Relationships
A partner, a parent, an in-law, a friend you have outgrown. When one relationship is strained, everything else gets heavier.
This is Nikita Vashistha’s counselling work.More about Nikita
What this often feels like
It might be the same argument, in slightly different words, for the third time this month. Or the opposite — a quiet that has grown so settled neither of you knows how to break it without starting something.
It might not be a marriage at all. Parents you love and cannot talk to. In-laws you live with. A friendship that has quietly stopped being mutual.
Relationships take up an enormous amount of emotional room. When one is strained, work gets harder, sleep gets worse, and you start managing yourself around another person's mood.
What we’d actually do together
We slow the conversation right down. What each person is actually asking for underneath the words, where things reliably go sideways, and what you each learned about love, conflict and apology long before you met.
We work on saying the difficult thing in a way that can be heard, and on hearing it without immediately defending yourself. That's a skill, not a personality trait, and it can be practised.
You can come alone — plenty of people do, and it still helps. If you'd both like to come, we do that too. Nobody gets put on trial in the room.
When it might be worth talking to someone
You don't need a crisis to justify an hour with someone outside it.
If you keep having the same conversation and getting nowhere, if you've started editing yourself to keep the peace, or if you're staying quiet about something that matters to you — those are all good enough reasons.
It's also worth coming when things are broadly fine and you'd just like them to be better than fine.
If you would like to talk
There is no rush, and booking a first session does not commit you to anything after it. You can also just ask a question first — that is a completely normal way to begin.