What are your relationship patterns telling you?

Have you ever wondered how your relationship with your parents impacts your relationships as an adult? Research suggests that there may be some overlap between our early childhood experiences with our primary caregivers and the way we form close relationships in adulthood.

In psychology, there is a working model called Attachment Theory. It is believed that in childhood everyone has an attachment style, which was developed in infancy, and falls under one of four categories: secure, insecure-ambivalent, insecure-avoidant, and disorganized attachment. For adults, a more general categorization of anxious, avoidant, or secure attachment roughly correspond to the childhood attachment styles. For more information, see Fraley’s report on adult attachment theory here. 

Attachment-related anxiety is characterized by worry about whether one’s partner will be available, responsive, loving, etc. Attachment-related avoidance is characterized by a person not wanting to get too close or become too dependent on a significant other, as a way of protecting oneself. These types of behaviour could be linked to patterns developed with one’s parents in infancy.

Secure attachment style is characterized by low levels of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. This means in romantic or close relationships, a person will feel comfortable being close to their partner, talking and opening up with their partner, and not worry about being left or rejected by them.

It can be beneficial to have awareness about your own tendencies in relationships and how these patterns might impact those closest to you. If you feel you might lean more towards anxious or avoidant attachment, the encouraging news is that your attachment style is NOT fixed for life. Forming new relationships as an adult means you have the opportunity to develop secure attachments and that you can change the way you relate to others in safe and secure relationships.

To learn more about your own attachment style, take this short quiz (Fraley)

Emily Hanna is a professional counsellor based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and seeks to help people improve their mental, emotional, and relational health through professional, non-judgmental, and confidential counselling. Please contact emily@hannacounselling.com for more information. 

Grieve Your Loss

Everyone has experienced some sort of loss in their lives. It might be one of the few things in life that we can all relate to on some level.

However, many people don’t recognise their loss as something to be grieved. They are then left wondering why they feel sad all the time, why they can’t take their mind off of something, or why they burst into tears with no explanation.

“Grief is a word that is used interchangeably with bereavement, but grief is not exclusively about the physical death of a person.” (Schafler, “The One Thing No One Ever Says About Grieving,” Thrive Global. Full article found here.)

The grieving process can take different forms and can be necessary for many different kinds of loss. Some losses are more obvious and are commonly recognised as something to be grieved:

Divorce

The death of a loved one

The loss of a friendship

Moving away from home

The loss or death of a pet

Miscarriage

However, sometimes instead of grieving something we once had but have now lost, we need to grieve what we once hoped for (or still do) but have never had. Grieving is often needed to let go of the way we thought our lives would turn out, when reality is actually much different to our plans and dreams. Some examples of these types of losses could be:

Not getting into your dream university/career path

Singleness

A debilitating injury or illness

Infertility

Struggling to make friendships

Being rejected for a promotion at work
 

So how do you begin to grieve your loss, once you have recognised it? There are different opinions on this, but the best description I have found is from Katherine Schafler’s article entitled The One Thing No One Ever Says About Grieving:

1.  Understand that your heart is broken, even if it’s not visible to others.

2.  Recognise the need to grieve the loss. Acknowledge to yourself what you feel you have lost, what was taken from you?

3.  Touch the loss, along with all of the feelings that come with it (anger, sadness, bitterness, rage, jealousy, compassion, etc). You have to make room for the feelings that the grief will bring with it.

“It may feel counterintuitive to go back to the feelings that you so desperately want to let go of, but there’s simply no way to move through grief without making contact with it, without fully touching it, without fully feeling it.” (Schafler)

4.  Move- You have to move forward and not stay in the intensity of your feelings. The feelings that accompany grief can linger for so long that they become familiar or feel safe. (Full article and further explanation of these 4 steps can be found here)

As you move through the grief and the intense feelings accompanying the loss, the pain will likely still be there for a while, but ideally it should lessen over time.

Some helpful ways to deal with the pain are to:

• Talk about it with trusted friends, family, or a professional counsellor. What specific aspects of the loss are you struggling with?
• Acknowledge to yourself when you are having a hard time, and know that this is okay. Be kind to yourself.
• Journal about your feelings, what you will miss most, or what you wish could have happened. Reflect on how you have grown or been changed because of this loss.

Whatever your grieving process looks like, there is no time limit or expiration date on when you should be done grieving. Everyone copes with loss differently, and we must be patient with ourselves and our loved ones in this often scary and uncharted territory.
 

Emily Hanna is a professional counsellor based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and seeks to help people improve their mental, emotional, and relational health through professional, non-judgmental, and confidential counselling. Please contact emily@hannacounselling.com for more information. 

Work versus Worth

In my experience in working as a counsellor, work-related stress is one of the issues that consistently comes up in sessions. Whether it’s the day to day stress of a job, not enjoying what they do, conflicts with colleagues, or questioning whether they have chosen the right career, people seem to focus much of their time and energy on worrying about work.

Since work takes up so much time during the week, it’s difficult to ignore negative feelings about a job or to just go through the motions when you are feeling unsettled or having a difficult time managing the demands of your career. These feelings are valid and deserve to be addressed. But I believe  there's a deeper meaning as to why this topic seems to come up so frequently in my work with clients.

It seems that many people have bought into the idea that what they do for their career defines their worth as a person, and as such feel a disproportionate amount of pressure in this area of their lives.

It’s not hard to see why many people feel like they are defined by what they do for their career. In any setting where people are meeting for the first time, one of the first questions always asked is, “So, what do you do for a living?” The idea that our value is tied up with our career is continually reinforced in these types of situations along with other social pressures.

So, how do we adjust this mindset?

A good place to start with changing one's mindset is self-examination. Pause and reflect on the amount of time your career not only takes out of your week, but how much it occupies your thoughts and your conversations as well. You may want to consider asking yourself questions such as: Am I able to switch off when I get home from work? Am I practising healthy boundaries with leaving work at work?

 Consider setting some firm boundaries for yourself such as leaving work on time, taking your full lunch break, etc., and you will be amazed at how these small changes start to allow you to feel a difference in your work-life balance. Putting boundaries around your work can enable you to feel more equipped to handle the inevitable stresses that arise on the job, and can serve as a reminder that although work is important, it is not ultimately what defines you as a person, unless you allow it to.

Hanna Counselling is a professional counselling service based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and seeks to help people improve their mental, emotional, and relational health through one to one and group counselling. Please contact emily@hannacounselling.com for more information. 

New Year, Fresh Start

It’s that time again, when everyone is setting goals and making resolutions to become a better version of themselves in the coming year. For many of us, we fear it will be the same old story we went through in years past…starting out positive and motivated with our goals in the first few weeks, only to slowly get side-tracked and discouraged as we fall back into our old habits.

Psychology Today states that one of the main reasons we tend to fail in our New Year’s resolutions is because we try to initiate drastic changes all at once, instead of making small, incremental changes to reach our goals (Robert J. Maurer, ‘Why Change is So Hard’, Psychology Today). When we try to take on big changes all at once, we often wind up feeling discouraged, because it is intimidating to suddenly take on a whole change of lifestyle. When our new goals trigger feelings of fear, this initiates a ‘fight or flight’ response in us, and we can either find ourselves stuck and unable to move forward or moving away from our goals (Maurer, Psychology Today).

Instead of setting out to become a completely different person in the year ahead, why not try just focusing on one area of your life you would like to improve? Then, break that one goal down into smaller steps that are realistic and achievable. Here are some practical ways to achieve these ‘small step’ goals:

• Write down an amount of time you would like to spend working towards your goal for each day
• Decide on a time of day for when you would like to incorporate a new habit
• Give yourself small rewards for sticking to your plan
• Allow yourself to make mistakes, and take it one day at a time

If you don’t reach your goal for one day, start over the next day. Don’t give up completely just because you aren’t perfectly achieving your goals.

 It is my hope that this time of year provides you with a chance to evaluate your life and gives you a sense of having a fresh start in the areas you want to improve.  Remember that you do not have to accomplish your goals perfectly, and you are already valuable and worthy of love and acceptance, just as you are. 

Hanna Counselling is a professional counselling service based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and seeks to help people improve their mental, emotional, and relational health through one to one and group counselling. Please contact emily@hannacounselling.com for more information.