DISCOVER PATTERNS, STRENGTHEN CONNECTIONS, AND NURTURE GROWTH
Relationship THERAPY in San Francisco
IN-PERSON THERAPY IN SAN FRANCISCO AND ONLINE ACROSS CALIFORNIA
Untangling Old Roots: Rewriting Your Relationship Story
The ability to cultivate and maintain successful relationships is not an inborn skill—and most of us have experienced a failed relationship at one time or another. So if you're feeling discouraged and hopeless about your ability to make meaningful connections, you’re certainly not alone.
Many people struggle with relationship challenges, such as:
People-pleasing, codependency, and boundary-making
Attachment wounds, infidelity, and emotional betrayal
Stubbornness, endless arguing, and a lack of listening
Difficulties with conflict, intimacy, sex, and trust
Feelings of loneliness, disconnection, or being misunderstood
These challenges can make you feel disconnected and alone, even as you long for meaningful, authentic relationships.
Tending Every Connection: Guidance for Friends, Family, Work, and Romance
Unlike couples counseling, individual therapy for relationship issues lets you work on challenges beyond romantic partnerships. You might be navigating workplace conflict, family tension, dating again, or improving your relationship with yourself, situations where a partner can’t join you in sessions.
Perhaps caregiving stress is creating resentment, or a painful breakup has left you feeling ambivalent or hesitant to date again. Maybe a difficult sibling or parent relationship is weighing on you.
At Sarita Redalia Psychotherapy, we can work together to address core issues, interrupt negative attachment patterns, and cultivate healthier, happier relationships. Together, we’ll explore ways to reclaim your authentic narrative to rewrite your relationship story.
“Don’t set yourself on fire trying to keep others warm.”
- Penny Reid
Many Relationship Problems Stem From Painful Past Experiences
Everyone encounters challenges in relationships from time to time. While many factors can contribute, patterns from your family of origin often play a significant role in what you’re experiencing.
For instance, if you’ve experienced childhood abuse, emotional neglect, or wounding in your relational attachment, you may have learned ways of relating to yourself or others that create intrapsychic pain or interpersonal distress.
Impulses, ideas, or conflicts that occur due to these patterns in your family of origin can play out in adult relationships. We are all susceptible to repeating these patterns until we find a safe place to explore their origins and learn new ways of relating to ourselves and others.
“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”
- Brené Brown
Therapy Provides Guidance to Shift Relational Patterns
Early patterns in relationships often leave a lasting mark, yet it can be hard to fully understand their effects on your own. Therapy offers a safe space to examine the patterns that shape your relationships, gain perspective, and begin to shift patterns that no longer serve you.
Attachment injuries, whether from trauma, betrayal, or subtle neglect, can shape how you see yourself, relate to others, and what you feel you deserve. By examining these early patterns and the beliefs that accompany them, you can better understand how your past influences your present relationships. These old patterns can show up in friendships, family ties, workplace dynamics, and even in the partners we choose, pulling us back into familiar struggles until we find new ways of relating.
This work focuses on your own relational experiences, helping you experiment with new ways of relating. While distinct from couples counseling, the insights gained here can help you recognize and shift repeating patterns, informing and improving all of your connections. Over time, you can begin to relate more consciously, break free from old cycles, and reframe your relationship story in all areas of your life.
“The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.”
- Esther Perel
Healing Through a trusting Relationship
The suffering we experience in life is often shaped by our relationships — by what others do or say, or sometimes by what they neglect. This reflects a fundamental truth: the human psyche is organized around connection, and we are hardwired to be relational and social beings.
For this reason, relational wounds are often best healed within a supportive relationship, which is why working with a therapist can be so beneficial. In individual therapy for relationship challenges, you’ll experience genuine empathy in a space of safety and trust. Your feelings of hurt, anger, and confusion will be met with acknowledgment and validation, helping you begin to process and move through them.
Together, we can explore your patterns in relationships and understand where they come from. In therapy, you’ll have the space to examine beliefs and behaviors that may no longer serve you and to practice healthier ways of connecting with others.
With individual therapy for relationships, you can gain strategies for handling communication challenges, managing strong emotions, resolving conflicts, and building more satisfying connections.
What Can You Expect To Experience In Relationship Therapy?
The way people often respond to relationship problems is largely based on patterns that develop early in life. As such, it is vital to explore your history and how specific experiences growing up in your family may have informed how you show up in relationships today.
Once we identify problematic patterns and connect them back to early childhood experiences, we can start to challenge the negative perceptions about yourself and what you deserve from a relationship. These beliefs, often maladaptive in nature, are metaphorically "the weeds growing in your garden," which block out the sun and rob the other plants of their vital nutrients.
To continue with the gardening metaphor, we have to “pull the weeds out by their roots” or they just grow back. In my approach, the weeds are the pathogenic beliefs that we challenge and supplant with healthier, more adaptive ideas about yourself and others.
“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
- Marcel Proust
How Do I Approach The Therapy Process?
Healing from attachment-based injuries involves both understanding the impact of your past and developing self-compassion. What you experienced as a child—whether parental conflict, abuse, or neglect—was not your fault. Learning to be patient, forgiving, and loving toward yourself is a vital part of the process.
An essential part of recovery is strengthening your relationship with yourself. Mindfulness for relationships can help you notice what you are experiencing emotionally and physically in the moment, fostering greater self-awareness and insight into how you respond to yourself and others.
Therapy also supports cultivating empathy for others, setting healthy boundaries, and communicating your needs more clearly. You can practice regulating difficult emotions so that challenges and conflicts feel more manageable, while also learning to listen empathically and engage with others in a healthier way.
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cultivating Healthier Relationships Through Insight and Growth
With the support of a seasoned, trusted therapist as your guide, it is possible to enjoy healthier and more satisfying relationships. Therapy can help you identify fears surrounding intimacy, conflict, and getting your needs met.
Over time, you can heal old attachment injuries and overcome negative patterns. And you can learn to relate more mindfully to relationship challenges, respond more consciously to your triggers, and begin to use your relationship as a vehicle for personal growth.
Do You Still Have Concerns About Relationship Therapy?
I worry that talking to a relationship therapist could make things worse.
Please know that this is a common reaction to uncertainty. Many people have a tendency to catastrophize, which is a defense mechanism that can actually increase anxiety. Instead, try focusing on the present moment, allow yourself to breathe, observe the uncertainty, and—as with all intense emotions—eventually the doubt and fear will subside.
I had a bad experience in therapy once and it left me a little hesitant.
Feeling judged or misunderstood never helps the healing process, so I completely understand your reticence. If you experienced a breach of trust, just know that I intend to support you without judgment, bias, or an agenda.
My job is to show up for you consistently, be invested and reliable, and offer you information you can actually use. At the same time, I can provide you with an opportunity for relational healing and corrective emotional experience that may help relieve the pain of the previous betrayal.
I don’t know if therapy can help with my relationship issues.
Sometimes, a slight shift in perspective on the nature of a relationship problem can create a meaningful opportunity for resolution.
To test this idea, try framing a challenge in your relationship less as a problem and more like a growing edge of change.
That is, try viewing your relationship as a vehicle for personal growth that allows you to approach the obstacle as if it were an opportunity to learn, grow and improve upon yourself and your relationship.
Let’s Grow Healthy Relationships Together
Relationships are like gardens—they flourish when tended with care, attention, and patience. Old patterns, misunderstandings, or unresolved conflicts can act like stubborn weeds, leeching the vitality from your relationships and keeping them from thriving. In therapy, you can explore what’s happening beneath the surface, uncover the roots of these challenges, and experiment with ways of relating that help your connections bloom.
Think of this as cultivating your relational garden: gently pulling the weeds, enriching the soil, and giving your relationships the care and resources they need to thrive. Over time, you can create a space where your connections feel healthier, more satisfying, and full of possibility.
I’d love to hear from you—whether you have questions or want to explore how therapy can support your growth. Leave a confidential voicemail at: (415) 292-5888 or Contact me to schedule your free 20-minute consultation. I offer in-person therapy in San Francisco as well as secure online sessions across California.
Book a Phone Consultation
If you have questions or would like more information, feel free to contact me to set up a free phone consultation. Please provide your contact information and some times you’d be available for a 20-minute phone conversation. I look forward to hearing from you.
IMPORTANT INFOrmation for prospective clients
I am available to meet with you online or in-person at my Union Street office.
Appointments are generally 50-minutes in length and are scheduled on a weekly basis.
Longer or more frequent sessions are available for more intensive work.
You may call my office voicemail 24-hours a day and leave me a confidential message.
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