Are you tired of the drama and heartbreak when you argue with those closest to you?
Do you feel lonely even though you’ve tried everything to connect with others?
Is setting boundaries in your relationships difficult?
Some people make relationships look hard. From the outside, watching them you feel like interpersonal skills just come easy to them. They have the perfect marriage, get along beautifully with the in laws and you constantly see Facebook pictures of them hanging out with friends. But for you? It’s…harder. Maybe you feel lonely in a group of people. Or the same problems keep coming up over and over again in your romantic relationships. Perhaps it’s problems with your in-laws, difficulty setting boundaries with your extended family or trouble making friends as an adult.
The Problem with Feeling Disconnected
One of our greatest needs in life is to feel important. Everyone wants to feel seen by and understood by someone in their life. If not, you feel lonely and become depressed. Whether it’s in your romantic relationships, your interactions with family or life in general, to feel alone & disconnected is hard and begins to impact other areas of your life. In fact, research shows that feeling lonely can make it harder to make good decisions and even impact your physical health.
Feeling lonely doesn’t mean you don’t have anyone at all in your life. It means that you don’t feel connected to people even when they are around. For you, it may mean getting frustrated when people are constantly telling you, “It’s not that bad,” or “stop being so dramatic.” Or it might mean constant arguments. Perhaps members of your family no longer speak to you or you want to go to couples counseling but your significant other refuses to go. These situations feel isolated and can be devastating. But counseling can help you feel better about your relationships…even if you are the only one coming to psychotherapy sessions!
Relationship Counseling for the Individual
Individuals chose to come to counseling to improve their interpersonal skills or process strong emotions related to the relationships in their life every day. The good news is that individual relationship counseling can be very effective.
Reasons for Individual Relationship Counseling
- Everyone’s life is a little different, but here are some of the reasons a person may come to individual counseling to work on their relationship.
- You want to work on your relationship but your spouse isn’t ready to begin marriage counseling.
- You have had a major falling out with your parents, adult children, in laws or other important people in your life.
- Setting boundaries in relationships is difficult and you worry people will be mad at you.
- You’ve had a lot of problems getting along with colleagues and/or your supervisor at work.
- It feels like conflict follows you everywhere and you are tired of arguing with people.
- You’ve just always found it hard to get along with people and worry your interpersonal skills aren’t where you’d like them to be.
- You’ve had bad relationship after bad relationship and want to explore why you fall into the same patterns over and over again.
- There’s been a rift in your relationship with someone for many years and you feel like it’s time to repair it but don’t know how.
- You want to make new friends but just aren’t sure how to go about it.
Individual relationship counseling can help you address any of these relationship concerns or more.
Identify Patterns in Your Relationships
Whether you want to talk about one specific relationship (i.e. marriage problems) or work on your interpersonal skills in general, relationship counseling may include talking about patterns in your relationships. You can explore how you relate to people in general and talk about how you’ve handled conflict in the past. Relationships from your past might help give you insight to problems you have now. Or, you may talk about your own values when it comes to relationships and identify your own triggers or unhealthy behaviors. Through relationship counseling, you’ll gain insight into yourself & how you relate to the world.
Gottman Counseling for the Individual
Gottman counseling techniques are one of the most effective types of psychotherapy for couples. However, the Gottman principles can be helpful even if you are coming to counseling alone. Particularly if you are discussing marriage or romantic relationship problems, your psychologist may pull Gottman principles into your counseling sessions. For instance, you might discuss the Four Horsemen and how they come up in your relationship. You may discuss with your therapist how to increase positive experiences in your relationship or how to improve your sex life.
Learn to Set Boundaries
Setting boundaries can be really difficult and is a common conversation that comes up in counseling. There are times you know you should say no that you don’t. Or times when you try to set boundaries but it results in major conflict. Through counseling, our trained psychologists can help you identify when to set boundaries, discuss the best way to set boundaries and even practice how you’ll approach those difficult conversations. Setting boundaries is a skill. We can help you become more comfortable using this skill.
Accepting When Others Won’t Change
Sometimes, there’s a relationship in our life that just isn’t healthy and can’t become healthy without the other person changing as well. Maybe you’ve poured all of your energy into being the best version of yourself & trying to repair a relationship. Perhaps you’ve even started to lose yourself in the relationship. You want so badly to keep the other person in your life and it’s just not working out. Sometimes, what we talk about in counseling is simply how to accept and cope with the fact that the other person doesn’t want to change. Whether the other person is an abusive spouse, a reckless adult child, a controlling parent or just a passive aggressive friend, we can explore how you accept the other person for who they are. You can begin to identify the reasons that person is in your life and explore how you can move forward in that relationship in a way that honors your own personal values.
Begin Relationship Counseling in Tampa Bay
You don’t have to live in constant fear of the next argument or feeling lonely even when you are surrounded by people. Relationships don’t have to be the cause of stress. Learn how to set healthy boundaries and manage relationship problems. Wellness Psychological Services has a team of expert psychologists in Tampa Bay who are here to help! Contact us today to learn how to make your relationships better through relationship counseling.
Other Counseling Services at Wellness Psychological Services
If relationship therapy isn’t the right fit for you, check out some of the other specialities our Tampa-based psychologists focus on. Other mental health specialties include online therapy, OCD, perfectionism, DBT, PTSD, PCIT therapy, EMDR therapy, anxiety, depression, couples and marriage counseling, divorce discernment, integrating coaching techniques and therapy, eating disorder treatment, and stress management. Learn more about working with Wellness Psychological Services in South Tampa, Fl today!