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Relationships

  • The sad truth is that we live in a very inauthentic society in which all of us are socially conditioned to function and relate to one another inauthentically. This creates a culture of falseness, insincerity and shallowness that causes us to struggle and suffer.

    To free oneself from this, the individual of conscience can live with sanity, self-respect, and peace with others by building an essential set of life skills for negotiating our way more self-reliantly in relationships. Many people today are neglecting relationship skills and basic boundaries, and both the individual and their relationships suffer for it. With psychotherapy, you can raise your critical awareness and hone your abilities to live in a state of greater authenticity, security, and harmony with yourself, your partner, your friends, and others.

  • All problems can be worked on, including:

    • Workplace, family, partner, social group problems

    • Habits of repeatedly choosing and settling for the wrong partners and friends

    • Learning how to seek the right partner and friends for you

    • Surviving and healing from betrayal, deceit and infidelity

    • Healing and being better prepared before looking for another relationship

    • Difficulties with intimacy, openness, expressing oneself

    • Coping with a relationship ending

    • Co-dependency, triangulation, and victim dependency

    • Insecure attachment/ fear of being alone

    • Controlling behaviour (given and receiver)

    • Mediation between separated or conflicted partners and family members

    • Surviving an exploitative/ abusive relationship (including narcissistic or sociopathic exploitation; sexual, emotional, financial and other forms of abuse)

    • Surviving childhood abuse and poor parenting

    • Domestic violence (both sides)

    • Anger, rage, violence and passive-aggression

    • Bereavement, grief and loss

    • Sex, sexual intimacy and sexual problems

    • Develop and improve social skills

    • Empathy

    • Confidence

    • Authenticity

    • Non-Violent Communication Skills

    • Ending subservience and people pleasing

    • Developing effective boundaries

    • Developing your interpersonal ‘radar’ and self-protection when engaging with others

    • Skills in identifying and dealing with highly toxic people, including fraudulent, narcissistic, and sociopathic individuals

    • Develop skills for finding the right partner and avoiding wasting your energies on the wrong people

  • Interpersonal manipulation and dishonesty have, sadly, become increasingly common in our society. A cultural decline in integrity is a significant cause of relationship stress and mental health problems. In this practice you can learn discreet boundary and critical awareness skills that, with practice, will allow you to minimise interpersonal stress, by quickly detecting and refusing dishonesty, and attempts to exploit you, and to divest your energies early, from relationships that are bad for you. One example is ‘Less is More’:

    Less is More

    Manipulative and dishonest people are energy traps, and will tend to elicit your attention and your mental, emotional and physical energy. Realise that the more you invest of your attention, thought, words, time, money, or physical energy in such people, the more you may be feeding the manipulation itself. Divesting and minimising one's investment is a crucial boundary skill. To do this takes critical self-awareness, practice, and the ability to slow down long enough to make careful, self-respecting choices focussed on looking after your best interests with quiet confidence.