.

We can split off all parts of ourselves that we think are unloveable and keep them safe. These parts, often parts we experience as vulnerable and deeply central to who we are, never get to fully live and we are left feeling unseen.

How I Work with You

The more we understand our patterns and their roots the more choice we have to do things differently. We can find a tenderness for the behaviours which kept us safe in our family of origin, but expand into new, more fulfilling ways of relating.

Therapy is at its heart an intimate relationship. Research has shown conclusively it is NOT the therapists’ modality, but the strength of the relationship, which is the key to therapeutic success. I understand this to be because we are all on some level broken in relationship but that, wonderfully, we also heal in relationship. The chance to sit with, be seen, be held in mind, be carried in the heart of a qualified, empathetic therapist can be deeply touching and reparative.

My stance is relaxed and collaborative. I offer my eyes and ears as a way to explore and be curious about yourself. I bring tenderness and the possibility to view yourself differently, to learn that you matter and feel your impact. You get a chance to try on new ways of relating, knowing you will not be judged. These emerging patterns can then trickle into your everyday life facilitating more satisfying relationships and ways of being in the world.