Having supportive and loving relationships is important. It can affect our health, our happiness, and how satisfied we feel with our lives. Our most valued experiences are often those times when we feel most connected with others.
Types of relationship include those with our partners, immediate family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours, activity groups, extended family, and our wider community. The degree to which we feel connected can affect our sense of personal inner resilience.
Like most things in life, relationships change and develop over time. We may start off in a certain way, but then, over time, find that the relationship we once had is not the way it used to be. Recognising these changes and adapting to them is important to relationship success.
All relationships go through challenging times. But this is especially so when external circumstances change (External Stressors) or where there are factors within the relationship that heap on additional pressures (Internal Stressors).
Examples of external stressors include additional financial pressure, moving to another place, having a new baby, living apart, a heavy workload, disability, retirement, redundancy, bereavement or change in life stage, such as after children have left home.
Internal Stressors are those that affect quality of communication within the relationship. Examples include struggles with any of the stages of working with feelings – identifying, naming, describing, accepting, experiencing or their expression, challenges around identifying or saying what it is that we need, mental health issues that may need additional consideration, problems with managing ourself in a conflict situation, absence of humility – never saying sorry, even when it’s our fault, neglecting to give any attention or energy to the relationship or addiction issues.
In therapy, we have space to take some time to tell our story slowly and carefully. hear ourself more clearly and notice what it is that is happening for us with greater awareness. As we collaboratively explore what comes up in the session, we might ask of ourself: What is it that is really happening for me in my relationships?, and What is the truth of my experience?
In the therapy room the therapist and the client are in relationship too, the “therapeutic relationship”. This offers a unique mechanism through which to explore what it is that naturally emerges for us in our person-to-person relating. As phenomena emerge in the room we might notice and be curious about them in a non-judgmental accepting way. Expansive but gentle exploration of this kind can facilitate us in getting to know ourselves more intimately which impacts how we relate to ourself and then how we relate to others.
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