Exploring familiar relationship patterns
Literature-based overview
Some feelings, expectations and ways of relating can seem to return in different situations. This reading theme introduces recurring relationship patterns and the questions they can raise.
The starting point is the individual’s experience. Exploring how a pattern appears in a person’s life is different from deciding its meaning in advance.
The past and the present
Early relationships and familiar emotional experiences form part of the perspective used in depth-oriented psychotherapy. A therapeutic conversation can consider what belongs to a current situation and what may have been carried forward from earlier experiences.
This includes exploring internalised expectations and how they relate to a person’s feelings, needs and present relationships.
Feelings and needs
Feelings and needs that have been difficult to recognise or express can be explored without reducing a person’s experience to a label. Curiosity about individual meaning remains central to that conversation.
The Masterson Approach is one framework used in Defne’s practice to consider personality organisation, emotional experience and relational patterns.
Practical concerns also have a place
Present-focused practical concerns can sit alongside an exploration of deeper patterns. Defne’s background in Schema Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy allows practical interventions to be included when appropriate.
Each person brings a particular history and set of concerns. Listening to that experience helps shape the questions explored in therapy.