Intimacy With Others

The Heart of Connection

Secure connection with others is the heart and soul of our emotional well-being.

Everyone longs for loving relationships, yet all too often we unintentionally distance ourselves from one another by being reactive: by withdrawing, by being too eager for approval, or simply by being too busy to pay attention.

This can result in feeling painfully separate, insufficiently appreciated & unloved.

Whether in individual therapy or in conjoint therapy with a partner, relationship therapy can help us hold and heal the sense of unworthiness that causes us to hold ourselves apart from others.  

By exploring how we relate to others, we can learn to let go of the need to protect ourselves and recover our natural capacity to be open-hearted, empathic and compassionate towards others.

Rupture and Repair in Intimate Relationships

It Always Takes Two To Tango

Most emotional problems that erupt in intimate relationships stem from wounds that were incurred with parents and siblings in the formative years of childhood.  The tension between the desire for, and fear of, intimate connection can twist couples into painful knots. In order to untangle emotionally charged issues, it is necessary for each person to see how each their patterns of attachment are challenged by the partner’s. 

By gaining some perspective on the reactive patterns that get reciprocally triggered in one another, it becomes possible for the couple to come to an empathic understanding that is inclusive of the pain of both.  In this way, relationship problems can actually become an opportunity to develop a deeper intimacy based in mutual empathy, respect and compassion.