We all have relationships in our life. With our life partner, our children, parents, colleagues at work, and so on. Less often we realise that we also are in relation to the living environment around us. Even less we give attention to the relation we have with ourselves, with our ideas, perceptions and values. Relationships are about you and the world, how you are in relation to what is external to you in the outside world. And they are about how you are in relation to wat you experience on the inside, how you relate to yourself.
Values and beliefs
If your relationships are satisfactory highly depends how you deal with them. The way you handle them is highly dependend on your beliefs, values and behavioral patterns. Beliefs how and what a relationship should entail, en the way you interact with your partner is influenced by your previous life experiences. You have drawn certain conclusions about life’s experiences, and are looking in a specific and maybe even sometimes colored way at the relational experience.
Old relational patterns
Most often we are unaware of the beliefs and patterns that lie beneath our thoughts, feelings, emotions and behavior. And it is exactly because they’re unconscious that they so deeply influence our life. Unnoticed old patterns again and again deform new relationships into old ones…. the same irritations and frustrations show themselves over and over. We often only start noticing when arguments arise more often and often, we are over stressed or even approach burn-out!
In relational work we give attention to:
- Identity: Who are you, who is the other and who/what are you together ?
- Values: What is really important for the each and for the two of you?
- Communication: How do you communicate? How do you want to communicate?
- Intimacy: What is intimacy for you?
- What emerges from the relation? What are the echos’ of the past that are showing themselves? What old feelings and behavior comes forward? What desire is there?
Commonly we work in session of around 90 minutes. It’s also possible to do day-long or half-a-day sessions.