Relationship
The State of Being Connected
Several close relationships for me were once fraught with
tension and risk so I grew up as a child with vigilance as my
watchword. However it wasn’t until after I had had my three
daughters and been divorced did I even identify the help that
was out there for me. Now as a re-married wife, mother, stepmother, grandmother and step-grandmother I have a certain
amount of experience of different relationships but it has taken
many years of learning to discover how people function. My
family is large and full of strong minded, noisy people who have
opinions and know how to voice them and sometimes this can
be problematic but more often it can be hilarious and joyful.
Relationships and people are what make
the world go round and away from the
midst of this swirl of lively individuals I
am a psychotherapist, or if you favour,
a counsellor. Modern life means that at
some time having to facing difficulties that
need more than a chat over a cup of tea
with a friend and in my world I see people
with a myriad of problems – problems
with sexual ly compulsive behaviours that
have culminated in dismissal from their
employment; people who are in crisis due
to the discovery of an affair; people whose
confusion about their sexuality can cause
real pain, people bereft because their dog
has died and they feel no-one understands
their grief and people who decide to get
a divorce and want the space to organise
their thoughts and emotions in the midst of
chaos – a small example of my working life
at my therapy rooms.
This may sound a list of misery and gloom
and yes people don’t come to see people
like me to share their jokes. However,
those courageous folk who seek my help
are surprised to discover amongst the
sadness how quickly they can access their
elusive humour and feel moments of lost
happiness. This dichotomy of thoughts,
feelings, emotions and our relationship
with ourselves is why I am so interested
in the human personality and why my
initial training many years ago was in
transactional analysis which is a study
of personality and then later studying
the intricacies of the couple relationship
followed by the complexities of the sexual
relationship and then the relationship of
the self with sexual addiction and the
relationship of the partner with that addict.
When couples seem to not be speaking
the same language, disagreeing over
everything and anything, when they are
fearful that it has got more serious and
any discussion has become aggressive
and nasty, they sit either side of the sofa
in my room with a wall of antagonism and
anxiety lurking like a malevolent miasma
between them. They have reached a point
where talking or rows have no resolution;
they are going around and around in
circles, prowling and looking for a chance
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