Online Therapy for Interpersonal Issues in New Jersey
Maybe you want to connect to people in your life but when it comes to sending the text to your friend, greeting your partner warmly, or having the hard but important conversation, you just can’t seem to do it. Maybe you have zero desire to connect to others and find relationships to be terrifying so you stay far away. Or maybe you panic at the slightest facial expression or change of tone in a person you care about and your panic drives you to try to fix things immediately.
These are all signs that working on how you show up in your interpersonal relationships may be a priority.
Therapy for adults who struggle with attachment wounds, avoidance, and communication in their relationships
Why Do People Struggle in Relationships?
My outlook is that relationships are our greatest teachers. The people in our lives hold up mirrors to us that are easier to avoid in isolation. That isolation is tempting for some but the research always supports the connection between feeling content in life and the quality of our relationships, romantic or platonic.
People can struggle in relationships for a variety of reasons including:
Emotional abuse and neglect in childhood
Experiences of bullying
Sexual abuse and/or assault
Depression that leads to social withdrawal
Shame that prevents them from feeling lovable
Anxiety that creates insecurity and hyper-vigilance in relationships
Past experiences of rejection that make folks predict it’ll always be the case
What’s My Approach to Interpersonal Issues
Without judgement and in collaboration with you, I’ll get to know the specifics of what your interpersonal challenges are. From there, we’ll begin to flesh out how your behaviors and “symptoms” make complete sense. I always tell my clients that if you want to change something within yourself, it will likely happen because you’re approaching yourself compassionately rather than from a place of frustration.
Let’s say you were emotionally neglected as a child. That you had caregivers that weren’t curious about you and your internal world. They got upset with you for being emotional which led you to hide your feelings to avoid their rejection. In response to this upbringing, you learned to keep people at a distance. Whether consciously or not, emotional closeness feels incredibly risky to you even if some other part of you wants to connect to others. You learned early on to expect that others won’t be able to hold space for your feelings and the aloneness of that was so unbearable as a child that you never want to feel it again.
This internal and often unconscious narrative becomes the target for growth and change in our work. I use parts work, Coherence Therapy, and Brainspotting to facilitate the unlearning of the narrative that makes you keep people at a distance. When the unlearning happens, you get to make choices about relationships from a difference place. You get to create a new narrative and a new experience of relationships that isn’t dictated by your brain’s expectation that it’ll be just like your upbringing.
Who is Therapy for Interpersonal Issues For?
Adults in New Jersey can benefit from this work to address the following challenges:
You’re having the same argument with a loved one and getting nowhere
You’re suffering from isolation and loneliness but the idea of connecting with others is terrifying
Part of you wants to set boundaries with people in your life but another part of you thinks that’s mean or rude
You find yourself acting like a “chameleon” depending on who you’re around despite wanting to take the masks off
You run from relationships the second the hard stuff comes up
Your partner says they’re okay and reassures you that they love you but you can’t help but panic at the slightest changes you notice in them
What Therapy for Interpersonal Issues Looks Like
We’ll begin the journey by scheduling a free 15-minute consultation where I’ll get to know you and what issues are showing up for you interpersonally that would change your life if they could be different. I’ll tell you about my approach and and you can ask me any questions you’d like that would allow you feel more confident in choosing me as your therapist. If everything feels right for the both of us, we’ll talk scheduling and logistics.
My intention in this work is to offer you both practical skills, pulling from the Gottman Method and DBT. Within those approaches, I can teach you how to communicate assertively and kindly. I can also point out the kinds of communication that tends to erode the strength of our relationships. Using IFS and Coherence Therapy, we’ll explore how your prior relational experiences are implicitly and explicitly playing out in your interpersonal world so that we can compassionately create meaningful change in your life.