Which of these Keep You from Having a Safe, Intimate, Emotional Connection to Your lover? (In-Person Couples Therapy in NYC for Every Stage of your Relationship

A whopping 18 hurtful types of very early family relationships have been discovered over the years by researchers and psychotherapists. Deep seated feelings about ourselves resulting from these relationships – memories without words – buried deep in the hippocampus of our brains get triggered in our present lives at the drop of a hat, and shape our beliefs about whether we can ever really be happy.

Which of the following beliefs weigh on you in the present and keep you from getting anything worthwhile from the people around you?

1. Abandonment/Instability: I can never get real emotional support from anyone.
2. Mistrust/Abuse: Others will always try to manipulate, cheat or lie to me.
3. Emotional Deprivation: I’ll never get real emotional support from anyone.
4. Defectiveness/Shame: A deep-seated feeling that I’m inferior. In the words of James Baldwin: that I’m always banging my head up against the low ceiling of my capabilities.
5. Social Isolation and Alienation: I feel isolated, a weirdo who will never be a part of any group or community.
6. Dependence/Incompetence: I’m never able to manage everyday responsibilities in a competent manner like others.
7. Vulnerability to harm or illness: The fear weighs on me that something horrible will happen at any moment and I won’t be able to stop it.
8. Losing myself in others: I can never feel my real self, who I really am,  when I get close to others.
9. Failure to achieve: I will always fail in whatever I try to do and neve succeed like other people.
10. Entitlement or grandiosity: I’m superior to other people. The rules don’t apply to me.
11. Insufficient self-control or self-discipline: I blow up easily whenever people bug me and feel like I’m lowering myself by cooperating with them.
12. Subjugation: I always let people walk over me, no matter what, to avoid being coerced, penalized or discarded by them.
13. Self-Sacrifice: The only way to get close to people is if I tend to their needs as if have no needs of my own.
14. Approval or recognition: I always have to get the approval of others as if I had no standards of my own. Fitting in is my only goal, as if I had no standards of my own. 
15. Life is solitary, nasty, brutish and short: There is no real happiness in life.  
16. Emotional inhibition: I never act spontaneously because I’m afraid of the disapproval of others. I’m flooded with feelings of shame and fear of losing control whenever I have an impulse.
17. My standards are unrelenting: The only way to avoid criticism is to be hyper critical of oneself.
18. The tendency to punish: Failures should always be harshly punished. There is no such thing as amnesty or forgiveness.

    At Marriage Coupes Counseling in New York City, we help you uncover the deeper hurts that block you from having a caring, compassionately curious relationship with your lover so you can both build a better life together.

Call Andre Moore, LMFT and Certified Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapist at 212 673 4618 for a consultation.