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May 29, 2024

Am I in an unhealthy relationship ? Signs and what to do.

Understanding Unhealthy Relationships

People often come to me for counseling due to experiencing signs that they may be in an unhealthy relationship. I felt it was important to bring this to life more in this blog and therefore to cast light on what you may be consciously accepting while on a deeper level having some inkling that it is not right.

Recognizing Unhealthy Dynamics

The outer characteristics of unhealthy relationship dynamics involve things such as control, intimidation, and physical and sexual violence. If you are experiencing any of these things, remember that the police are just a phone call away. For women I have worked with, Women’s Refuge has also been a great level of support.

Seeking Support

While pointing in the direction of the support systems our society gives us is part of my role, recognizing these characteristics is useful. Classic counseling support involves identifying what is occurring for my respective client within the relationship.

Common Signs of Unhealthy Relationships

Not feeling supported and a feeling of walking on eggshells are commonly reported occurrences in an unhealthy relationship. It is critically important to give yourself permission to validate a feeling that something just doesn’t feel quite right. Often, in unhealthy relationships, our intuition has been a bit switched off. Just giving oneself permission to feel what is occurring and then pulling that thread can be a huge part of our unconscious becoming more conscious. This is a therapeutic journey.

Can Unhealthy Relationships Turn Healthy?

So, you may be asking yourself if unhealthy relationships can turn healthy. I would say yes, but it requires the commitment of both partners. It’s good to draw on the support of friends too, and this is where therapeutic support can be hugely valuable.

Individual Counseling Approach

On a purely individual level, working with clients, I help people ground themselves and acknowledge how they are feeling in the relationship. Very often, first-time sessions such as this can be something of an offload, which is obviously fine. We bring out what is occurring in the relationship and then try to figure out if there is something triggering about what is happening, which is taking you to a past event unrelated to this relationship, or if the issue is firmly in this present relationship.

Self-Reflection and Validation

If you are reading this and suspecting some issues in your relationship, perhaps take some time to meditate on what is going on. Do some writing and allow your emotions to flow and recognize what is happening for you in the relationship. This can be a good way to validate yourself and ultimately reach a solution.

Communication in Relationships

When working with individuals, we look at the communication which has been taking place. We work to commit to speaking in an adult manner, which involves being assertive, honest, and time-appropriate and expressing one’s wants and needs. It’s important, though, to manage this by prioritizing safety and recognizing if a personal threshold has been crossed by the other person and if it may, in fact, be time to break up.

Couples Counseling Approach

Working with couples, we look at communication again. It can often be quite quick to identify where someone may be more passive and where someone may be more dominating. It can be great in a couple’s session to just honestly draw this out and then set a practice to be in an adult mode of communication while also recognizing the tendency to drop into other forms of communication which are less than empowering.

Setting Boundaries and Expectations

I have couples make requests to one another and then also bring up their own vision for the relationship. They discuss their respective ‘nos’ and their points of investment or compromise.

Taking the Next Steps

If you are reading this and thinking your relationship may have unhealthy elements, don’t panic. Just acknowledge what is going on for you and then take your next step while acknowledging your own safety physically and emotionally while also being courageous. It’s a delicate balance. It may be a conversation with your partner. It may be taking some time to yourself to meditate and journal. Or it could be reaching out for further support.

Contact me if I can perhaps be of help. For more immediate urgent support, don’t hesitate to call your local police. I also hear great reports about Womens refuge.

All the best


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April 30, 2024

How competent are you ?

Stages of competence.

When doing something new we naturally go through stages of competence. We start at unconscious incompetence. At this stage we don’t know what we don’t know what we don’t know so to speak. If we were to apply this to driving we don’t even know what a car is.

Following this we become consciously incompetent. We’re aware that there are cars and that we have no idea how to drive one although we may have an idea that learning could be a good idea. At this stage we may even have looked in a car and had an increasing realisation of I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

Following this we may start to learn and we become consciously competent over time. We are driving and we think constantly about what we are doing. We may have an ongoing dialogue with ourselves as we drive. Something like ok I need to change to second gear now, okay so I’m approaching a traffic light I must press brake and the brake is here.

After much practice and habit forming we then become unconsciously competent. This is where we are just driving. It’s what we do. We get in the car and we just drive.

It’s good to think of these stages and the term competent and what you may want to get competent in. We see this in kids learning to walk where they just try and try and ultimately get there. The key thing here is to just remember that it’s a journey of progress through the stages and we just learn by doing.

It’s about being aligned to what it is you are doing. Couples do this with me in their relationships as they build a new way of being with one another. It may feel unnatural at the start but as long as it’s aligned for you/you both it doesn’t matter. Just honour the stages and where you are at. What are you looking to get more competent in?

January 17, 2024

Human Design. A curious path to possibly explore for building foundations in your life. 

In my work I am always looking for the best way to help people to build foundations in their own life and then to build the best possible relationships with other people. 

Over the years I have tended to explore things personally and then find the value and then share with others as and when it is all seeming good and the way to go so to speak. 

It was in the last few months I came across the idea of ‘Human Design’. I have to say I am finding it very interesting in terms of a level of application with my own life and now some of my clients are also benefiting from and resonating with the ideas here. 

It’s partly based on Astrological charts although going deeper and much more specific. Without me trying to explain it fully and likely not even explaining it properly (as I’m just a beginner) I’ll just say you can get a free chart for yourself online such as here: https://ahumandesign.com/ 
 
It uses your birth time, date and place to create it for you. 
 
There are a lot of details in a chart but the main things which can give an immediate jolt to work with should you be interested is that you get a classification of being a : Generator, manifesting generator, manifestor, projector, or reflector. These are all different ways of being in the world which are quite easy to relate to ways we may have been conditioned to be. There is then a specific authority in terms of how we be in relation to this so to speak. 
 
It does get more and more complex but if I just quote a course I’m doing around this the person who seems something of an expert on it thought that 80% of your outcomes can come from just understanding your type and then your authority. 
 
I admit I was skeptical about this for sure. I do think healthily skepticism in fact is a healthy thing but I have found it somewhat resonating as a thing to explore. 
 
I am a Generator myself and my authority is in responding and responding via emotional authority. 
 
This is something that I’m currently on a journey of learning more about and applying to my life. I wanted to just share with you where I’m up to and my thoughts so far. 
 
As you know I am committed to helping people the best I can to build foundations in their lives and build their best possible relationships and I certainly feel this is a potential tool to use to do just that. 
 
If you are interested I’d recommend just getting your free reading on the link then having an explore into the core components of it. 
 
So much of Counselling and Psychology is around us being true to ourselves etc etc and it’s very interesting to think if this does really provide another piece of the jigsaw potentially. 
 
All the best and wishing you a lovely rest of the day. 
 
Phil 


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January 11, 2024

Entering new relationships as consciously as possible. 

When I work with people who are overcoming a destructive relationship there’s commonly healing work to be done in building self-foundations as I call it. That really taking time to feel the tough to face pain which we’d rather gloss over to allow ourselves to recognise it’s realness. When we’ve been in a relationship which has caused distress, we can be so used to carrying the other person’s baggage we can lose total sense of ourselves. It’s like we have been swept away by a whirlwind temporarily and then have come crashing back down to earth. Other analogies people tell me are like being on a rollercoaster. 

When we get off the rollercoaster ride there can be a strong mixture of emotions. Things like grief, trauma, and not uncommonly a strange kind of relief mixed in. We got out before it was too late. It’s often this last one people find the hardest to accept in themselves funnily enough. 

People typically seek to be in relationships, and I find that healing can be something of a dance between getting our own self foundations back through our journaling, meditation, time with friends, and this meeting new people. 

There are learning experiences from the respective ex. Usually realising red flags, I won’t do that again kind of things. Sometimes but not always the healing work involves a healing of actual patterns going back to our own childhood. 

If there’s a general trick of the trade to implement here it would be to try to enter new relationships as consciously as possible. Whether you’ve needed to do healing work from your family of origin or not there are common experiences of recognising how we maybe let things slide which we wish we hadn’t in retrospect.  

There’s natural emotions and biology mixed in with any relationships and I don’t believe we can ever be totally pragmatic, but one therapist said about the move from being reactive to being more responsible (which she split into ‘response – able’). 

Sometimes when people go through self-recovery, they recognise that they have been on a kind of autopilot. A roller door kind of thinking and making more kneejerk reactions rather than conscious decisions. This is commonly the case when the person has had certain dysfunctional family dynamics from their family of origin. Regardless of if this is the case or if the now past romantic relationship was just an unusual more one-off event the trick seems to follow a similar process something like: 
 
1. Building/rebuilding our own self connection and self-foundations  

2. Practicing the appropriate communication with others 

It’s mainly from number 1 here in building our new self-connections which allows us to enter new relationships more consciously. A Therapist I knew always used to say ‘don’t should on yourself’. You’d be surprised about how many people do this even in subtle ways. I’d invite you to think about if you do it. I should be more like this or that. Notice if you do these things to cover up your own truth. 

It’s in this rebuilding of foundations process where we can grow to a healthier sense of self-esteem. One of which we can be with and learn to trust our own internal guidance system. To give yourself permission to recognise if something feels a bit off (self-relationship) and then to decide whether you either pull a bit away from the person (clinical communication practice) or have a discussion with them (adult communication practice). 

The point is whichever communication you choose to use with the other person doesn’t matter if it is empowered and from a response able (conscious) place, and this is the thing. It’s just the practice of learning to be more conscious in your relationships. 

There’s a lovely book I’ve sometimes recommended to clients, it’s called ‘It’s just a date’. I found this a nice book and I’d recommend this to anyone now looking to build healthier relationships and to be more conscious in their new dating life following a less than constructive relationship. 

How conscious do you feel you are in your relationships right now ? 

Reach out if I can help. 

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All the best 

Phil 


PS. If you are not already receiving free content from me to help your relationships then go to www.mygreatrelationships.com