Beverly Hills Relationship Therapy :: Industry Therapist Rebecca Roy, M.A., MFT

Beverly Hills Relationship Therapy

Relationships Issues

Relationships in the Entertainment Industry are often highly stressed. Being able to negotiate needs and wants in the context of a highly erratic environment that presents with many temptations and challenges is central to survival.

There are concrete ways to address “communication issues.” But, often communication problems are reflective of deeper issues that have not been addressed by each person. Fears, past hurts, family of origin issues, mental health issues, infidelity or substance abuse are all potentially part of that mix.

They then get projected into the relationship in the form of misunderstandings and communication problems. Children will often pick up on the tension, become triangulated into the conflict and suddenly begin acting out.

There are ways to immediately begin to start to address the pain and hurt you may be inflicting on each other even if there are deeper issues underlying the problems in the relationship. Learning about your particular conflict styles, your needs and wants in the relationship and how to begin to negotiate them from a depth perspective can begin right away.

Depending on the issues involved, we will work on their context within the framework of the relationship as well as do concrete homework that simultaneously addresses communication problems.

Communication issues are often symptoms rather than core issues:

• Are you stuck in a pattern of emotional reactivity?
• Is your partner unconsciously asking you to fulfill a role of some kind?
• Are you replaying family of origin issues in this relationship?
• If infidelity is an issue, is there a fear of true intimacy?

There are four Conflict Styles to avoid:
• Critizing
• Defending
• Contempt
• Stonewalling
• Criticism is a destructive force. A complaint is different from criticism. A complaint focuses on specific behavior but criticism adds in blame and character assassination. Instead, focus your discussion on specifics, not the person as a whole (i.e. What’s wrong with you?)
• Contempt is equally poisonous to a relationship, but is the worst of the four conflict styles to avoid. Contempt includes sarcasm, name calling, eye rolling, mockery and hostile humor. It inevitably leads to more conflict and less resolution.
• Defending is a way of blaming your partner. Research shows this approach of “the problem isn’t me, it’s you” rarely has the desired effect. The attacking partner usually does not back down.
• Stonewalling usually happens after criticism, contempt and defending has been used to ill effect. At a certain point, one person usually tunes out as a protection against negativity and begins stonewalling.

We practice and serve Beverly Hills, Century City, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, Studio City, and the surrounding areas in California.