Relationship therapy

I offer Internal Family Systems informed therapy for couples/partners, and other pairs including siblings, friends, and parents and children. I welcome people in non-normative relationship structures such as queerplatonic relationships.

How does relationship therapy work?

Our close relationships can support deep growth and healing, but they can also be a cause of profound wounding and disappointment. Our longings to feel heard, held and protected, to find acceptance and be delighted in often awaken in them. They can also evoke the fear, vigilance and painful beliefs about ourselves and others which we carry with us from past events and relationships.

People benefit from relationship therapy for a wide range of reasons. You might be struggling to make a major decision, managing a break in trust, trying to understand your differing needs, neurotypes and attachment styles, or feeling a loss of intimacy and connection.

Internal Family Systems informed relationship therapy is called ‘Intimacy from the Inside Out.’ IFIO can give you a space to develop a deeper understanding of dynamics that happen between you and your partner, and learn to understand the protective strategies you both use to try to get your needs met, as well as the vulnerable parts that each of you are trying to protect. 

Every pair is different, however we can often divide relationship therapy into a few key stages.

Exploring what brings you both to therapy, your hopes and your histories

In our first few sessions we will discuss the difficulties you want to explore in therapy and any hopes and concerns you have.

We may also explore your histories and identities, including your experiences of your families of origin, any history of mental illness or addiction, identities such as sexuality, neurodivergence and cultural identity, past experiences of betrayal, apologising and forgiveness, and previous experiences of therapy.

Identifying and pausing patterns of conflict

Conflicts often follow a familiar, repetitive pattern even though the content may change. The idea within IFS is that conflicts are often driven by the attempts of protective parts of us to get the needs met of our most vulnerable parts, but that unfortunately this often brings out protective parts of the other person.

Together we can explore the needs, fears and desires that are behind the protective strategies each of you use. For example, behind parts who are critical, angry, closed off or dishonest are generally parts feeling vulnerable emotions such as fear, loneliness or shame.

We can also figure out how each of you can pause during conflict and speak for the needs and concerns of reactive and hurt parts rather than speaking from them, so that you can turn towards each other with greater curiosity about each others’ experiences.

Helping vulnerable parts

As well as mapping the dynamics that happen between each of your protective parts, we will spend time getting to know the vulnerable parts that drive protective behaviours.

When you can attend to wounded, vulnerable parts of you who have been hurt in the past with compassion and offer them the emotionally corrective experience they need, you can return to previously difficult conversations feeling safer, braver and more able to hear the underlying needs of the other person.

Doing this work in the presence of your partner can not only lessen the need to use protective strategies that often backfire, it can also be deeply connecting, and help each of you understand the vulnerability that is behind your protectors when they show up in the future.

Courageous communication

As we map out the dynamics that play out between you and your partner and work on you both connecting compassionately with protective and vulnerable parts, you’ll both become more able to ‘unblend’ from parts.

Unblending refers to noticing a part (such as a part feeling angry, jealous, scared or lonely) and observing it in a compassionate, curious way rather than seeing the world through its eyes and feeling its emotions. In this state, it is much easier to speak for rather than from parts and listen from the heart when your partner does the same.

Courageous communication is a way of communicating that involves both partners, the speaker and the listener, accessing a calm, compassionate place inside and then communicating about their needs and desires, vulnerabilities and feelings of hurt or remorse, without being taken over by emotions such as judgement, anger, shame or anxiety, which might often get in the way of fully hearing each other.

FAQs

I typically hold sessions weekly or fortnightly, for 50 minutes or 90 minutes. If there’s a different frequency or length of session that would work better for you then please let me know.