Could Healing Yourself Heal Your Relationships?

Most people understand emotionally numb partners, emotionally distant partners, repetitive cycles of conflict, the cycles of emotional pain, and the guilt of being frustrated with the person you love.

Maybe the answer isn't additional communication skills. Maybe the answer is you. More specifically, what is it about you that keeps leaving certain issues unresolved?

Relational health and personal healing are more intertwined than most people assume. Working on yourself is often the most positive impact people can have on others.

The Inner World is Actually the Foundation of the Outer World

Relationships don’t form in isolation.

Everything from the emotional and psychological work that you have accomplished to the work that is still to be done will influence the relationships and the dynamics within them.

Relationships are impacted when these systems are wounded or dysregulated.

This is, in psychological terms, relational patterning, a subconscious phenomenon in which we repetitively reconstruct certain emotional environments.

Emotional environments you reconstruct can be painfully familiar.

For example, if you were raised in an environment where love and care were provided inconsistently and unpredictably, you will tend to seek such a pattern in your adult relationships.

This is not a choice, but an instinctive reaction from the nervous system, similar to a perpetually stuck system.

Attachment Styles

The categories of attachment styles are:

●        Anxious

●        Avoidant

●        Disorganized

●        Secure

Attachment styles are shaped by the emotional reactions you learned to exhibit toward your primary caregivers and by how those reactions influenced your formative years.

This will manifest in the following ways:

●        How you respond to conflict

●        Your relational orientation to intimacy

●        How you respond to social ambiguity

●        The degree to which you can be emotionally vulnerable

The positive news is that your attachment style can change.

With purposeful and beneficial work in therapy, the brain can develop new templates. This is termed positive neuroplasticity and means that real change is genuinely possible.

The Impact of Trauma on Relationships

Trauma, especially when complex or developmental, shapes your emotional memories and resides in your body.

It creates a specific setup in your emotional response system, creates a particular pattern of emotional reactions, and determines the conditions under which you feel safe in an interpersonal setting.

When your nervous system is chronically stuck in either hyperarousal or hypoarousal, you may experience the following symptoms:

●        Hyper-reactivity during conflicts

●        Emotional shutdown or dissociation when faced with conflict

●        Difficulty trusting others, even people who deserve your trust

●        Persistent feeling of being misunderstood or disconnected in your relationships

These symptoms are not flaws in your personality. They are responses in your body to pain that has not been processed.

Somatic therapy, coupled with trauma-informed therapy, helps to bring the body back to balance so that true connection is again possible.

Healing Yourself in a Relational Context

Relational self-healing involves gaining self-awareness coupled with nervous system regulation that allows you to show up in an intentional rather than reactive manner.

The Emotional Impact of Healing Yourself

●     Emotional regulation: Instead of reacting, you are responding, thereby changing the entire tone of a conflict

●     Improved mentalizing: Your understanding of your own and others' emotional states is enhanced

●     Reduced projection: You no longer assign your own unprocessed trauma or fears to your loved ones

●     Secure functioning: You are able to strike a balance between interdependence and

codependence, thereby avoiding emotional unavailability

All of the changes outlined above are very real. You will experience and feel these changes in your relationships with the people around you.

We Should All Be Taking Time To Heal

Focusing on your inner healing is essential. Refining your self-awareness, processing trauma, and gaining control of your nervous system helps everyone around you.

A better you, a better everything. It is that simple.

Heal With A.O.S. Healing Center

We have designed our services with your complete experience in mind. We treat your mind, body, and spirit without discrimination.

Here, we practice trauma-informed care, and we do so holistically.

We work with you. This is what makes us different.

Start by booking a healing appointment with us, so we can go on this adventure together.

FAQs

Do I need my partner to be present for therapy to improve my relationship?

Yes. Even without your partner being present, meaningful individual therapy can improve relational dynamics.

This is because your own emotional regulation, and the way you respond and behave in a system, will influence the entire system.

Does A.O.S. Healing Center offer holistic mental health services?

Yes. A.O.S. Healing Center employs a holistic methodology that considers all aspects of a person's mental, emotional, and physical health.