Individual Therapy for Relationship Issues: Is It Helpful?
Individual therapy can be extremely helpful for relationship issues. Relationship therapy can also be beneficial for individual issues.
While figuring out which one might help the most can be complicated, there is no right or wrong
This article will guide you through considerations and questions to ask yourself as you decide the best option for you. You’ll also read a brief overview of how individual therapy approaches can help with relationship issues.
What is individual therapy?
Individual therapy, or talk therapy, is a personal growth tool that people use to improve their mental health, recognize their thoughts, and understand their behaviors.
You might seek out individual therapy to increase support, deepen your understanding of self, analyze and refine your communication skills, and ensure you’re using optimal and effective coping strategies for managing life’s experiences, transitions, and stressors.
Individual struggles often contribute to relationship patterns. Whether with family, friends, colleagues, peers, or significant others, what we struggle with as individuals often impacts the people around us, which is why you may seek individual therapy for relationship issues.
By the same token, the people around us have a significant impact on our individual mental health, making it difficult to figure out if we would benefit from doing therapy with them – or on our own.
Can individual therapy help relationships?
Individual therapy can most definitely help with relationship challenges. In fact, research indicates a positive correlation between an individual’s level of mindfulness (i.e., level of self-awareness) and the quality of their relationships. Mindfulness is also a key component of understanding ourselves in relationships.
Should we go to couple’s therapy?
Individual and couples therapy are both effective ways to better understand yourself and engage in lasting, meaningful growth and change.
If you’re wondering if you should go to couples, relationship or family therapy instead, these questions might support your consideration process:
1. Have I ever been to individual therapy before?
If you haven’t, would it be worthwhile for you to experience that on your own before embarking on it with someone else?
If you have, does it feel like you achieved goals and/or accomplished meaningful healing and growth? Is it possible you may need to do more of this on your own before or while healing with your significant other(s)?
2. Is my partner or family member willing to go to therapy with me?
If they are, that could be a good sign that couples or family therapy could be helpful.
If they aren’t, individual therapy may be more accessible and productive at present.
3. Are my difficult thoughts, feelings, or behaviors coming up for the first time, OR am I re-experiencing them as relationship patterns?
If something is coming up for the first time, it might be a sign that it’s relationship-specific. If you’re noticing something that has come up before, it might be a relationship pattern that will persist regardless of the particular relationship.
4. Could our relationship benefit from better communication skills?
If yes, that’s often a joint effort. Although it’s not always necessary or accessible, when a couple or family does relationship counseling alongside each person engaging in individual therapy, the outcomes are often markedly enhanced.
Individual Therapy Approaches for Relationships
Some individual therapists are especially trained to work with clients in ways that will directly impact the client’s important relationships. Other individual therapists focus more on specific aspects of the individual’s internal experience.
If you’re looking to do individual therapy for relationship issues, be sure to let your therapist know that’s your goal.
Below are four approaches to individual therapy that can directly experience your relationship dynamics.
Cognitive Behavioral Individual Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on the unique framework of an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as how these dimensions interact with one another.
In relationships, we have thoughts and feelings about other people, and we behave in dynamic interactions with other people. At the same time, others have thoughts and feelings about us and behave in certain ways toward us that can be equally as impactful.
In cognitive behavioral individual therapy, you can discuss, analyze, and reconsider how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors exist. You can also explore how and what you believe their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are communicating to you.
From there, suggestions may be offered to support how you verify your beliefs with the other person’s intention and reality. If this is difficult and/or not fruitful in your healing, therapy may be indicated with that person(s) to further clarify differing perspectives.
Here’s a helpful guide to understanding CBT for Relationships.
Psychodynamic Individual Therapy
Psychodynamic individual therapy is a close examination of your personality.
A psychodynamic therapist will explore things, including but not limited to your level of self-awareness (e.g., conscious versus unconscious experience and ego functioning), how you manage stress (e.g., coping strategies and defense mechanisms), and make connections through your experience with the therapist and the therapeutic alliance (i.e., your relationship with your therapist).
These connective insights often yield greater awareness of how you are experiencing your non-therapy relationships. According to psychodynamic theory, the ways we manage stress, defend against anxiety, and relate to other people (therapists included) can be consistent in several ways.
In sum, psychodynamic individual therapy can help your relationships by examining your personality, and the way it may show up, impact, and be impacted by the significant relationships in your life.
Person-Centered Therapy
A person-centered therapist will approach you with acceptance, unconditional positive regard, and empathy. They believe that these ways of relating to someone are both necessary and curative for an individual's mental functioning.
Our personal relationships don’t always offer us the same qualities. Therefore, some of our unique wounding may be healed in a person-centered therapy approach, that would otherwise not be a realistic expectation for a relationship with your family, friend, or partner.
Person-centered individual therapy aims to develop your self-esteem and empower you to feel courageous and confident in your life and in your relationships.
Narrative Therapy
A narrative therapist is eager to understand the narrative, or “the story,” you are metaphorically writing, reading, or believing about your life. In listening to both what you say and how you say it, a narrative therapist attunes to your experience – as you share it.
The theoretical underpinning of narrative therapy is that what we tell ourselves about ourselves influences how we think, feel, believe, and function in our present and future mental health.
When we deepen the understanding of our narrative, we become more aware of how we portray ourselves to others and we can explore how we imagine others think of us. Narrative individual therapy supports relationships by extending the conversation to consider how others actually experience us.
Integrative Therapy
A significant body of research has been conducted on different approaches to individual therapy, and many of them have helpful elements that work together to provide comprehensive and holistic healing solutions for individuals.
Integrative therapy values the integrity of each individual client and their unique relationships. Instead of deciding that there is “one best” approach, an integrative therapist will work to discover which parts of different approaches can be combined to produce the best possible outcome for you.
Many therapists, myself included, choose to adopt an integrative approach to individual therapy. In my experience, therapeutic outcomes significantly improve when the offering is flexible, accommodating, and strategically designed. Integrative therapy also increases accessibility to a greater variety of interventions that can extend to an individual’s relationships.
Individual Therapy for Relationship Issues: Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has increased your familiarity with the idea of individual therapy and extended your awareness of how individual therapy can positively impact and/or clarify relationship issues.
The most important takeaway is that there isn’t a “right or wrong” choice for therapy. Individual and relationship therapy can both be incredibly useful, regardless of what you choose.
Ultimately, it is important to decide if you’re more interested in exploring therapy independently or with the important people in your life so you can authentically commit to the process. A well-practiced therapist has the training, experience, and wisdom to help you figure this out.
If you’re interested in learning more about individual therapy for relationship issues with me, I’d love to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.