Healthy Relationships are Important!

Healthy relationships are one of the most important aspects of a healthy lifestyle. The people around you can either uplift you or drain you. In this blog, I will provide tips on ways to asses the relationships in your life and improve them.

Common Relationship Challenges in the Bel Air Area

In my experience as a therapist, Bel Air residents have similar relationship challenges as everyone else in the country. Some common relationship issues include:

Issues with family

We are often told that you only get one family or family over everything. But what if your family is the one that is hurting you? What are you supposed to do then?

My philosophy is simple. If your family members are hurting you physically or emotionally, why should you tolerate it? I understand that it can be hard to challenge family norms, but continuing to allow anyone (even if it’s a parent) to hurt you will not contribute to your overall wellbeing.

This doesn’t mean you have to cut your family member off. Maybe you can start setting boundaries so that you can protect yourself instead of being a human punching bag.

Issues with friends

I personally love watching the Real Housewives franchise. In these reality tv shows, you often find many friendship issues that I often talk to clients about in therapy.

I find that many people prioritize working on romantic relationships, but tend to neglect friendships. Some common friendship issues I’ve seen with my clients are:

• Issues that arise when you travel with friends

• Feeling like you put more into the friendship than your friend

• Feeling judged by friends

• Feeling left out in a friend group

Issues with romantic partners

Couple issues are one of the most popular relationship challenges that is discussed. People tend to priortize their romantic relationships over other types of relationships because romantic partners are seen as life partners. If your relationship with your life partner is unhealthy, it negatively impacts other areas in your life. Some common issues with romantic partners are:

• Wanting to get married when your partner is not interested in marriage or would like to wait longer

• Infidelity issues

• Physical Intimacy (Sex) Issues

• Communication Issues

• Child Rearing Issues

Issues with coworkers/ bosses

Most people don’t consider work place relationships when evaluating the relationships in their life. But think about it, you can spend 8 hours or more a day with your coworkers (if you don’t work from home) Monday through Friday. This only leaves you with about 3 to 5 hours daily throughout the work week to spend with your romantic partner, children, friends, and family members.

It may be beneficial to evaluate your work relationships and consider if these relationships are negatively impacting your wellbeing. There are some people who are able to create rigid boundaries at work where they do not form personal relationships with coworkers. This may work for some people. Others may need some help setting appropriate boundaries at work.

No matter how you choose to navigate your work relationships, consider how your working relationships would need to be in order for you to get the most out of your working dynamics. If your workplace dynamics are toxic, it may be worth looking for other jobs.

How Therapy Can Help Individuals and Couples

Individual Therapy

Individual therapy is great because the focus is all about you! On a day to day basis, we have to focus on our kids, the people at work, our romantic partner, and anyone else we deem important to us. It’s feels nice to go to counseling and know that is your time to focus on you; your goals and your wellbeing.

Many people think that therapy involves a therapist telling you what to do to improve your life. THIS JUST ISN’T TRUE! Therapy provides you with a safe environment to fully process what you want out of life.

By participating in therapy, you can come to your own conclusions of what you need out of your life with the support of a trained professional. This is different from going to a loved one for advice. Because our loved ones often want what’s best for us, their advice can often times be centered around what they want for us versus what is best for us (or what we want).

Couple’s Counseling

Couples counseling is an excellent way to ensure that the couple is on the same page regarding their relationship goals. Most people assume that if a couple is participating in couple’s counseling that it means that their relationship is in trouble. This is not neccessarily the case!

Sure, if a couple is having issues, it can be beneficial to attend couples counseling so you can repair the relationship. But couples who are not in crisis can benefit from counseling as well. If couples participate in couples counseling before there is a fire to put out in the relationship, the counseling experience can be even more beneficial.

Often times I see couples come to counseling sessions and they are so upset with each other that the therapist spends the majority of the time trying to put out major fires. Sometimes this results in the couple being so upset, that they aren’t able to see things objectively because they are so upset with their partner.

I always recommend couples attend therapy either when they get engaged or when they notice that something is wrong before it begins to escalate. Participating in premarital therapy is a great way to ensure that each partner is on the same page (financially, raising kids, buying a home, in law relationships, etc.) before getting married. Participating in couples counseling as soon as you notice an issue in your relationship can be beneficial because you are able to tackle the issue before it gets out of hand.

If your partner is not interested in couples counseling, you can always attend individual therapy and focus on your relationship issues. Sure it’s more helpful if your partner would join. But I always encourage clients to not let their partner stop them from improving themselves. Your romantic partner is a huge part of your life and there are plenty of things you can process without them present. Some examples of topics to discuss in individual therapy that focus on your relationship are:

• If I really want to be in this relationship (especially if my partner is refusing to improve the relationship by participating in couples counseling)

• What are some things that absolutely need to change in order for me to be happy in this relationship?

• Is there anything that I could do better or differently in this relationship that can help?

• Exploring how my childhood experiences have contributed to some of the issues in my relationship.

  Examples of Success Stories

  Since I specialize in working with client’s who experience relationship anxiety, many of my clients come to me wanting to focus on improving their relationships. My clients often come to me thinking that they are the problem and are seeking ways to “fix” themselves so that their loved ones are happier with them.

  Once my clients start their healing process, they learn that they are not the problem (it’s not impossible for you to be the problem, this is just what I see the majority of the time). People pleasers often try to make everyone in their life happy no matter what. Part of the healing process is becoming comfortable with people not being happy with us 100% of the time.

  My clients who successfully graduate from therapy often learn that in order for them to be more comfortable in their relationships, they must first accept the person they are.

  For example, if you are the kind of person that doesn’t like to participate in a lot of excursions or activities while on vacation, don’t try to force yourself to participate in 10 activities a day while vacationing with your friends!

  It’s important to know yourself and adjust your life around what is best for you. Instead of forcing yourself to do all the activities your friends want, you could participate in the activities that you’d like and schedule some down time while your friends are at excursions that you’re not really interested in.

  Or if you think that would be a problem, maybe those aren’t the group of friends that you should be vacationing with. Instead of trying to “fix” yourself or change parts of yourself to appease others, another option could be to accept your characteristics and set appropriate boundaries.

  Tips for Maintaining Healthy Relationships Post-Therapy

  A common complaint I hear from my clients once they start the healing process is that their loved ones are complaining that my clients have changed. This is very common, especially for my people pleasers.

  Usually, our loved ones benefit from our people pleasing tendencies. So when we start to set boundaries and prioritize ourselves, the people that benefited from our people pleasing behaviors are not happy.

  If this happens to you, simply explain why you are no longer behaving in the same way. You can explain how your behaviors in the past has negatively impacted your mental health, how your changed behaviors are helping you, and how your intention is to not hurt them in any way.

  Exploring your close relationships is a very important aspect to therapy. During the therapy process, you may find it best to end a relationship or change the dynamics drastically. It’s important to work with your therapist and explore if your relationships are healthy or not.

  Ready to Start Counseling in Bel Air, MD?

  I may be a good fit for you if you are looking to examine your relationships and your behaviors in your relationships. I love helping my clients to start prioritizing themselves and their well being. If you are looking to

• improve your relationships

• address your anxiety when it comes to realtionships

• set boundaries with your loved ones

• improve your self esteem,

  schedule a FREE 15 minute consultation to learn more about how I can help. Remember, you are an important component in your relationships. Let’s learn how you can show up in your relationships more confidently and stress free!