Online relationship counseling For women in oregon
Relationships have a way of bringing us face to face with parts of ourselves, or certain patterns, that we can more easily avoid everywhere else.
We might feel confident and grounded in other areas of our lives, only to find ourselves overwhelmed by self doubt in a relationship. We might have clear boundaries at work and struggle to maintain them with the people we love. We might understand our patterns intellectually and still find ourselves reacting in ways that feel familiar, frustrating, or confusing.
I've found that relationships are where our deepest wounds and our deepest longings tend to meet. We are social beings, after all.
Many of the women I work with come to therapy because they are tired of repeating the same patterns. They find themselves over functioning, people pleasing, second guessing themselves, avoiding conflict, choosing partners who are emotionally unavailable, or feeling responsible for everyone else's needs while swallowing or shrinking their own.
Many inherited relationship models that asked women to do an enormous amount of emotional labor while remaining disconnected from their own needs, anger, desires, and truth. Many learned to prioritize keeping the peace over being honest, to prioritize being chosen over choosing, and to confuse endurance with love.
Connection as Survival
The ways we learned to seek connection, create safety, earn love, navigate conflict, express emotions, and respond to disappointment are shaped by the relationships we experienced growing up, by the patterns we inherit through family, community, or culture. Over time, these experiences influence what feels familiar, what feels threatening, and what we come to expect from ourselves and others.
Many of these adaptations were intelligent responses to the environments we were living in.
The challenge is that what once helped us maintain connection and survival can sometimes limit our ability to experience the kind of relationships we actually want.
In my experience, most women are not looking for perfection. Rather, they're looking for relationships where they can be fully human, in which they don’t have to leave themselves behind or burn themselves out to stay connected. Relationships that support their aliveness, their complexity, their desire, their evolving and expanding nature.
Women are trying to figure out how to love and be loved while staying connected to themselves.
If this resonates with you, click on the button below to schedule.
