I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you’re with them.
~ Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
Therapy for Relationships
Our attachment to partners, friends, colleagues and family members is influenced by how we learned to attach to early care-givers.
We are born into the world as vulnerable beings. We cry for food when we are hungry or for solace when we hurt. As infants, we babble and coo seeking the reflection of our pleasure in the faces of our primary caregivers.
If we are fortunate, a caregiver recognizes and responds sufficiently to both our pain and pleasure.
In a perfect world, we all would be given the gift of “mattering” emotionally, but sometimes we are forced to resort to other ways of getting our needs met.
We may pretend we don’t have any needs and exhaust ourselves caretaking others. We may be so afraid of the pain of rejection that we don’t voice what we need out of fear that those who care about us will disapprove and leave.
We may pretend we’re happy all the time even when we suffer internally.
We may become big and dramatic with our emotion because we believe this is the only way we are recognized and heard.
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Unconsciously we can be drawn to partners that embody characteristics of those we depended on when we were young.
Even if we aren’t getting our needs met, we feel a sense of security because something about the relationship feels familiar.
In relationships where we feel particularly vulnerable, we may engage in behaviors that promote mistrust, reactivity and isolation, still believing these behaviors will satisfy our unmet emotional needs.
Using Attachment and Family Systems Theory, I help clients understand the attraction to certain relationships and what actions or attitudes of the other are particularly stressful.
I work on increasing awareness around how clients react to that stress. By cultivating this awareness, I believe we can make more intentional choices about how we take care of ourselves in individual relationships or within a system of professional or personal relationships.
I do not work with couples or families, but enjoy working with individual clients seeking to take better care of themselves in relationships.
I am also there to support clients as significant figures in their lives react to the changes they are making.