02 Christine Shalala Psychotherapy
Relationship Counselling
& Couples Therapy
What does it take to build a healthy relationship? and What do we need to know to maintain long-term relationships ?
……included in this Edit
A relationship that thrives through challenging times is a relationship built on affection, connection, and appreciation; and maintained through genuine communication. Genuine communication between two partners is a place where concerns, desires, vulnerabilities, and perceptions are shared. They all fall together at one point in the present, leading to the development of an intimate connection between both partners, and reconnection to the Self – Reconnection to the parts of the Self we appreciate and
those parts we have disowned due to trauma and limiting beliefs. As you experience a full sense of being in the present, through the full expression of yourself, you are not trying to become something or someone or trying to reach certain goals. On the contrary, you enjoy being fully YOU. You can assure yourself within “yourself” and within the dynamic of a healthy relationship that the best way to be in this world is the ultimate way you reflect YOU.
Consider this for maintaining a long-term relationship…
When we place too much value on things that mean a lot to us and we attach our self-worth to those things, we lose our sense of self-worth when we lose our connection to those things. On the contrary, when we redefine our values, we realize that our values are only internal perceptions to things that mattered to us in the past.
They are the constructs of what we believed makes us happy, acceptable, and satisfied. The values that we carry with us from early childhood experiences are shaped by social constructs and the beliefs that society conveyed to us as valuable.
In other words, the meanings that we have attached to intimacy may not serve our purpose from the relationship anymore. Therefore, we need to change our perceptions and make new meanings to how we express ourselves in relationships today.
