Relationship THERAPY
Challenges And Conflict Can Easily Overtake Relationships
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 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.
Relationship Therapy Can Be Beneficial In Many Contexts
Unlike couples counseling, individual therapy for relationship issues gives you a chance to work on problems that extend beyond the realm of romantic partners. For instance, you may be dealing with conflict in the workplace, but you can’t exactly ask your co-worker to join you in sessions.
Perhaps you’re caring for an elderly loved one and the stress is slowly creating feelings of animosity, resentment, or guilt. Maybe you’re reeling from a painful divorce or breakup—or you’re trying to re-enter the dating game after a long hiatus. Or it could be that you have a tenuous relationship with a toxic sibling or parent, and you just need a little guidance making things better.
Whether you need help navigating family conflict, meeting a new love interest, or even healing your relationship with yourself, individual therapy may hold the solutions you need. As the founder of Sarita Redalia Psychotherapy, I want to help you address core issues, interrupt negative attachment patterns, and learn to cultivate healthier, happier relationships across the board.
“Don’t set yourself on fire trying to keep others warm.”
- Penny Reid
Many Relationship Problems Stem From Painful Past Experiences
Everyone at times runs into problems in relationships. And although there are a number of factors that can contribute to those challenges, there’s a good chance that dysfunctional patterns in your family of origin may be playing a part in what you’re going through.
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. As such, we are all susceptible to repeating these patterns until we find a safe place to explore and understand their origin.
“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”
- Brené Brown
Therapy Provides Crucial Guidance For Improving Relationships
If you've struggled to resolve your relationship challenges on your own and not been successful, please know it is not your fault. It can be extremely difficult to gain enough perspective without support to clearly understand the impact these early patterns may have had upon you. Attachment injuries stemming from traumatic events, betrayals of abuse, and the invisible wounds of neglect often negatively inform our beliefs about ourselves, our relationships, and what we deserve.
Fortunately, individual therapy for relationship issues (in contrast to couples counseling) allows you to fully focus on yourself. It gives you a chance to interrupt self-sabotaging patterns, adopt healthier behaviors, and learn to love yourself so that you can truly love others.
“The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.”
- Esther Perel
Healing Through a trusting Relationship
The organization of the human psyche is a product of our relationships, which means we are hardwired to be relational and social beings. The suffering we experience in life is most often related to what other people do and say, or conversely, what people neglect to do or say.
For this reason, wounding that happens in relationships is best healed in a relationship, which is why working with a therapist can be so beneficial. When you start individual therapy for relationship issues, you’ll experience genuine empathy within a therapeutic space of safety and trust. I’ll meet your feelings of hurt, anger, and confusion with acknowledgment and validation.
Together, we can work on better understanding your patterns in relationships and where they came from. I’ll help you challenge beliefs and patterns that may no longer serve you and teach you healthier ways of relating to others.
With individual therapy for relationships, you can also learn new tools for addressing communication issues, resolving conflict, managing strong emotions, and getting your relationship back on track.
What Can You Expect To Experience In Relationship Therapy?
The way people 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 now.
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?
To heal from attachment-based injuries, it is important that therapy focuses on both understanding the impact of your past and cultivating an attitude of self-compassion. What you experienced when you were only a child, be it parental conflict, abuse, or neglect, was not your fault. So, learning how to love, forgive, and be patient with yourself is crucial to healing.
In recovering from attachment wounds, it is also essential that you claim your most valuable resource, your relationship with yourself. To support you with that, I utilize mindfulness for relationships, a practice of simply noticing what you may be experiencing emotionally or physically in the moment.
Building your self-awareness enables you to make meaningful changes as to how you respond to yourself and others. I also want to help you cultivate empathy toward others so you don’t take their words or actions so personally. Because “good fences make good neighbors,” sometimes relationship therapy is about setting healthy boundaries and learning to say, “No.”
We can practice regulating difficult emotions so that you can navigate challenges or conflict without getting overwhelmed. Plus, you can gain insight as to how to not only communicate your needs, but also listen empathically to others.
Relationships Don’t Have To Be So Complicated
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.
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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 Work Together to Weed Out The Problems In Your Relationships
If you want to enjoy healthier, more fulfilling connections throughout your life, let’s talk about it. I welcome hearing from you to answer any questions you may have or provide additional information.
Please Contact Me or leave me a confidential voicemail at: (415) 292-5888 for your free, 20-minute phone consultation to see how individual therapy for relationship issues with Sarita Redalia Psychotherapy can help you.
Providing in-person relationship therapy in San Francisco and online therapy for those who reside within 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 INFO
You may call my office voicemail 24-hours a day and leave me a confidential message.
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.
Recent Blog Posts
