Relationship Counseling for Individual Adults
Improve Your Relationships by Healing the Most Important Relationship of All … Your Relationship with Your Self!
Our relationships are one of the most important aspects of our lives.
To a large extent, our relationships with others define who we are. Our relationships can also be the source of our greatest joys, and our greatest frustrations, heartache, and pain.
Given this central role relationships play in our lives – not to mention their importance to our overall mental, emotional, and physical well-being – it’s really no surprise that the vast majority of my clients come to me looking to resolve relationship issues.
We long for meaningful connection with others … relationships that not only provide a sense of stability and security, but that also nurture us and make us feel understood and appreciated.
Yet most of us lack the emotional and relational grounding to create the types of relationships we desire.
So, if you’re fighting with your partner all the time or your relationship feels like it’s withering on the vine, or you’re having problems meeting people, or you’re having issues with your children, parents, siblings, other family members, co-workers, or friends … know that you’re FAR from alone.
And help is available!
That being said, while many people contact a marriage and family therapist like me looking for marriage counseling and couples therapy, what people often overlook is that the most important relationship you have is your relationship with yourself.
This is why much of the focus of my work is providing relationship counseling for individual adults.
Why Individual Relationship Counseling?
It’s a question I hear all of the time …
“If all of my problems are coming up in my relationship with my partner, or spouse, or children, or family members, wouldn’t it be more effective to get all of us in a room together to resolve the issues?”
While couples and marriage counseling and family therapy can be very effective, and I often recommend them, there are several reasons why individual relationship counseling and therapy often make more sense:
1) You’re Not Reliant on Someone Else to Get the Help You Deserve
It’s relatively uncommon for both partners in a relationship to be ready to seek professional help at the same time. Quite often, one partner wants to get help long before the other is ready.
It can be even more difficult to get multiple family members to agree to counseling or therapy. For example, I help a lot of people who come from different cultural backgrounds, including hierarchical, authoritarian, top-down family systems. While these clients’ problems may stem from their relationships with their parents, it’s a good bet many of their parents aren’t going to attend therapy.
And what if the relationship problems you’re having are with colleagues, or friends? Or you’re having a problem meeting people and getting into relationships?!?
There are obviously numerous situations in which getting two or more people in the same room to work on relationship issues just isn’t feasible or doesn’t make much sense.
Individual relationship counseling allows you to get the help you need and deserve, when you need it, without relying on someone else’s willingness or availability to attend counseling and therapy.
But more than this, by doing the work to better understand yourself, you may well be able to improve your relationships even if the other person never gets help!
2) The Only Person You Can Really Change Is You
Many people seek couples counseling or family therapy hoping to change another person’s behavior – whether that person is their partner, a child, or another family member. But the truth is that the only person you can truly change is yourself.
Individual relationship counseling and therapy can help you accept responsibility for the things you can change and let go of the things you can’t, so YOU can create the changes you seek.
I will listen to you as you decide whether or not it makes sense to continue a given relationship and, if so, how to do so in a way that doesn’t involve you sacrificing yourself, your wants and needs.
3) The Importance of Healing Your Relationship with Your Self
Despite the vital role relationships play in our lives, most of us learned everything we know about relationships from watching and interacting with our parents or primary caregivers, as well as our siblings and other family members when we were very young.
But no one is perfect. Even if we’re fortunate enough to have been raised by loving, emotionally intelligent, and securely attached parents, there’s always a chance we developed defense mechanisms to protect us from some sort of emotional trauma (bullying, a death in the family, you name it) that can, in turn, affect our relationships in the present.
And most of us did not grow up in securely attached families.
All of the emotional wounds we’ve experienced – and all of the emotional defenses we’ve created to protect ourselves from them – are acquired in our relationships with other people.
This is why we get “triggered” by others. It’s not necessarily what the other person is doing or not doing, but our reaction to it that is causing us problems.
It’s also possible that you might actually be in an unhealthy relationship. If that possibility exists, we’ll look at that, too.
However, it’s more than likely that the issues you’re experiencing in your current relationship may actually predate your relationship with this person.
This also means that our relationship problems offer us an ideal opportunity to consciously explore who we are, what we truly want, and any underlying issues and beliefs that are preventing us from creating the relationships we desire.
Last but not least, since all emotional wounds occur in relationships, they also need to be healed in the context of our relationship. This is precisely what the healing relationship you and I develop together in individual counseling and therapy is all about … helping you heal the relationship you have with your Self.
After all, whatever triggers or emotional buttons you have, they’re your issues.
No matter whom you’re with, at some point or other those same buttons are going to be pushed again until you work through them.
Every relationship you have starts with the relationship you have with YOU. Shouldn’t you make yours the best it can be?
Should You Seek the Help of a Relationship Therapist?
I’ve studied relationships in many settings and places throughout my life, including what leads to relational pain and what leads to healing and allows our relationships to flourish and grow.
And as someone who’s been helping clients communicate and connect relationally, be empathetic, and bond with others for well over two decades, I want to be perfectly clear …
Counseling and psychotherapy aren’t some sort of “magic pills” – it’s difficult work that can take time.
However, if you’re curious about who you are and why your relationships work and don’t work the way they do – and you’re willing to put in the time and energy to better understand who you are and what you want most – then individual relationship counseling can be one of the best investments you make, not just in the future of your relationships, but for your whole life.
When all is said and done, only you can decide whether or not individual relationship counseling is right for you.
Just remember, your relationships aren’t going to change unless and until you do.
So, if you’re ready to better understand who you are and learn to create healthier, more joyous relationships with others, and with yourself, I encourage you to contact me today at 510-866-4781 or email me at eleanor@eleanorlew.com with any questions you have or to schedule a free, 15-minute, initial telehealth consultation. I look forward to speaking with you. But the person you’re really going to meet is you!