Don’t You Deserve a Happily Ever After!
Couples Counseling
What being stuck in a non-relational relationship may look like with a partner or family member.
”A lack of relational connection in a relationship can mean that there is a lack of depth, communication, or emotional intimacy which can lead to anxiety, depression and a ton of resentment”
Lack of emotional connection
A relationship that lacks emotional intimacy may appear okay on the surface, but there is no real depth. Signs include not feeling understood, not talking about important things, and not being very touchy feely.
Lack of communication
You might feel like your partner doesn't listen or understand you. You might also avoid communication or block your partner's attempts to connect
One-sided relationship
A relationship where one partner leads almost every aspect, such as what activities you do together and when. This also can include one sided parenting of children. This can lead to feelings of resentment and exhaustion.
Unbalanced relationship
You might feel drained, stressed, or dissatisfied after spending time with your partner. You might also feel like your partner makes little effort to help meet your emotional needs
Unhealthy relationship
A relationship where one party uses strategies to achieve their own goals and needs, often at the expense of the other party. This can include power imbalances, manipulation, and putting your own feelings on the backburner.
Transactional relationship
A relationship that is more self-serving and short-term, with the goal of getting something with minimal effort.
Lack of trust
A relationship where there is no emotional connection, communication breakdown, or you don't trust your partner.
Being relational with others means that connections are reciprocal, rewarding, and rooted. They are about trust, communication and being heard and seen. Feeling safe to be vulnerable with your loved one and that feeling that is you and them against the world and you have each other’s back no matter what.
4 Simple Steps to your Happily Ever After
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#1 Discovering Your Dance
The first step is discovering how you argue and fight and the dysfunctional dance you do over and over. It typically is the same fight about different things. Discovering the dance is the first step because you both need new moves to move your relationship forward.
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#2 Exploring the Past
The second step now that we know the dance is how come you dance that way. Is it something from your childhood, a parent you are modeling or unhealed trauma that you are reacting to or relationship resentment. We need to understand our adaptive child and heal our inner child so we can allow our wise adult to start running the show.
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#3 Healing and Letting Go
The third step is doing the work to heal the trauma of the past and forgive and let go of resentments that make us portray our partners as villains. Thanking our adaptive child for helping us through some tough times and allowing our wise adult to take over and be relational with ourselves and our partners.
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#4 Learning Relational Skills
The final step is learning the relational skills that your wise adult can use that will empower you to communicate effectively, become intimate, let down your walls and reconnect with your partner and enjoy a relationship that you always dreamed of and have your happily ever after.
Why Relational Life Therapy is so Effective.
Relational Life Therapy is designed to bring deep healing and swift changes that last!
You can’t connect to a relationship if you can’t connect to a person, and you can’t connect to a person if you can’t connect to yourself. RLT first reconnects people to themselves—their feelings, desires, and needs—and then reconnects them to their relationships.
What makes RLT unique is…
I am not your Traditional Therapist
Traditional therapists sit there and nod, ask you how that feels and allow you to argue about the argument of the week. Arguing about arguments is not helpful and wastes everyone's time. I am relational with my clients and I don't hide behind a veil of professional secrecy. I share my experiences good and bad with my clients to normalize what they are going through and model what being relational is during the sessions.
Lasting Change
Traditional therapy heals through nurture, but this isn’t enough for permanent change. RLT goes even further, equipping people with the lifelong relational skills they need for lasting change.Swift Results
Letting therapy drag on can be detrimental to clients, especially those in crisis. RLT uses a powerful combination of techniques to quickly get to the root of negative behaviors, understand where they came from, and teach individuals how to change them.Dramatic Transformations
The idea that character is fixed is outdated. Character is changeable, and through RLT, we can teach people to transform negative beliefs and behaviors, often dramatically and sometimes immediately.Healing Trauma in the Partner’s Presence
In traditional therapy, trauma work is done individually. But opening up such levels of vulnerability in their partner’s presence helps people go much deeper for more remarkable transformations.Tackling Shame and Grandiosity
Modern therapy often focuses on bringing people up from shame. RLT is concerned with both shame and grandiosity to help couples achieve healthy levels of self-esteem—working with both is necessary for relationships and individuals to heal.Radical Honesty
I don’t shy away from directly but compassionately telling clients what they’re doing to harm their relationships. We tell them what to do in certain situations so they can have a corrective emotional experience with their partner over and over.I Take Sides
Often, therapists remain neutral, never siding with one partner. But relationships are rarely 50/50, so in RLT, we explicitly side with the disempowered partner to restore balance in the relationship.Therapists and Clients Are Equal
In RLT, therapists aren’t above clients as experts, nor are we simply facilitators. We’re right there in the thick of it with them, sharing our own experiences of relational living to inspire, motivate, and build trust.
RLT works by:
Compassionately confronting and showing couples what they’re doing wrong
Going deep into uncovering where their negative behaviors came from
Teaching people how to behave differently.
Teaching relational skills to the parts of you that can use them where traditional therapists teach skills to the parts of you that are not able to!
