Relationship and family issues
What are relationship and family issues?
As humans we are social creatures, and relationships tend to be central to our lives. While relationships can bring us much joy and foster feelings of connection, love and security, sometimes our relationships can be fraught with tension. Relationship issues might be ongoing problems or tensions between you and another person who you care about. This could be partners, friends, colleagues, or anyone who you have a close bond with. It’s when things don’t feel smooth or easy between you anymore. You might be arguing more than usual, struggling to communicate, have different expectations or needs, experience trust problems or feel misunderstood, ignored, distant or disconnected.
Family issues are difficulties or conflicts within a family unit, between parents, children, siblings, or extended family. These can be made more complicated if you live together and are often more stressful because family relationships are often long‑term and emotionally important. Signs these relationships are under stress might include frequent disagreements with parents, struggling to set boundaries or cultural and generational issues. This can leave us feeling unsupported, judged or stressed. At times, we may struggle with feeling a sense of belonging with our family, which can be rooted in attachment trauma.
Difficulties with the people we love often improve with communication and conflict resolution. However, if it persists it might be time to seek support from a psychologist. We’re here to help, please contact us to find out more, we offer psychologists in the Western suburbs of Melbourne.
Signs and symptoms of relationship difficulties
Psychologists are able to offer evidence-based therapies to support you to better understand yourself and your attachment relationships. Often conflicts in our relationships can be from old wounds or maladaptive patterns, or sometimes we feel like we just don’t have the skills we need to manage. Therapies such as Mentalisation-Based Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy or Schema Therapy can often help. Support organisations such as Raising Children Network offer articles, advice and apps for raising kids at different developmental levels. If you are struggling with family violence, please contact 1800 RESPECT or Safe Steps which offer free, confidential counselling and other support.
It might be time to speak to a psychologist if….With your family, or other significant people in your life…
Please note, our psychologists do not work with couples if there is active famimly violence occuring, but we can offer some advice on better services that might be able to help.
- You are arguing or snapping at each other more than usual
- Small things turn into big fights
- You feel like you’re talking, but the other person isn’t listening
- Your home feels heavy and uncomfortable
- You avoid each the other in your house
- You feel unsupported or judged by family
- Feeling left out or not valued
- Feeling more stressed and anxious
So, what can I do?
Our psychologists are able to speak with you and help you make sense of your relationship problems. Together, you can work on developing a plan to tackle things better, manage boundaries or be more assertive in your needs. For some, it might be processing and healing some childhood trauma, or navigating adult relationships with family members better.
We’re here to help, please contact us to find out more, or to find a psycholgist near me.
We offer Medicare rebate psychologists in Melbourne, and telehealth psychologists in Melbourne.We also have Workcover psychologists and TAC psychologists.
Psychology FAQs
Have a question? Take a look below… these are some of the common questions we get.
Ready to talk?
Please get in touch today to have a chat to our friendly team so we can match you with an appropriate psychologist. If you are an existing client, you can book online.