Please Note: Due to the current situation with COVID-19, I am offering Telehealth video therapy sessions via a HIPAA-compliant videoconferencing service. If interested, please let me know.
We Live Our Lives in Relationships … Are You Ready to Make Yours the Best They Can Be?
If you’re tired of always feeling like you need to explain yourself to others, trying to anticipate everyone else’s needs in order to avoid conflict, worrying about what others think of you, apologizing all of the time, or feeling unable to say “no” because prioritizing your own needs is selfish …
I can relate!
I’ve been there myself. And I help individual clients work through and resolve these types of issues every day.
We’re all relational beings … our beliefs, perceptions, interpretations, and behaviors are formed in our earliest years, and throughout our lives, in the relationships we have with others and with ourselves.
Our relationships define us. They can be the source of our greatest joy and fulfillment. They can also lead to our greatest anguish and pain.
Of course, we all face relationship challenges from time to time … it’s part of being human.
However, few things in life are more emotionally painful than not being able to connect in a positive way with the people you care about most – whether that’s with your partner, friends, family members, or with your Self.
If every time you try to connect with someone it feels like something goes wrong, after a while you may stop trying. But that doesn’t mean that your desire to connect just stops …
That desire to connect is the good news. It means you still have hope that you CAN reconnect with the people that matter most in your life.
Fortunately, help is available …
Relationship Counseling for Individual Adults
Just because many people with relationship issues turn to couples, marriage, or family counseling for help, this doesn’t mean it’s always feasible to do so, or even the best choice.
Quite often, one partner wants counseling long before the other. And it can be even more difficult to get other family members to agree to see a therapist together, let alone coordinate everyone’s schedules.
However, those are just logistical hurdles …
As often as not, couples and family members enter counseling with the hope of changing each other, as opposed to changing themselves.
But the truth of the matter is that the only person we can EVER truly change is our Self.
As is the case with so many emotional issues, our relationship difficulties are typically caused, or aggravated, by erroneous thoughts and beliefs we have about our relationships, the world around us, and ourselves.
The reason we’re not consciously aware of these unhelpful beliefs is that they’re typically formed in our earliest relationships with our parents, siblings, other family members, and friends.
We have all received messages from our families, schools, society, and parts of ourselves that we need to deal with and resolve in order to move forward and create the best relationships and lives we can.
And just as our emotional wounds and unhelpful beliefs and behaviors are formed in the context of our relationships, healing and growth also need to take place in relationship … first and foremost in the relationship you have with your Self.
That’s right … creating the best relationships possible starts with your relationship with YOU!
This is precisely why individual relationship counseling and therapy can be so vital to your personal healing and growth, as well as creating the healthy, loving, joyous relationships you desire.
Specifically, the healing relationship you create with your therapist can help you:
- Better understand the thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs that may be causing relationship conflicts;
- Change your perspective, understand where others may be coming from, and gain CLARITY;
- Overcome any feelings you may have that you’re an “impostor” or that you’re “doing it all wrong” or that it’s “all your fault;”
- Discover how to take care of yourself, so you’re better able to take care of others;
- Learn to set and maintain healthy boundaries, so you can compassionately say “no” to others, say “yes” to you, and make sure you give yourself the time you need to do the things that matter most to you;
- Practice self-compassion and self-care;
- Feel empowered to make your own decisions and choices;
- Achieve a greater sense of connectedness to your partner, children, family members, friends, colleagues and, most importantly, to your Self;
- Live a more authentic, joyous life!
I know what it’s like to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What happened to me?”
I’ve been there.
I’ve struggled with feeling like I always needed to take care of others before taking care of myself. I know what it feels like to think you have to “do it all,” and to feel like you must be “doing it all wrong” when you can’t get it all done.
It took me a long time to recognize the societal underpinnings of “being nice” and “being selfish,” and how to avoid the trap this gets us into when it comes to recognizing and taking care of our own needs.
It’s taken me a lot of deep digging, reflecting, and therapy to figure out what I truly want, need, and value … and to learn how to sometimes say “no” to others, so I could finally start saying “yes” to myself and create the things I wanted most.
And I can help you do the same!
I know from personal experience and the work I do with clients every day that you CAN create the healthy, mutually respectful, loving, and joyous relationships with others and yourself that you need and deserve.
So, if you’re ready to stop trying to figure it all out on your own …
If you’re ready to stop going down the “relationship checklist” trying to do everything you think you’re “supposed to do” to make everything okay, only to have everything end up anything but …
If you’re ready and willing to try something different in order to feel differently …
If you’re ready to work with someone who understands – someone who knows you’re a deep thinker, a deep feeler, and smart as hell – and who will challenge you to recognize the needs you’ve hidden in an effort to survive, and help you thrive …
If you’re ready to take a deeper journey and explore what you really want and need from your relationships in order to create a future you love and a fulfilling and rewarding life …
If you’re ready, call me already! ?
Contact me today by phone at 503-961-9200 or by email me at julie@juliewilliamspsyd.com to learn more about how I can help and to see whether or not we’d be a good fit for working together and creating the healthy, healing relationship you deserve. I look forward to speaking with you.