Are you in a relationship that works to protect you from pain while, at the same time, hopes that your real needs will be met?
This is the Paradox of Protection – a constant, predictable pattern of pain and frustration in a relationship, that often protects partners from true, deep, intimate connection, while also keeps your real needs from being met.
Much of what’s happening in your relationship exists outside of your conscious awareness.
Working together in therapy, each couple begins to understand their unconscious nature, and what may be keeping each person from the deep, connected, kind of intimacy that both partners may be longing for in your relationship.
When we meet our partner, we may tell ourselves something like this:
“This person may meet needs that I’ve never had before”, OR
“This is known territory, and I can handle this.”
Our yearning for excitement & difference from our past experiences, represents your real self’s hope for fulfillment, and the need for familiarity represents your defensive self’s fear that a new or unpredictable relationship will bring new trauma.
Love whispers to the real self, this is finally it (!), at long last the authentic YOU can come out and be perfectly safe. But the defensive self is always there. Waiting for a misstep in the relationship and a chance to feel abandoned or neglected once again.
When the defensive self gets a wake-up call, relationships go through a period of struggle and uncertainty. Our defensive selves begin to act the same way as we did as children.
If our childhood defense was to fight, we get angry. If it was to flee, we begin to withdraw from our partner.
Our relationship with our partner begins to take on a familiar pattern; our partner becomes our parent (in our unconscious), and we react as we did as children.
This pattern happens in every relationship at some point.
I’ve seen relationships and individuals evolve significantly over time with deep understanding of their negative patterns and the repetitive communication styles that happen between one another.
If your relationship is in a struggling phase right now, I can help you understand what’s happening for you as individuals and for you as a couple.
You will learn what is happening for you on both an unconscious and conscious level – and you will learn how your patterns of intimacy, connection and communication may be contributing to what is troubling you.
The patterns that are contributing to your struggle right now, will not help you resolve it. It may be time to learn new skills and tools to help you in your relationship.
Get in touch to learn more about how to work with me, and for a free telephone consultation.
Let’s make sense of this together.
[email protected] or 647 222-3086
www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com
