Relationships

When people think of relationships, they often think of their partner. While this may be your most important relationship, our whole lives are made up of hundreds of relationships, each with its own set of rules, assumptions and boundaries. Your relationship issues right now could be with your partner, but they could also be with friends, colleagues, family or online communities.

When we work with your relationship issues, we will look at your earliest relationships, as these were when you learned how to interact with other people. In your early years, you learned many of your expectations for how people would treat you and a set of rules for how you treat others. The purpose of this isn't to find somebody to blame, but to identify the unhelpful assumptions you have about your interactions with others.

When we expect people to treat us badly, we often behave badly towards them as a form of self-defence, or sometimes we just close ourselves off so that people can't be in a position to hurt us. Some of us allow ourselves to be abused because at some point we have learned that this is the normal way for a relationship to function.

None of these beliefs or assumptions are set in stone. With practice, you can start to feel comfortable with asking to have your needs met in your relationships. You will begin to see people as complex individuals with both good and bad aspects to their personalities and you may find the strength to walk away from toxic relationships that you are powerless to rescue.