STAR For Relationship Issues Help and Adult Attachment Disorder

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Anger Management Retreat

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Recommended Reading

Relationship Issues Help

The number one reason people seek therapy is for help with relationship issues. These problems may surface at home, at work, or as a generalized feeling of not belonging and never fitting in. A STAR retreat is an excellent opportunity to work on these issues, whatever their source.

At a STAR retreat, a safe place is created for your core personal work. You are introduced to valuable tools for empowering yourself to develop healthy relationships without sacrificing your personal needs for self-respect and integrity. As old negative patterns of feeling and thinking are transformed, you can escape the dysfunctional habits of clinging dependence or stoic independence, and move toward a state of interdependence.

Help with the relationship issue known as codependency is also available at STAR.

Adult Attachment Disorder

STAR is one of the only places available to work on adult attachment disorder. Initially, attachment disorders were specifically associated with children. Today there is a growing recognition that this diagnosis is a common issue for adults as well. Simply put, early experiences with primary caregivers form an internal template that may exert a powerful yet unconscious influence on adult relationships. When early relationships were safe and loving, we grew up confidently knowing how to connect with others in a healthy and positive way. When early connections were hurtful, threatening, neglectful, or absent of simple acceptance, care, and safety, our capacity to form healthy relationships was compromised. As adults, we may cling with suffocating co-dependent neediness, or play come here/go away. We may develop a fear-based facade of anger and hostility that drives others away. Indeed, we may live life superficially from a safe intellectual level unaware of our true emotions. These patterns may have helped us to survive as children and often represented our best efforts to keep ourselves safe. In adulthood they may leave us isolated and wanting to be loved, but never truly trusting our connections with others. Ultimately, we live in a world of incomplete or broken bonds and loneliness.

At STAR, we have developed highly effective therapeutic methods to address relationship issues and adult attachment disorders. During a STAR Retreat you will be supported to confront core injuries and fears in order to re-open your heart. As human beings we were not designed to live apart. With the intelligent and loving support that the STAR Process provides, you can begin to heal the past and invite love and the joy of genuine intimacy back into your life.

As an attachment therapist and STAR graduate, I know that through the deep early work at STAR, the participant begins to remember and resolve the mysteries encountered in relationship—to self, to other, to community, and to environment. This validating information helps to foster compassionate understanding and fill in the blanks in the attachment continuum.

Susan L. Love, M.A., M.F.T.
Oakland, CA
Post-Adoption and Attachment Therapy

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