Love is enough to sustain a bond between two people- This notion could not be farther from the truth. Often family bonds deteriorate, friends drift apart and romantic relationships reach a bitter end due to unresolved hurts, unmet needs, disappointments, and unrealistic expectations that cause pain and build resentments. Love is a necessary factor for any relationship be it family, friends or romantic partners but there are certain skills and often some healing that needs to take place to offer consistency, sense of safety and security, healthy communication, and boundaries in our relationships. Some we learn with subsequent experiences and introspection, for some, we might need professional help to identify, heal and empower ourselves. Online Counselling helps to explore and understand how unique, subjective elements of each individual personality might be creating friction in the relationship and how to repair the rupture caused due to it.
How Relationship Counselling Helps
- Explore ideas and patterns of relationships
- Identify met and unmet needs
- Managing expectations
- Work on communication style
- Boundary setting
- Conflict resolution
Approach
- Your counselor will spend the initial part of the Online Counseeling in building a rapport with you and giving you a safe, non-judgemental atmosphere to share your challenges.
- The counselor will understand the current concerns, explore the relationship in-depth, identify the areas of work, set goals for Online Counseeling.
- Gain an understanding of the patterns of communication, attachment styles, present triggers, unresolved conflicts, unhealed relational wounds and its impact.
- After receiving clarity on the length and breadth of the relationship concern, the Counselor will help to identify whether individual sessions will suffice or there is a need for couples counseling or family Online Counselling as well to find a resolution.
- Individual sessions are required when individual personality factors like insecurity, anger outbursts, rigid beliefs, unrealistic expectations, inability to regulate emotions, possessiveness, controlling nature impact the interaction or when a previous trauma continues to trigger us in the present and leads to dysfunctional attachment patterns.
- When two or more people’s communication patterns, belief systems, attachment styles, distress tolerance, needs, expectations, rigid and flexible, imbalance between intimacy and autonomy, boundaries lead to destructive patterns of codependency, enmeshment, toxic relationships that hurt one or all involved.
- The Counselor will help to chart a course of action and step by step take up each problem area of the relationship like controlling behavior. personality clashes, lack of space, or autonomy, fair fighting, boundary setting and equip you with skills to resolve conflicts change perspectives, find a middle ground or part amicably.
- You may find noticeable changes after a few sessions where you would be able to identify triggers, deal with conflict effectively and are able to break the cycle of negative interactions.
- The aim of the counselor is to empower you in your journey to build healthy relationships with the people you love.
Break Ups
Empty, hurt, lonely, angry is just the tip of the emotional iceberg that a person experiences in a breakup. It leaves in it wakes a broken individual with a bruised self-image. A heartbreak is not only loss of a partner but an imagined future, certainty, and a part of ourselves as well. Moving on is tough, and one can experience a whole range of difficult feelings, complicated thoughts, obsessive behavior patterns, which can affect one’s productivity at work, quality of relationships with friends and family and squander one’s self-esteem self-image.” Instant and quick fixes may help to distract ourselves for a short period of time or numb the pain for a while but don’t resolve the emptiness and hurt we experience.
Counselling helps in
- Express the pain
- Find stability in emotional chaos
- Grieve the loss
- Seek answers to questions
- Gain closure
PitFalls of breakups
When it comes to healing from a break up there are several caveats to look out for- Numbing emotions through drinking, smoking, drugs, rebound relationships, casual sex, binge eating, rash driving, overworking are some short relief measures that one tends to engage in during this period. It is unrealistic to expect that a relationship that lasted for several years will be forgotten in a short duration of time. It is completely natural to feel triggered while coming across a familiar place, person, object. Associations take time to wane off. Some mistake emotional numbness to healing. It seems better to not feel at all and might even provide temporary relief to the burden of experiencing pain but it further delays the healing.
Approaches
Catharsis
When a person goes through something as shattering as a breakup, they might feel emotionally overwhelmed and need to vent out their feelings which might not always be possible with friends and family.
Griefing
A break up is not just a loss of a relationship but also an imagined future. Griefing the loss of a dream is necessary in order to experience hope and joy again.
Dealing With Overthinking/ Psychological Challenges
Loss of a relationship forces us to think how our few actions or whole me would have stopped this fateful event from happening and I wouldn’t have to go through this painful event in my life. Thinking so, we knowingly/ unknowingly slip into a vicious cycle of self-blame or self-criticizing mode that does not allow us to see the flip side of the coin.
Sensemaking
A lot of people get stuck in questions like- Why did this happen to me? Was the relationship not strong enough to withstand adversities, wasn’t the love genuine?. Integrating knowledge and lessons from this experience helps to achieve clarity and makes sense to give a holistic picture.
Psychoeducation on Moving on Phases
A break up accompanies an emotional roller coaster where a person goes through various phases of shock, anger, betrayal, numbness, rebounds, etc. Knowing that all of this is normal and one can experience dichotomous emotions at the same time eases the pain and move forward with acceptance and insight.
Rebuilding Self
When we get habituated to a person’s presence in our daily life, it becomes challenging and confusing to imagine our days without them. We may end up feeling lost and lonely. Rebuilding our sense of identity without this person is the final phase of the healing process.