Why do we focus on relationships?

The Petrie Dish of Personhood

If you are curious as to why we focus on relationships, we hope this might help. From the moment we are born, we are wired for connection with our parents/caregivers as the source of our ongoing survival. Every interaction we have with them offers a guide, message, or blueprint for how to make sense of self and others. Our nervous system, brain, sense of self, and maps for connection are in a profound process of growth and development between the ages of 0 to 25 and we rely on our family to navigate this process.

As we engage in thousands of interactions with family and extended family throughout our childhood these experiences shape our personhood, often without our conscious awareness. Over time, these interactions develop into consistent patterns that help us know who we are, what is loveable and valuable about us, how to manage emotions, what we can expect from others, who will come for us in moments of need, and how to navigate the challenges of life. When we can’t reconcile the two, we experience distress and conflict and are required to develop a variety of strategies for dealing with and tolerating these competing needs. 

In an ideal world, we will all experience family life that is nurturing, engaged, structured, and willing to challenge or push us to grow (the four components of secure attachment). We will experience the security of connection and belonging alongside the freedom to be an individual and separate. Systemic therapists understand that human beings are always trying to balance these two very human needs – how to be part of a group and give and receive love, while also being our authentic selves and honoring our own needs, preferences, and personhood.  

No family is perfectly attuned to the needs of every member, and, in fact, it is not healthy to be! If we never experience a missed need or a relational challenge to navigate then we will never learn how to regulate ourselves, become independent, or how to compromise, repair, and set boundaries with others. None of us have a foolproof map and we all need something different from our family. It’s not ‘if’ a need will be missed, it’s ‘when’. Research shows that secure attachment only requires attunement 30% of the time, and for all the things that are missed, we can lean into repair to restore our connection.

We all grow up in imperfect families. All of us are family members who are/were wounded children ourselves, inheriting imperfect maps for how to connect and be an individual. We are all doing the best we can with what we have at any given moment, and because life is hard and taxing on our resources, we won’t always engage with ourselves and others from an optimal place. 

The maps we hold about ourselves, our families, our partners, and our children are grounded in the experiences we have of our families growing up and, as such, will inevitably be vulnerable to our long-held patterns, strengths, and vulnerabilities. This is the challenge of being human and why we choose to be a resource for those seeking to explore their past, so they decide, design, and dictate their future. 

We make space for all the gifts, strengths, and skills that emerge out of your relational experiences.  We also make space for the ways in which you learned to adapt, protect, and survive the inevitable ways in which family did not always know how to meet your needs or support your unique personhood at any given moment. 

Where more significant misses have occurred, or you have endured invalidation, abandonment, trauma, or abuse, it is even more important to know that the messages you received are not the truth of who you are and not the only story about what is available to you.

We are invested in helping our clients explore their experiences so they can better understand how they got here, what to keep, and what they want to change. When we work with individuals we can help you organize and understand the messages you received about your worth, loveableness, emotions, stressors, and needs for connection so you can understand your current reality more fully. If you received messages that limited, hurt, or created dilemmas, we can guide you through the process of healing missed needs, redesigning your map for self and others, and taking the risk to experience something different.

When we work with couples, we understand that the cycles you get into, often that of pursue and withdraw, are a function of your upbringing. Many of the ways you know how to connect, deal with stress and conflict, and ask for what you need are grounded in your experiences of earlier family life. We help couples, together, find new ways to reconnect, reach, respond, and repair.

When we work with parents, we make space for your experiences of being parented, what you want to emulate, and where you want to show up differently. If you have experiences that need tending to, healing, or validating, we can be alongside you. From personal experience, we know that being willing to lean into support within the overwhelming realm of raising human beings is both a risk and a gift to your child, inner child, couples’ partnership, and family as a whole and we always feel privileged to be in it with you. X.

To offer further organization for the power of relationships, here are some of the things we, hopefully, learn from our families throughout the process of growing up. If you are part of the vast majority of humanity who did not have perfectly attuned parents, you are most welcome here and we will be honored to be of service to you and the people you hold dear.