WORKING WITH RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
Our earliest relationships with our parents or caregivers influence who we are and how we interact with others for the rest of our lives. Connecting with our parents is as instinctual and fundamental as our need to eat and sleep. A good relationship or attachment to our parents allows us to develop our sense of our selves and shapes our personalities. How we get our needs met by our parents as children affects how we see and experience others and the world around us.
When we have relationship problems or are unhappy generally in our adult lives, we can examine these early relationships to determine how we learned to connect with others. The therapeutic relationship is the perfect place to figure out what we need to change to have good relationships and more satisfying lives.
In my Boulder Psychotherapy practice, I help individuals understand how ways that they interact with others can interfere with having healthier, more satisfying relationships and personal lives. In counseling clients will:
- gain a better understanding of themselves and their needs
- learn more effective communication skills
- reduce relationship conflict and stress
- create more satisfying couple, stepfamily, stepkid, friend, and family relationships
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)
Sometimes our earlier attachment with our caregivers is not as positive or productive as it could have been. There are many reasons for this, such as maternal depression or other stressors including ineffective or poor parenting (e.g., physical or emotional abuse, alcoholism or other substance abuse), medical traumas (e.g., childhood hospitalizations) or economic hardships to name just a few.
Because the brain develops through interpersonal interaction, this problematic relationship affects how we perceive and experience the environment around us, including others important in our lives like spouses/partners, stepkids, biological children, friends, etc. Trying to resolve these relationship problems through traditional “talk” therapy is ineffective because it does not access the parts of the brain that contain the distressing relationship experiences.
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) accesses these parts of the brain and allows us to work with these experiences. EMDR is also very useful for resolving traumas resulting from car accidents and violent crime. I am trained in EMDR and use it successfully with individuals as well as couples to resolve relationship problems.
For more information about EMDR, please visit: www.emdr.com.
BRAINSPOTTING
A longtime EMDR therapist and psychologist, Dr. David Grand, has developed Brainspotting, another technique that accesses the parts of the brain that store painful experience and relationship problems. “Brainspots” or eye positions allow us to neurobiologically locate, focus, process, and release experiences and symptoms out of reach of the conscious mind and its cognitive and verbal capacities.
According to Dr. Grand, “Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of challenging symptoms.” I have trained in Brainspotting and use it with individuals and couples struggling with relationship problems in their couple’s relationship, stepfamilies, and at work.
For more information on Brainspotting, please go to www.biolateral.com/brainspotting.htm
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