How Relationship Counselling can help you to get over a break up.

When it comes to getting over a break up, relationship counselling can help you to move forward faster. The first step in letting go of resentments is recognising the impact of carrying those is having on your wellbeing. Holding onto anger, resentment and thoughts of revenge can cost you in terms of peace of mind as well as stop you from moving forward and finding a better, healthier, more loving relationship. Holding onto negative feelings can have a detrimental effect on your mental and emotional health, especially when there are children or businesses involved.

Learn how to deal with a relationship break up

In counselling, we can explore techniques to unpack frustrations in your last relationship, the impact it had on you, what unmet needs are and you’re your hopes for the future.  Sometimes looking at the relationship from a 3^rd party perspective can take off rose tinted glasses and look at whether it really was the right relationship for you. We can uncover your attachment style and look at creating healthy relationship patterns.

Move towards healthy relationships with therapy

We’ll explore motivations and impact as well as your readiness to forgive. Forgiving someone does not mean that you forget or excuse harm done. Forgiving cuts the chains from toxic ties and frees you to live more in the present moment and welcome in new opportunities for happiness.

Why does relationship separation hurt so much?

We are born with a primal need for human love and connection. When our social relationship bonds are threatened or severed, it hurts. Functional Magnetic Resonance Scanners (fMRI) scanners have shown that the same parts of the brain light up with emotional pain as with physical pain. Our wellbeing is influenced by our connection with others and some theorists believe that this is evolutionary – being cut off from the tribe meant certain death in olden times.

Speed up your recovery from a broken heart

Separation from a lover can be similar to a grieving process. Relationship counselling can help you move through this process faster. It can be even more complex when there are children and businesses involved, as individuals must learn to navigate still having this person in their lives. The separation process can be similar to psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross stages of grief model. The stages are not linear and individuals may go back and forth through several stages many times.

• This can be disbelief “this is not actually happening”. This can be a defence mechanism and actually numb emotion however eventually the ‘pretending everything will be okay,’ will change.
• This can manifest as anger towards yourself or anger towards another person. Anger is often a secondary emotion and may be masking other emotions such as sadness, shame or embarrassment. In the anger phase, it is not unusual to have thoughts such as “They will pay for what they did”. Some people do not go through this phase (particularly couples that have done intensive relationship counselling) whereas other may stay in this phase.
• In this phase, it’s not unusual to ask your partner to take you back and to promise to make any change necessary. There are often desperation attempts to affect an outcome.
• The stark reality starts to set in and emotions are felt much deeper as the nervous system starts to calm down from frantic anger and bargaining.
• In this stage, there is an acknowledgement that you cannot change the outcome. It is about looking at what this means for your life going forward. Because you have accepted the things you cannot change, you can now look forward to focusing on changing the things you can. Accepting and acknowledging what has happened is the first step in moving forward.

How does your attachment style affect your break-up recovery ability?

Everyone grieves differently. If you have been for couples or marriage counselling, then you will have most likely heard of attachment style. It is based on the premise that individuals have a primary attachment style: secure, anxious, disorganized or avoidant. Your attachment style can influence how you deal with break-ups. Secure attachment types are often confident and secure being single. Relationship break-up still hurts but deep down, they know that it will get better with time. Avoidant attachment types often have trouble trusting and letting people in. They may have been cynical through the relationship with thoughts of “this wasn’t going to work anyway” or “I shouldn’t have gotten too close”. Ambivalent attachment types find relationship break-ups most difficult and tend to keep trying to reconcile despite all odds. This can result in getting back with the ex, only to break-up again.

How counselling can help heal a broken heart.

Whatever your attachment style, couples counselling can help you to identify your attachment style and relationship patterns. If you tend to unconsciously attract the same unhealthy relationship pattern, then it’s likely you’ll continue to do the same thing over again until you become consciously aware of it and make changes.

Start moving forward today. Text / Email for a free consultation.