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Healthy Relationships

Healthy relationships show reciprocity, equality, mutual understanding, compassion, trust, shared maps of each other’s world, positive regard, nurture, commitment, allowance for difference and a capacity to touch and be touched.

When we’ve experienced developmental trauma, enmeshment, co-dependency, Narcissistic abuse, uneven power dynamics, conflict avoidance, neglect, intrusion (the list goes on) we can begin to believe that we may never be worthy or capable of a healthy relationship. We may believe that there is no-one else out there who is available and who shares a longing for a healthy, intimate connection. We make up stories about the partners we do have and what’s wrong about them. We may believe if we found “the right” person it would fix everything or we would mess it up or fail to recognise them or they would not be attracted to us or we’d be validated for being a victim of our previous “bad partners”. 

The bad news is that our relationships, or lack of them, don’t happen to us; we participate in the dynamics that play out within them. (This is a generalisation and I want to acknowledge with a particular sensitivity instances of coercive control. There are, of course, sometimes real perpetrators and victims).

The good news is that healthy relationships are not rocket science, that many well-balanced humans share the same longings for connection and intimacy, and that with a combination of personal awareness, communication and conflict management skills, healthy boundaries, commitment, self-trust and a little bit of luck, we can all make choices that increase our chances of a healthy relationship.

 

There are plenty of Scientific Studies, Relationship experts, and easily accessible information out there now to help people to understand the components of a healthy relationship. The challenge is in pulling together what’s factual and useful to you as an individual or couple and aligning it with the healing of the history held in your body so you can be open to a loving and sustained connection with your partner or partners.

In regards our sexuality, the challenge for many people who have experienced relational trauma is that there is a magnetic pull towards our relational healing. This pull is towards re-enacting and repairing what once went wrong. We look for partners who are similar enough that they can represent our previous aggressors or traumatisers and different enough that we might get a different outcome this time. Our trauma therefore often drives our erotic charge or our erotic shutdown. If we can learn to look at our relationship to sex and to our eroticism, to slow it down, to discover our behaviours and motivations and take new actions we open a gateway for healing in our bodies and our relationships.

Our relationships create different environments for us to express within and to heal or be re-traumatised within.

Relationships can feel both enlivening and expansive and also often challenging and confusing. Sex brings all our issues right to the surface and we are behaving in Sex as we are in Life, we often just don't realise that.

How we show up sexually depends on many things: our expectations and experiences, how sensitive our bodies are and how well we know ourselves, who it is we're relating with and how safe we feel with them, what is the state of our body and nervous system in the onset of intimacy, our capacity to contain or share our sexual energy, the list goes on.

Our trauma tends to inform how much sexual energy our systems can hold and how we react to our partner’s presence and behaviours. Sometimes we can experience ourselves very differently in response to the same partner, or to different partners. Other times we experience consistency in what shows up time and time again in our sexual patterning.

In healthy relationships we allow ourselves to not know ourselves or our partners and to stay in a state of constant curiously and learning; supporting each other into deeper intimacy with ourselves and one another.

We lose the goal focus, the performance focus or the service focus and learn to accept and dance the unique unfolding body story of the moment.

It's critical to stay connected to ourselves when we relate.

It's important to remember that we are each totally unique. We are individually tailored machines responding to unique moments in time. In every moment we can have choices in how we respond and yet often we respond in default, habituated and unconscious ways. When we move too fast, we lose the capacity to respond rather than react and we lose our choice.

The key to excellent relating is to stay present to oneself and to stay anchored in your body; to learn to speak your own experience without projecting onto or controlling another and to identify and share your needs with them. It is also about being able to stay present to another’s experience and to stay connected and curious about who they are and what they need.

It’s not always easy. No two relationships are the same. You are the authors of your story.

In therapy we use relationship to heal our disconnection.

Psychosexual Somatics® Therapy (PST) and Internal Family Systems (IFS) work to increase your capacity and tolerance for Life-force energy and Self Leadership, to pull your centre of gravity back into you, to identify and rectify boundary violations, to support you to identify your needs and put them equal to those of others, to develop presence and drop the need to perform when it’s safe to do so, to open your heart first to yourself and then to the other, to tolerate states of vulnerability and to support the physical body to let go of bracing against the potential that others might ultimately be out to harm us in some way. In our work together we make more space for Love.

We were disconnected from our Eros (life-force) energy through failures in our environments and our relationships and it takes healthy relationship imprints to reconnect those neural pathways.

That's why choosing a therapist/practitioner you can feel completely safe and relaxed with is such a critical component to the effectiveness of this treatment. You can take what you learn in sessions, including practising new ways of relating internally and externally, back out into your real life for integration through experience.

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Book an Introductory Call

The first step starts with reaching out. Please get in touch to let me know you are interested in doing your inner work. I offer a free 20 min Zoom introductory call if I’m able to accommodate you as a new or potential new client. I look forward to hearing from you.

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"The body is our soul made visible, plus our history."

Mike Lousada, Founder of Psychosexual Somatics® Therapy

“Place yourself in the cycle of life by living like nature, letting go of the death of your winter (older or outdated versions of yourself) as you are reborn into a new shape of possibility, your spring.”

Anne Davin, PhD

"Out of difficulties grow miracles.” 

Jean De La Bruyere

"Our nervous system is built to respond to certain input in a way that gives us maximum survival.” 

Michaela Boehm

"There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.” 

Rumi

"Emma has a very compassionate heart and a strong sense of empathy, both of which she uses to lovingly support clients to drop more fully into their bodies. She is open-minded, non-judgmental and can safely hold space for many states and experiences and help clients ground and integrate different aspects of themselves. She is an excellent PST practitioner and I warmly recommend her."

Mike Lousada, Founder of Psychosexual Somatics Therapy

"Emma Harper's passion for transformation - both in herself and in her clients - matches her enthusiasm for life. I admire her wild feminine courage to dive head first into the cutting edges of all her lines of development, and as she does, others are inspired to do the same. The result ... Freedom. Vitality. Synchronicity. Sensuality. Magic. Miracles. Yes!"

Lissa Rankin, MD

"Experiencing with Emma as my psychosexual somatic therapist is strong feeling of being held, seen and supported in my healing process. I feel safe and supported with Emma to trully express my emotions and feelings. She has strong empathy and I adore her body intuition to help me to connect to myself and listen to my body and dont let me to escape. I can hardly explain how good it feels when she hold safe and powerful space for me to guide me to release blocks and integrate part of myself I was rejecting. It is life shifting work we do together (for each other). Thank you Emma for your great work. I look forward to more release and more integration with you."

Barbora Koblizek, (Tantric Masseuse and Fellow PST Therapist)

"Working with Emma was a wonderfully nurturing and empowering experience. I'm really grateful for what she taught me about my body and sexuality. I was amazed by the variety of techniques that Emma used to help me understand my body and mind. I've learnt things about myself that have helped me in all areas of my life, not just the bedroom!” 

Miranda Bloodworth

I really enjoyed the Unravelling Peak Performance workshop. I met a group of nice gentlemen, we shared our stories and experiences sometimes with bravery and always with open heart, learnt about each other, and most importantly made progress in being better men and better partners. I loved how Emma facilitated the workshop, bringing us where she wanted in a gentle and loving way. I highly recommend this workshop to everyone who is on his journey to be a better man.

JJ Munsch, 2020 Unravelling Peak Performance workshop participant

"Powerful and transformative - what I learned was well beyond any expectations. Emma is a brilliant facilitator who created the space and material for us to grow rapidly whilst having fun."

Anthony Kennon

Emma held a space for me which allowed me to feel safe, seen and deeply valued. Her gentle directions and guidance allowed me to access parts of myself that I had been frightened to look at on my own. Being supported by Emma has enabled me to make positive changes in my life from an embodied place. 

Grace Brown, PST Mentee

Emma, I am grateful that you were my mentor. You attuned really well to what I needed in the mentor sessions. You are very good in paraphrasing what is really important in such a way that that it sinks deeper. You have the gift of being able to really see people in their essence, in what makes them unique. You have a great intuition, and you bring that kind of safety that invites me to bring what wants to be seen, even when that is very vulnerable. And you always give choice, which feels very empowering. 

Thank you very much. Warm hugs

Karen. PST Mentee

 "The powerful yet vulnerable way Emma guided and mirrored me in my intimate process of growth has been a very insightful and remarkable journey."  

Piero Flor, Intimacycoach

"I have come out of it a changed woman. I have dropped the old stories of something being wrong with me and that I am not sexual. I am able to stand in my power and in the sexual energy without always wanting to run away from it."

“ I still want to work more on it, to uncover more of me that has been in hiding for so long. But I will be doing the work in the knowledge that I am not broken or frigid, I am not any of the labels I have been called over the years. I am a healthy, sexual woman who chooses when and with whom she wants to share that energy with. I know now that my sexuality is not always connected to someone else, that I am a sexual being in my own right and that it doesn't have to include anyone else. That is a revelation for me!" 

Louise Merrick; Mother, Writer, Women's Sexual Expression Programme 2019 Graduate

“ I felt so seen, heard and supported with Emma as my PST mentor, I cannot recommend her enough. She has a gentle and caring presence combined with intelligence that feels very unique, she helped build my confidence and empowered me to trust my instincts. “ 

Alakina Mann, Mentee

"Emma rocks!!"

...and....

Emma has a safe, grounded and beautifully heart centred presence. She welcomed all parts of me into the space; the tender, the crazy, the angry, the sexy, the sleepy, the powerful...the full spectrum of being human. She has a lot of wisdom across different modalities and her approach integrates mind, body and spirit at a pace that my psyche was ready to open to. During our sessions, I was particularly thankful that she has an understanding of sexual energy/life-force energy and an awareness of the spiritual awakening process. 

Eshana Spiers

Emma's attention and skill over the last six months as a mentor and PST therapist has allowed me to feel safely held, seen, heard and respected through the process of our work together. Her being a mentor throughout my training was a major resource to me. I experienced her energy as boldly protective. Fiery and strong, yet compassionate; she has an amazing ability to understand a variety of experiences in a very open-minded way. She helped me to slow things right down and to get me to feel what was going on for me beneath the surface. 

Emma taught me to hold my own in identifying behaviour that was not ok and to set boundaries within my life that have proved to be so transformative for me. Her creative and playful energy also assisted me in forming a deeper relationship with my body in a way that lifted some of the heaviness I had been experiencing.

I am deeply honoured to have had Emma as a support during a monumental time in my life. Thank you Emma!

Sofia Panayiotou, PST Coach and Energy Work Practitioner

“I worked quite intensively with Emma over a period of 6 months or so. I found her to be a practitioner of great depth and empathy. Her ability to find just the right gesture, the right word, the right moment to say nothing at all, allowed me to go very deep into my inner processing of trauma from my past. During the time that I was under Emma’s care, I released some of the biggest trauma wounding patterns of my life. I can honestly say, that I am a different person since I completed this work with Emma. I feel that I have my life back. You are very lucky to find this wonderful practitioner. She has a very great capacity to hold you in your process, if you are willing to do your own work”

Karin Probert

Emma has an unparalleled ability to hear the meaning behind what I say and guide me to understand it. She has helped transform my sense of myself and my relationship. Her work is life-changing. She is a gift. 

Anonymous, civil servant, 40 (but in remarkably good shape for it)