Many people find that they struggle in relationships. Sometimes, this struggle can lead to anxiety and depression. Difficulties in relationships can show up in a variety of ways. Your disconnect in relationships may not just be between you and a parent. You can also experience relationship struggles in your daily interactions with friends, or with romantic partners. Further, professional relationships are important too, and you can experience difficulty in these as well. Perhaps, you feel that your conversations are strained. Maybe you’re analyzing each conversation and looking for hidden meanings. Or, maybe you’re picking apart past interactions to see if you did it “right.”

People struggle in their relationships in unique ways.

Here are a few examples of what this can look like:
Romantic Relationships

  • Feeling attracted to someone who always seems to be just out of reach or noncommittal.

  • Dating someone who is unstable and needs you to help them be more more of a parent than a romantic partner. 

  • Flirting with the idea of being with someone else while you are in a committed relationship with your partner.

  • Acting on your thoughts by having an emotional or sexual affair. 

  • Having a hard time feeling deeply connected and expressing affection. 

  • Losing yourself in relationships by trying to be what you think your partner wants you to be.

Relationships with Family Members

  • Feeling like nothing you say is right. Your opinion is “wrong” because it doesn’t fit your family’s preference.

  • Receiving unsolicited advice from your family about your life decisions.

  • Making life choices because it’s what your family wants rather than what you know that you need to do. 

  • When making progress in your life dreams and goals, chaos unleashes in your family. 

  • Realizing that the same patterns you saw growing up are starting to show in your adult life.

  • Family failing to recognize your boundaries concerning time or availability.

Relationship to Self

  • Feeling stuck and hating where you are in life.

  • Experiencing anxiety or depression out of the blue with no known trigger.

  • Noticing that when things are going well in your life, you create chaos to take you off track.

  • Being unable to escape a shame cycle; constantly beating yourself up for failures.

  • Abusing alcohol and drugs.

  • Doubting your own decisions, being unable to make a decision, or feeling like you’re making decisions out of spite.

Relationship to Faith

  • Struggling to figure out what is your own faith versus the faith that you grew up in.

  • Being attracted to someone outside of your faith and receiving judgment from others. 

  • Feeling inauthentic in your faith community because you haven’t shared your full story. 

  • Being the target of spiritual abuse and struggling with confusion about what you truly believe to be true.