Is Your Relationship Being Spoiled

     By Endless Fighting?

• Do you feel anxious, angry, hurt and depressed?
• Do you feel trapped in dysfunctional communication patterns?
  
• Do you feel detached and distant from each other?
  
• Do you despair that you will ever feel seen by your partner?
• Have sexuality and intimacy died off?
• Have you had a recent crisis that threatens your core trust?
• Is your partner demanding more emotional contact from you and it's not your natural way?
  

Start Feeling Less Stress

and More Intimacy

• Learn to connect more deeply and be more authentic in your relationship
• I will help you untangle your painful negative cycles of communication
  
• I help you see that it is not your fault, but rather a consequence of the power of the cycle that grips you.
  
• You can learn to have power over that cycle by learning your triggers and undoing them.
  
• You will learn about the roots of the cycle learned in early relationships, but not dwell there.
  
• Rather we will focus on here and now problem solving and skill building such as help getting less anxious and anger management.
• You will improve your communication and increase your sense of closeness, mutual acceptance and understanding.

 

Get Your Relationship Back on Track

I have over twenty years successful experience helping couples and individuals restore their sense of connection and relationship vitality.

For a free consult, call me at 510 684 0658 or

email me at peter@peterbernhardt.com.

We can usually talk the day you call.

Where Does The Negative Cycle Come From?

Understanding where the negative cycle comes from helps you have compassion for yourselve and your partner and the seemingly crazy behavior couples sometimes find ourselves engaged in. Often in our early family life, we witnessed dysfunctional expressions of emotions and communication. Sometimes even abuse and neglect. These patterns are handed down from one generation to the next, even over many generations. Children need to be cared for, so of course they need to fit in to the world they were born into. So naturally they adopt the strategies and patterns available too them to survive.

Survival At All Costs

Strangely enough, relationships seek stability in any way they can. The negative cycle creates stability in our family systems by establishing fixed ways of managing stress and hardship. Fixed interactions and fixed roles, no matter how bad, seem to be preferable to total chaos and family dissolution. The negative cycle, to a primitive part of our brain, is perceived to have survival value. This is why part of us clings to old behaviors even when we see the cost to our relationships. In therapy the goal is to move beyond survival to an experience of journeying together, personal development and transformation. This begins with the building of compassion and success in working through the negative cycle.

The Negative Cycle in Parenting and Family Relationships

The negative cycle is not limited to couples. It can happen between parent and child or involve the whole family. For example, cycles of defiance vs. control can dominate the family’s emotional climate in painful ways. Therapy can be helpful for a parent-child pair or for the whole family. Don’t let these cycles keep spoiling your connection with each other!