The following review is a letter that I received from a client. It is shared here with their permission and encouragement..
We sought help from multiple very well-intentioned therapists over a number of years who all tried to help us practice different methodologies of relating to one another. If we just learned how to approach and respond differently with one another, we could repair years of relational difficulties. It didn’t work. Then we found you.
You took a different approach. Instead of starting with the mechanics of talking, you started with fundamental relational belief systems (Do I blame? Do I have all the information? Are they really wrong or just different?) and somatic emotions (What is my body feeling? What emotion describes that bodily experience? What does that tell me and my spouse about the interaction?). And then you helped us connect those feelings and emotions to childhood experiences/trauma where they originated, diffusing the blame and focus on the other person by learning that we weren’t the source of each other’s issues, only the trigger for issues that existed long before we met each other.
Now we’re learning to give grace because we know the other person isn’t a threat, I’ve just put them in that same threat role that existed long before I met them. Before, we focused on how the other person regularly did things that made our relationship less and less viable. Now we’re learning to focus on our own personal growth and understanding of our childhood traumas as the path to a great relationship with each other. If I can embrace and co-parent that wounded child in me, I will have better tools and personal regulation to meet my spouse as the gift that they are to me.
I’m not sure where our relationship would be without your input over the last two years. But I can say that we are profoundly grateful we found you and feel working with you has marked a turning point in our relationship. When we read the {AND} game card that asked, “Who has played the biggest role in your relationship that isn’t one of us?”, it was an easy answer for both of us – you.
We are so grateful for the work you are doing with your own shit, that enables you to help us with ours. We are grateful for your attitude of grace, kindness, and love, and your unwavering commitment to authentic, transparent, and secure-functioning relationships. You are a regular example to us of how to lean in and be with and “for” each other as committed spouses. We are grateful that you have done the hard work to have the courage to live joyfully and with an intention to make an impact in the world around you.
Thank you most of all for being you. Just you.
- An Anonymous Couple