Therapy for Relationships

Healing Relationships & Transforming How You Connect in Bellevue and throughout Washington State

You’re not alone in experiencing relationship struggles– finding community, feeling isolated or unheard, trying to build genuine closeness, and resolving complicated conflicts is really difficult. 


We help people who are trying to:

  • Recover from constantly giving to and accommodating others

  • Resolve conflict without building resentment

  • Build long-lasting and trusting relationships

  • Make friends as adults

  • Move beyond surface-level connections and conversations

  • Feel more confident to share their own opinions and feelings

  • Build independence and/or a new parent-child relationship as adult children

Trying to change your relationship patterns often feels confusing and frustrating, especially when you can't quite pinpoint why relationships feel so hard.

Therapy can help by slowing down and examining what's actually happening in your relationships.

How do you improve relationships in therapy?

Sometimes, the most important work is simply validating that your relational experiences have been difficult. That people have mistreated you. That your protective strategies made sense given what you've been through. Improvement doesn't always mean changing everything, which is why we work with folks to understand themselves with compassion. 

Our work in therapy is to help you feel connected to your emotions, able to express them, and feel more relationally fulfilled. We also work on how to address conflict constructively and ensure everyone's needs are being honored.

Uncover Your Relationship Beliefs

We all carry beliefs about how relationships work, often ones we've never explored. In our sessions, we explore questions like:

  • How do you think relationships form and grow?

  • What do you believe you need to do to maintain them?

  • What are your expectations of yourself and others in relationships?

We work on understanding how your past experiences and past relationships inform how you currently navigate relationships. What are the beliefs you've developed over time about relationships that might be impacting how you now engage with others?

Trace the Roots

Where did your relationship beliefs come from? Often, they're messages absorbed from childhood, past relationships, or painful experiences. Maybe you learned that expressing needs pushes people away, or you have always had to be the “responsible one.” Perhaps you never saw conflict and emotions handled kindly, or learned that love is conditional on your achievements and perfection. 

These early experiences shape not just what we believe about relationships, but how we automatically respond in them, often without conscious awareness. People weren’t born suppressing their emotions or needs, or striving for perfection to feel a sense of connection; these were shaped over time.

Understanding the origin of these beliefs is powerful. It helps us see them as learned patterns, not unchangeable truths.

Build New Skills

From this foundation, we’ll work on:

• Healthier communication strategies
• Expressing your needs clearly and directly
• Recognizing when you might not be meeting others' needs
• Identifying people and relationships that energize versus deplete you

We might role-play difficult conversations or practice new ways of expressing emotions. Sometimes it's about learning to set boundaries; other times it's about learning to be vulnerable.

We also explore how you can engage in ongoing relationships with the least cost to your well-being. This typically involves practicing recognizing and regulating your emotions, learning to set boundaries and dealing with the guilt that comes with doing so, and grieving what we wish these relationships would look like.

We’ll also focus on:

  • How people behave in relationships is heavily influenced by their relationship beliefs, and typically, people will try to avoid a feared outcome. This process can involve keeping thought records to track your beliefs and the situations that trigger them. 

    For example, if you believe conflict always ends relationships, we look at evidence. Have you seen relationships survive disagreements? What happens when you do express a need? We explore how these untested beliefs could be creating the very problems you fear.

    We don’t force you into uncomfortable situations. We want to gently gather real evidence about what's true in your current relationships, rather than living by rules that may have been necessary in the past but no longer serve you.

  • Sometimes difficult beliefs about relationships come from current relationships where those beliefs are true: maybe a parent with whom love feels conditional, a partner who gets upset when you bring up your needs. That is why we also work simultaneously to clarify what safety and connection look like for you in relationships.

    We want to make sure you're in relationships that are both safe and connecting, so we define what that looks like.  What does it feel like to be in a relationship with someone who makes you feel secure, excited, and joyful? Do you have relationships like that?

Work with Nuance

Moving Forward with Purpose

At first, thinking about changing your relationships might feel uncomfortable, even scary. You might expect the worst—that people will be angry or that relationships will end. A change in behavior like this is new and often feels risky. What we’ve seen though, is that clients are willing to take this risk to feel less resentment & exhaustion and more authenticity & genuine connection in their relationships.

When you're able to say no sometimes, your yes becomes more genuine.

If you recognize yourself in these patterns, find yourself repeating relationship struggles, or feel disconnected even when surrounded by people, we can help. You don't have to navigate relationships feeling stuck, hurt, or alone. Together, we can create new ways of engaging with others that align with who you want to be and the relationships you really want.

Ready to Explore a Different Way?

If you're ready to develop a more balanced relationship with yourself and others, we're here to support you on your journey.

Schedule a free 15-minute consultation with Dr. Faraha Hasan or Dr. Diana Hu, licensed psychologists in Bellevue, WA, specializing in working with high-acheiving people-pleasers and healing relationship patterns.

Serving clients in Bellevue, Seattle, and throughout Washington State via telehealth.

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