Do you find yourself getting reactive in certain relationships? Are your negative emotions close to the surface with certain people? Do you want to change that and gain more control over your feelings in your relationships? Do you want to be more calm, centred and grounded?
90% of our reaction to any event comes from our past, and only 10% of our reaction is about what is currently happening in front of us. So when your boss tells you to write a report and you find his tone controlling, or when your partner doesn’t help you in house-care as much as you would like – 90% of your reaction has to do with old wounds /traumas from your past. Maybe you have an old belief about being unworthy of love, or maybe your mom was controlling and you grew up feeling like she never truly saw the real you…either way, THAT is what you are mostly reacting to.
In order to be able to find joy and ease in relationships, it is imperative that we DO OUR OWN WORK!
While couple therapy is highly useful, the most important part of couple therapy is healing our old wounds that are getting activated in the relationship. When we heal these old wounds we naturally show up in our relationships more open, receptive and comfortable.
For example:
Ben is feeling jealous when his wife Emily talks to other men. Whenever he even thinks about her giving attention to another man he gets a sick feeling in his stomach. He expresses this to Emily, but Emily had a controlling father and she perceives this feedback as criticism. When we worked with Ben on the sick feeling in his stomach using an integrative approach of therapy we discovered that the first time he ever had that sick feeling is when his best friend in elementary school moved away. This was very upsetting for Ben at the time, as ben was quite shy and found it difficult to make friends. The stomach feeling held an experience of loss and fear. When we cleared that Ben regained a larger perspective with regards to Emily’s behaviour and it no longer bothered him. We followed with helping Emily clear the trauma from being criticized by her dad as a child and adolescent. She was then able to accept Ben’s feelings without becoming defensive and reactivated.
What will our work look like?
- Narrow down the relationship that you would like to address (your partner, your child, your friend, your boss…)
- Narrow down the symptom(s) that you would like to address (for example, feeling anxiety when my boss talks to me, losing my temper with my child, yelling at my
- Explore the reasons that you would like to create change – this is an important step! (what would be different in your life when these symptoms were released?)
- Using an integrative approach, taking the symptom back to its root cause (its origin)
- Healing the original experience (trauma) = uprooting the tree from the roots
- Creating new behaviours, tools and a new outlook.
Recommended length of therapy: 6-12 sessions (sometimes less, depending on how many symptoms).
Fee $140 per hour
Contact me for a FREE consultation