Relationships don’t come in a box with instructions. Most of us learn how to love and connect by watching people who were figuring it out as they went. When our relationships aren’t giving us what we long for, that’s often where it starts.
You May Relate If:
- you keep ending up in the same kinds of relationships, no matter who the other person is
- you find it hard to be vulnerable, even with people you care about
- trust is hard for you, even in close relationships
- you want connection but feel isolated or misunderstood
- you carry anxious or critical thoughts about yourself that get in the way
Understanding How You Connect
The relationships we have now are shaped by the relationships we’ve had before. Early attachments. Painful experiences. The models of love we absorbed without choosing them. All of it shows up in how we connect now.
Whether you long for:
- a close friend to share in life’s adventures and challenges
- a life partner to love and be loved
- a renewed connection with a family member
- a community where you feel a sense of belonging
What tends to get in the way is usually older than the current situation.
Counselling can help you understand:
- the patterns you tend to repeat in relationships
- how those patterns were shaped by your earliest relationships
- how your core beliefs about yourself and others are affecting what feels possible now
- why certain kinds of closeness feel safer than others
- what it might feel like to relate with less guardedness
By better understanding how you connect, and why, you can begin to relate in ways that serve what you actually long for.
How Counselling Can Help
Counselling can help you:
- Understand how past experiences of relationship may have shaped your current perceptions and expectations
- Identify patterns of thinking and core beliefs about yourself and others that may be getting in the way of healthy relationships
- Find the courage to be vulnerable in relationship or marriage, while maintaining good boundaries, so that real intimacy can develop
- Overcome anxious, negative thoughts about yourself that keep you from seeing yourself as worthy of love, and others from seeing the real you
- Develop your capacity for spontaneity and ease in relating to others.
- Learn how to relax and have fun.
Relationships don’t come with instructions. With some support, they start to make more sense. And you start to make more sense to yourself too.
Our Therapeutic Approaches
We draw on a range of evidence-based approaches, grounded in a flexible, collaborative, and client-centred way of working that adapts to what is most helpful for you.
This allows us to shape our work around your needs, experiences, and goals, drawing from different therapeutic modalities as needed. Learn more about our approach to care.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Attachment-based work looks at how you learned to connect early on. Those early patterns tend to shape your relationships now, often without you noticing. Once you see your own attachment style clearly, a lot about your relationships starts to make sense.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy looks at the deeper patterns shaping how you relate. Things from earlier in life that are still influencing your present connections. When you understand what’s been driving those patterns, a lot about your relationships clicks into place.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy works with the stories you carry about relationships. Some of those stories you chose. Many you absorbed without choosing. Re-authoring them changes what becomes possible.
Compassion-Focused Therapy
A lot of relationship struggles are really struggles with how you relate to yourself. Compassion-focused work helps you build a different inner voice, one that can hold difficulty without adding judgment. As that shifts, your connections with other people tend to shift too.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
CBT pays attention to the thoughts and beliefs that shape how you show up in relationships. The inner narrator that keeps telling you you’re too much. Or not enough. Or that people always leave. These beliefs often feel like truths until you examine them. CBT helps you see them for what they are, and respond differently.
You don’t have to manage anxiety on your own. With the right support, anxiety can become more manageable and no longer define how you live your life.
Book an appointment today and take the first step toward lasting relief.
Meet Some of Our Counsellors Who Work With Relationship Problems
Erica Burdzy
Rebecca Bonham
Shedean Jones
Amy Wolgemuth
Candice Rockwell
Christine Crocker
Christine has been providing services to families, couples and individuals since 2007. She believes relationships are central to the health and well-being of individuals, families and communities, and that each person is encouraged to understand their unique situation and reach for attainable goals as they work toward making changes needed for a better life.
Webinars on This Topic
Frequently Asked Questions About Relationship Problems Counselling
No. Relationship counselling in this context is individual work. It’s you and your counsellor, looking at your patterns, your history, and what you bring into relationships. Couples counselling is different — both partners come together. If you’re looking for joint work with a partner, see our couples counselling page.
You can still do a lot of work on your own. Understanding your own patterns and your side of the dynamic often changes the relationship, even without the other person being in the room. Some people come to individual counselling hoping things will change for both of them. Others come because they’ve given up on that and want to understand themselves better. Both are valid starting points.
There’s no bar you have to meet. People come in for all kinds of reasons, from feeling vaguely unsatisfied in their connections to dealing with the fallout of a major rupture. If it’s affecting your life or weighing on you, it’s worth bringing in. You don’t have to wait until things are worse.
Yes. Relationship counselling applies to any relationship that matters to you. Friendship struggles, family patterns, connections you can’t quite figure out. All of it is fair game. Some clients come specifically to work on family-of-origin relationships. Others come because their friendships keep falling into the same patterns.
Not directly. Your counsellor won’t make that decision for you. What counselling does is help you see the relationship more clearly, and yourself in it. Sometimes that leads to staying and working on things. Sometimes it leads to leaving. The decision is always yours.