Relationship Issues Help

The number one reason people seek therapy is for help with their 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 you to do your individual work. You are taught valuable tools for empowering yourself to develop healthy relationships without sacrificing your own needs for self-respect and integrity. As old negative patterns of feeling and thinking are recognized and transformed, you can escape the old habits of clinging dependence or stoic independence, and move toward a healthy state of interdependence.

Help with the relationship issue known as co-dependency (see Overcoming Codependent Behavior) is also available at STAR.

Adult Attachment Disorder

STAR is one of the only places available to work on adult attachment disorder. At first, attachment disorders were specifically associated with children. Today there is a growing recognition that this is a common issue for many adults as well. Simply put, early experiences with primary caregivers form an internal pattern that may exert a powerful unconscious influence on our adult relationships. When early relationships were safe and loving, we grew up understanding how to connect with others in healthy and positive ways. When early relationships were hurtful, threatening, neglectful, or lacked basic caring and safety, our ability to form healthy relationships was damaged.

As adults, we may cling with suffocating co-dependent neediness, or play come here/go away. We may develop a fear-based mask of anger and hostility that drives others away. We may live life outwardly from a safe intellectual level totally unaware of our true emotions. These patterns may have helped us to survive when we were children and often represented our best efforts to keep ourselves safe. However, as adults they may keep us isolated and hungering for real love, but never truly trusting those around us.

At STAR, we have developed highly effective methods to address relationship issues and adult attachment disorders. During a STAR Retreat you will be supported and encouraged 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

After 28 years together we didn’t know of a happier couple. Of course we were elaborately well-connected. Just imagine the sheer volume of accommodations and adjustments, the level of acceptance, the depth of commitment, the amount of communication invested. Then we did our STARS – separately. We plunged into the ultimate intimacy – no current withholding, and no past secrets. One year later we’ve recovered the comfort and the ease and the confidence we started with. But before, our intimacy was largely a complex truce drawn through the territory of our egos. Now we’re just connected at the soul.

Lee and Marijo Franklin
Alameda, CA

Also see:
Overcoming Codependent Behavior
The STAR Process
What Graduates Say about STAR Retreats
The Value of a Personal Growth Retreat
Frequently Asked Questions