Relationship difficulties can take many forms. You may find yourself repeating painful patterns in romantic relationships, feeling intensely anxious about being left, becoming overly focused on another person, struggling to trust, withdrawing when closeness increases, or staying too long in situations that are hurtful or depleting. Sometimes the problem appears in one specific relationship. Sometimes it feels like the same dynamic keeps returning in different forms.

People often come to therapy with questions such as:

• Why do I keep ending up in relationships that leave me feeling lonely, unsafe, or not good enough?
• Why is it so hard to set boundaries without guilt?
• Why do I become preoccupied with the other person and lose myself in the relationship?
• Why do I long for closeness, but then feel overwhelmed, disappointed, or trapped?
• Why do I stay in situations that I can see are hurting me?
• Why do breakups, rejection, or distance affect me so intensely?

These struggles are often connected not only to the present relationship but also to deeper patterns of attachment, self-worth, and emotional regulation. The ways we learned closeness, safety, love, responsibility, and boundaries earlier in life can continue to shape how we relate as adults. This does not mean everything is mechanically determined by childhood, but it does mean that present difficulties often start to make more sense when we look at the relational templates a person has been living with for a long time.

I work with adults who are struggling with issues such as:

• recurring conflict or instability in intimate relationships
• fear of abandonment or intense sensitivity to rejection
• difficulty trusting or feeling secure with others
• emotional dependency or codependent patterns
• over-responsibility for a partner’s feelings, behaviour, or wellbeing
• difficulty expressing needs directly or bottling up frustration
• weak or inconsistent boundaries
• loneliness, relational confusion, or feeling disconnected even when with someone
• low self-esteem and harsh self-criticism in relationships
• the effects of controlling, manipulative, or abusive dynamics
• painful breakups, separation, grief, or difficulty letting go

A common pattern in relationship difficulties is an imbalance of responsibility. One person may feel compelled to rescue, help, manage, or hold everything together. Another may withdraw, become unavailable, avoid responsibility, or seem impossible to reach. In other cases, the same person moves between both positions at different times. What often gets lost is genuine dialogue, mutuality, and the ability to stay connected without control, self-erasure, or fear. The result can be suffering, confusion, resentment, and a painful sense of being stuck.

Sometimes this shows up in what is often called emotional dependency or codependency. I understand this not as a label to shame people, but as a way of describing patterns in which self-worth, safety, and emotional stability become tied too strongly to another person. This can involve over-involvement, hyper-focus on the relationship, difficulty separating your needs from the other person’s, or a repeated pull toward unequal or exhausting dynamics. Beneath these patterns there is often a deep longing for love, recognition, safety, or relief from loneliness — and often a fear of losing the relationship even when it is painful.

Attachment is an important part of how I think about this work. Early experiences can shape whether closeness feels safe, whether needs can be expressed directly, whether conflict feels survivable, and whether love becomes associated with anxiety, control, unpredictability, or self-sacrifice. Some people come to therapy feeling too dependent and afraid of separation. Others feel cut off from their needs, wary of intimacy, or frightened of being emotionally overwhelmed. Some experience both. Therapy can help make these patterns more visible, less automatic, and less powerful.

My approach here is person-centred, attachment-informed, and trauma-informed. I am interested in how these patterns formed, what they have been trying to protect, and what keeps them in place — including shame, fear, self-criticism, unmet needs, and earlier experiences of inconsistency or control.

Gestalt therapy helps us notice what is happening in the present: emotional reactions, bodily responses, expectations, and ways of relating. This can make repeated patterns less automatic and create more space for clearer boundaries, communication, and choice. Where appropriate, EMDR may also be part of the work, especially when relational patterns are closely linked to trauma, abuse, or painful beliefs such as “I am not enough” or “my needs do not matter.”

If you have experienced emotional abuse, controlling dynamics, manipulation, or a relationship that has left you doubting yourself, therapy can also help you rebuild clarity and trust in your own experience. The aim is to help you understand your patterns more deeply, strengthen your relationship with yourself, and move toward relationships that allow both closeness and individuality.