Relationships

When the dynamic between you and someone important to you has become distant or dysfunctional, life feels imbalanced. Healthy relationships support our personal wellbeing. A TPG therapist can help improve fragile relationships, and assist you to address distance, dysfunction, and unresolved conflict.

If you’re hoping to improve an important relationship, therapy can help. Whether this is a romantic relationship, or one involving a family member, friend, or other significant individual in your life, they can support your effort to relate better.

What Is Therapy for Relationship Issues?

Therapy focused on relationship issues involves the creation of a safe space for exploring relationship challenges. You may struggle with your partner or family member in cycles of useless or hurtful arguing, poor communication, destructive behaviour, or remoteness between you. We cannot change the other person, but we gain from understanding our own part or position in the difficulty. As it’s easy to lose our balance in troubled relating, a skilled therapist’s guidance can be very useful.

How Can Therapy Help with a Difficult Relationship?

There are multiple ways that therapy can help with a relationship you experience as too conflictual or distant.

A therapist can help by:

• Providing a safe place for you to speak and be heard
• Helping you identify and shift patterns in your conflicts
• Assisting you in exploring roots of these patterns
• Shifting your reactivity in these difficulties
• Developing strategies to de-escalate or navigate conflict
• Creating better closeness and connection
• Exploring when to take space from or let go of a troubled bond

What Issues Does Therapy for Relationships Address?

You may wish to consider therapy for difficulties with relationships if you struggle with any of the following:

• Difficulty creating or maintaining connection
• Loss of emotional closeness or intimacy
• Unproductive conflicts or fighting without resolution
• Poor communication
• Feelings of unbearable hurt, loneliness, or rejection
• Loss of trust, respect, or love
• Fear of losing your sense of self in the relationship

Are You Seeking Couples Therapy?

This page is a reference and resource for relationship issues. However, you may be seeking couples therapy —that is, for a therapist who will meet with you and another person (often romantic partner/spouse) in order to understand and address the issues between you.

Several psychotherapists with Toronto Psychotherapy Group are certified in the practice of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) or Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT).

To connect with a therapist trained in Couples Therapy, view our directory of professionals