Your stuff, Our stuff: Individual & Couple Counselling at Tonic Psychology

Relationships can give us the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows. People in long-term relationships usually face some strain as they attempt to navigate the world together, and when the negotiations of sharing living spaces and everyday responsibilities come into play it can create emotional challenges for these individuals.

While it is common for relationships to have their ‘ups and downs’, and for conflict to occur in varying degrees, sometimes problems that emerge are more dysfunctional and life draining.

Relationship problems, breakdowns, and separations are a common trigger for seeking therapy. This could be the result of problems such as parenting differences, financial stress, sexual problems, infidelity, inequality, clashing of values, emotional disconnection, or a build-up of resentment just to name a few. At times, these issues are best addressed in couples counselling, where both parties have an equal presence in therapy and work collaboratively together with the guidance of a therapist.

In other circumstances, therapy may be more valuable for individuals in the relationship. This may be more relevant to those who find relationships particularly triggering and an ongoing source of distress in their lives, nonspecific to the current relationship. For example, individuals suffering the effects of an abusive, unstable, unloving, or chaotic upbringing may have trouble navigating adult relationships. This is because difficult attachments in childhood have the potential to activate our most primal fears – abandonment, mistrust, abuse, or feeling neglected. If such childhood issues have been left unresolved, there is a higher potential for these strong emotions to be activated again in intimate relationships.

Difficulties responding to these strong emotions effectively may lead into unhealthy behaviours in relationships, such as:

·       Acting in a possessive, overly jealous, or controlling manner

·       Becoming preoccupied by fears that your partner doesn’t love you or will leave you suddenly

·       Acting on insecurities by becoming ‘needy’, ‘clingy’, seeking constant reassurance, or not wanting to leave your partners side

·       Flipping between devaluing your relationship, and threatening to leave the relationship often, to complete idealisation, when you give it your everything

·       Avoiding sex, intimacy, or conflict in relationships

·       Externalising blame in conflict onto your partner

At Tonic Psychology, our psychologists are trained to provide therapy which promotes healing from the past, whilst building an understanding about your coping styles in relationships, whether you want to seek therapy for relationship issues in a couple or as an individual setting – they are here to help.

Our psychologists also aim to build upon healthy strategies to enrich your current relationships rather than repeat old life-draining patterns of behaviour. They can focus on what is truly in your control and reframe your understanding about what contribution ‘your stuff’ has towards your relationship problems. Your stuff becomes our psychologists’ stuff, where they aim to help you with your relationship challenges and can assist you with a range of techniques and strategies to strengthen yourself as an individual which will benefit your relationship in the long-term.

Our Relationship Counsellors at Tonic Psychology