Are You Experiencing Lingering Pain Or Disconnect In Your Relationships?

Do you struggle with feeling under-loved or under-valued? Has it become hard for you to determine what you want from those around you? Are you beginning to be emotionally unavailable to your partner, children, family members, or friends?

Maybe you’re a busy stay-at-home mother who left a job or shifted priorities when you became a parent. Now though, because you stopped working outside of the home, you may struggle to feel fulfilled or focused on your passions, creating tension between your partner and/or children.

Or maybe you’re the husband of a stay-at-home mother who now feels envious of your children for receiving more of your partner’s attention than you do. While your wife and children may get their nurturing needs fulfilled by one another, you’re left out as a third wheel who only gets what’s left over when you come home from work for the day.

Even if these scenarios don’t apply to you, you’re likely here because you’re having trouble relating to others. Perhaps you find it difficult to truly connect with yourself, which, in turn, makes it nearly impossible to connect with those around you.

If this is the case, you may have recognized emotional, social, and relational symptoms that indicate a need for relationship counseling—and these symptoms often exist on two sides of the same coin. Maybe you often withdraw or isolate yourself from others, or alternatively, you might become clingy. Perhaps the people closest to you have remarked that you seem emotionally absent or unavailable, or by contrast, that you are overly sensitive.

Even though such signs and symptoms exist on an opposite spectrum, they serve the same purpose, which is usually avoidance or emotional numbing. And it’s possible that a need to numb has translated into substance abuse, excessive eating or exercise, or other forms of self-medicating.

The truth is that if you’re struggling in your relationships, you’re likely focused more on external factors than your internal feelings. But with counseling at Fort Mill Psychotherapy, you can learn to better understand your own emotions and the functions that they serve so that your relationships with others are healthier and more fulfilling.

Society Doesn’t Value The Relationship We Have With Ourselves

Life inevitably brings change and moments of drastic transition, often creating a sense of internal discomfort that we’d rather not face. As a result, we find ways to make ourselves feel better, which may look like a big move, changing jobs frequently, adding to our family, initiating a separation, or abusing substances—to name a few. 

However, all these things do is keep us from feeling our true emotions, creating further disconnection from ourselves, and thus, jeopardizing our relationships with others. We engage in emotional numbing behaviors as a desperate attempt to leave our past behind. But the more we avoid our emotions, the bigger our relationship problems become. 

Unfortunately, our culture does not value a strong, safe, and secure relationship with the self. Instead, we are encouraged to focus on an external center of control, feed our perfectionist tendencies, and develop codependent (as opposed to healthy) relationships with others. Especially for those of us who were raised and conditioned in dysfunctional environments, our relationships will continue to be wounded until we address the core issue(s). Before that happens, we will seek external means of relief instead of looking within to heal. 

Yet the truth is that healing individual wounds and disconnected relationships is something that can happen only in the context of a community. Finding where you belong is an extremely essential component to healing—and relationship counseling at Fort Mill Psychotherapy is precisely the environment in which you can learn to recover and reconnect.

Relationship Counseling Fosters A Deep Understanding And Awareness Of Yourself

Despite its name, relationship counseling is more about the connection to the self than it is about the connection to others. Our clinicians believe that if you can heal your internal wounds, you’ll be more effective in fostering secure and fulfilling relationships with those around you. 

We see individuals, couples, and families for relationship counseling and will tailor our treatment approach to meet the unique needs of each one of our clients. After you (and your partner/family) complete an intake questionnaire, you will be able to schedule your first session with a counselor who will collaborate with you to develop a treatment plan and address relationship goals/concerns for therapy. 

During consecutive sessions, you will work to understand the core wound that is creating problems in your relationships. Meeting you exactly where you are on your journey, your counselor will aid you in developing awareness about the familial or cultural system from which you come so that you can recognize the patterns and emotional injuries that are keeping you from making progress. 

Ours is an experiential approach to therapy that helps individuals identify the wounds they endured as children so that they can create healthier and more effective means of keeping themselves safe and functioning within their relationships. Once the individual succeeds in healing internally, the partners and family members included in session (if applicable) can begin to engage in the same relationship-building tactics that will ultimately complement the individual work done in counseling. 

At the end of the day, you are the only one that you have control over. By understanding and honoring this reality, you can learn to repair all of the relationships in your life that have been wounded. At Fort Mill Psychotherapy, we believe that recovery is always possible, and that healing is within your reach.

Maybe you’re interested in going to therapy to strengthen your relationships, but you have some questions…

I’m not even sure I want to stay in my relationship, though. 

If you’re struggling with relationship issues and considering a breakup or divorce, counseling can help you to recognize the value of reconnecting with yourself. Perhaps this is not an opportunity to decide about your partnership but to get clearer on your priorities and internal connection with yourself so that you can get to a place where you understand what you want and how to move forward. 

My partner thinks I’m the problem—not them. 

Rather than looking for where to place blame or fault, it will probably be more effective to shift the focus on yourself. By doing so, you will gain a deeper awareness of your core wounds and the patterns that have developed as a result. With your partner doing the same in counseling, your work and progress can complement that of your partner’s so that you both can grow as individuals and within the context of your relationship. 

I’m concerned that my partner will never stop numbing and medicating their emotions. 

It sounds like you’re feeling pretty hopeless and powerless about your partner’s behaviors. However, if you can begin to heal your relationship with yourself, it’s likely that your partner’s behaviors won’t weigh so heavily on you. If they’re in counseling, too, then they will have the chance to see how their numbing behaviors are impacting themself and the relationship so that you can work together to affect positive change.

Learn To Heal Yourself So You Can Grow Closer To Others 

If your relationships are struggling due to emotional disconnect and avoidance, counseling at Fort Mill Psychotherapy can help you identify root problems and find effective solutions. To learn more about how we can help or to schedule a session, please visit our contact page.