Online Video Counseling to Create Healthy Relationships

If you grew up in a negligent or abusive family, then you may have had no healthy role models for intimate relationships or even friendships. The lack of a positive relationship blueprint often leads to difficulties getting – and staying – close to others. You may have difficulties trusting your partner or friends, or fall into obsessive patterns like love addiction and codependency, choosing unavailable or inappropriate people as this is the ‘devil you know’. You may be clingy or avoidant in relationships.

Whatever the difficulty, relationship or couples therapy can show you new ways of connecting based on your true emotional needs and healthy boundaries, so you can begin to experience the secure relationships you long for and deserve. Couples can also learn to communicate better, and stop destructive fighting, with the help of an authentic ‘love language’ I will teach you and your partner, leading to greater empathy, support, trust and commitment.

 

What Are The Signs That I May Need Individual Relationship Counseling?

• Chronic self doubt or insecurity is making you run from good relationships, or driving potential partners away.
• You avoid close, intimate relationships because you are afraid to trust others.
• You are attracted to troubled, addicted or unavailable partners, hoping you can help them get better, and make them love you.
• You only feel good about yourself when you are in a relationship. However, you pursue uncommitted or controlling partners who threaten to abandon you – leaving you in a panic. You find it hard to feel attracted to caring, committed people.
• You feel stuck in grief over the loss of a former relationship and can’t or don’t know how to move on.

Things probably didn’t start out this way. Deep down you’ve likely always desired a fulfilling relationship with someone you can love and feel loved by in return. But in spite of your best intentions, you repeatedly find yourself caught in relationship dynamics that hurt, leaving you feeling frustrated and sad. You may also worry that you will never find someone to love.

There are a lot of reasons that relationships can go wrong. Fortunately, many relationship problems can be resolved through individual counseling. Below are the most common relationship challenges that I help individuals overcome, so they can enjoy the love and companionship they deserve:

• • • Low Self Esteem: Sometimes relationships cause pain because your sense of self worth is low. You may doubt your lovability because you feel inadequate. If this is the case, relationships can seem intimidating. You may feel flawed and worry about being rejected. You may also end up sabotaging relationships by acting distant or getting into arguments due to fear or anxiety.
    • Fear of Commitment: Perhaps you’ve been hurt earlier in life, and find it difficult to open up and trust. In order to protect yourself from getting hurt again, you to keep others at arms length or push them away if they get too close. What this means is that you never get to experience the loving intimate relationship you long for.
    • Codependence: You may be attracted to people who have personality problems, such as demanding, controlling, dependent or destructive behavior, hoping you can ‘fix’ them. You avoid yourself while losing touch of your own needs and sense of self identity in the process as your life, and self worth, revolves around the person with the problem. Instead of having a healthy relationship with yourself, you make someone else more important.  You may feel superior to the person you are trying to help.  The bottom line is that you never get your own needs met in a codependent relationship, leaving you frustrated, hurt, lonely, and increasingly out of touch with your own needs – a recipe for resentment.
    • Relationship Addiction aka Love Addiction: You find yourself pursuing relationships with people who are distant, controlling, critical or threaten to leave you, as you believe that your value as a human being depends on their love.  This dynamic makes you feel panicky and despairing.  You feel very vulnerable as your self worth is tied directly to whether that person accepts or rejects you.  You may tend to blame yourself for their behavior, rather than recognizing that you are acting out an old script from your family of origin, trying to win the approval of someone who will only hurt, reject and abandon you. Learn more about how to break free from Relationship and Love Addiction here.
    • Complicated Grief: Perhaps your partner of many years left you or died, and you just don’t know how to get over it. New relationships seem impossible, as you find yourself living in past memories, feeling down or hopeless and stuck. You feel lonely, but uncertain how to heal and move on to a new relationship that could be satisfying and rewarding. Find out how to overcome Complicated Grief here.

Relationships do take effort, but they shouldn’t be a source of hurt, sadness, frustration or loneliness

 

Relationship counseling for individuals can help you break free from this pain by:

• Strengthening your feelings of self worth and confidence, so you can see yourself as a person of value, who knows what they want, and deserves to have positive relationships with others.
• Recognizing when and how to trust others, so you feel emotionally ‘safer’, and able to commit to the right person.
• Directly communicate your needs and emotions to your partner, and respectfully resolving conflict.
• Overcoming feeling attracted to cold, rejecting, addicted, unstable or uncommitted people.
• Learning to put yourself first more, so you become guided by your needs, and choose relationships with partners who complement your values and vision for your life.
• Transcending chronic grief and loss that is keeping you stuck in ‘the pain that won’t go away’, so you can love again, and have the fulfilling life you wish for.

 

What Is Couples Relationship Counseling?

My counseling work focuses on helping individuals – and those they love – overcome longstanding difficulties, such as childhood abuse and trauma, that get in the way of healthy, satisfying relationships.  Childhood abuse can interfere with the ability to form and maintain healthy relationship bonds, due to the absence of secure attachment with parents, and a lack of healthy roles models.  Most people discover that focusing on themselves first, and building their strength from the inside out, helps make their relationships stronger.

If you are currently in an intimate relationship and struggling, you may also benefit from couple counseling. My approach to couple counseling can include 1 to 1 counseling to help individuals share their own private concerns, get support and make progress overcoming personal challenges that may be getting in the way of having the relationship they desire.  For the most part though, the most fulfilling relationship counseling can be done in couples sessions, where you and your partner work towards creating a shared, positive vision for your relationship, while building up your sense of self.

 

What Are The Signs That I May Need Couples Relationship Counseling?

• Your relationship feels lifeless like you are roommates or living parallel lives together
• Repetitive arguments that result in resentment, distancing from each other, and breakdown of intimacy and trust
• Conflict between the two of you over how much closeness or independence you want
• Emotional or sexual affairs
• Drifting apart and one or both of you is thinking about ending the relationship, as you don’t feel in love with your partner anymore
• Feeling overwhelmed or struggling with intimacy due to stress, anxiety, grief, sadness or past traumas in you or your partner
• Addictive or compulsive behaviors on the part of one or both members, or children
• Confusion or conflict about forming a united front with your partner to deal with parenting or challenging family members

 

Click Here For More Information on Couples Counseling with Certified Couples Therapist Glynis Sherwood

 

Find the Fulfilling Relationship You Long For!

You can break free of negative relationship patterns and find the love and intimacy you want and deserve!
Request an Appointment to connect with Glynis today.

Couple Counseling is conducted by Video Worldwide

Request an Appointment