Healing and Being Relational with Yourself
So You Can Discover You and Get Your Happily Ever After
Individual Counseling
What being non-relational with yourself may look like.
”Not being relational with yourself can mean not having a healthy relationship with yourself, which can negatively impact your mental health and relationships with others.”
Low self-esteem
Being critical of yourself can lead to low self-esteem, which can cause you to avoid partners, loved ones and friends, or to have poor boundaries with others.
Unhealthy habits
You might develop habits that take you away from yourself, such as viewing the world through limiting beliefs, addictions and engage in misery stabilizing behaviors to keep people at a distance.
Losing yourself in relationships
Being a people pleaser. You might merge your identity with your partner, or go out of your way to please them.
Not expressing yourself
You might not share your opinions, wants, or needs, or establish boundaries
Weighed down by the past
A past filled with trauma and bad experiences if not therapeutically processed can feed depression and anxiety which prevents you from discovering who you are supposed to become because there is only one story you have been telling yourself.
Being relational with yourself involves self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-care. Through self-awareness, you learn to understand yourself better, understand other people better, and in turn, your relationships improve along with your mental health. Most importantly provide you with an opportunity to get to know the real you,
who is happy, fulfilled and at peace.
My 5 Pillars of Therapeutic Transformation
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Making a Connection
Without a connection therapy will not work. If you do not feel a connection and feel safe with your therapist you will not feel comfortable being vulnerable. I let my clients know that connection has to be a priority in our work together and I give 120% to my clients to make that happen. However, if there is no connection "it's all good" and I am happy to refer them to a colleague. Because their healing is what is most important to me and my work. I believe my clients need more than a therapist. They need a life guide to meet them where they are at and help them navigate those challenging and treacherous roads of the past and present. I have their back until they are ready to retake control of their lives and move forward.
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Exploring the Root of Stuckness
I know that stuckness is not a word but I think it does a great job at providing a mental picture of how we get stuck in life and are unable to move forward. It could be trauma from our past or present, mental health or relationship challenges, life or career changes or just an overall feeling of not knowing which direction to go and fearful of what is on the other side of whatever we are in. Sometimes we feel safe in our stuckness because we fear the unknown! My job is to help you see what you cannot so I can support you in overcoming the challenges that have kept you from inner peace and happiness.
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Healing and Moving Forward
Doing the work will be hard and at times be very anxiety provoking and uncomfortable and that is how we heal and move forward. Pushing down our feelings and keeping the past in a box only prolongs our pain and reinforces our stuckness. We make a plan together to help you heal and get unstuck. When you leave a therapy session you should leave with a bag of mixed emotions which means things are starting to shift. When clients tell me that they thought about cancelling a session because of how hard the last one was, I know they are doing the work and their journey of healing and transformation has begun.
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Creating your New Story
Therapy should have a start and end point. You have a presenting problem or problems and you want to heal and develop solutions to get you unstuck. You do not want to be in therapy for years and years because the goal is to get back to living your life and you can't do that if you are reliving the same story that has you stuck. The stories we tell ourselves from the past keep us traumatized and stuck in the present. You need to create a new story to change the present because the past has already been written and there is no going back and you have to move forward.
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Saying Goodbye
I find it quite rewarding after working with a client for several months when they come in and say "Everything is good". My response is "Are you sure you are good" and if they respond yes that means they were able to heal, move forward and create a new story for the life that they are going to live from this point on in pursuit of their Happily Ever After. The work is done and we say goodbye. I let them know that if down the road they need to reconnect for some support I am here for them.
Where do we turn when life’s challenges don’t meet our expectations. Most of our struggles in life are correlated to an expectation we had for the path in life and the person that we thought we were supposed to become. Our trauma changes us, especially if was active or passive childhood trauma. What also changes us, is this belief we are supposed become this certain person based on someone’s else’s agenda. This results in us getting stuck in never ending loops of uncertainty, self doubt, emotional dysregulation and stress that has us wondering about not only who we are but what we are doing here.
Most individuals seek therapy to help them develop coping skills for things like anxiety and depression or to have a weekly place to go to talk about challenges. However, my questions as a therapist is, why are we treating symptoms instead of the underlying causes that have us not feeling good about ourselves and our path in life. If all we have are band-aids (medications, positive and negative coping skills) than how can we ever heal? What individuals need is a guide on their journey of healing to discover who they are, what they want and develop a plan to get it!
I have four core beliefs when when it comes to therapy.
Number 1 therapy has a start and end time, we have a treatment plan and goals. When we achieve our goals and therapy is over. Therapy should not be a year after year journey.
Number 2 the goal is getting to the root of the trauma or negative life situation that is manifesting all the unwanted symptoms.
Number 3 A therapist should not tell you want you want to hear because you have friends for that. A Therapist should challenge your beliefs in a empathetic and loving way to help support you in reflecting upon what is keeping you stuck and what you need to do to heal and move forward.
Number 4 A great therapist (life guide) will help you see what you can’t and work with you on developing a plan to overcome whatever obstacles are in your way. A great therapist will provide you with a feeling of safety, love, nurturing and validation while pointing on what they see in the most loving and nurturing way possible. When this happens, that is when growth starts because avoiding or being in denial of what is happening is one of the biggest reasons we become stuck in life.
If you are looking for a guide on your journey of healing, click the link below. The most important thing in finding the right therapist is finding the one that you have a connection with. If you don’t feel the connection you will not feel safe to be vulnerable enough to do the work that you need to do to move forward in life and if you had a therapist in the past you know what I am talking about!