The Journal

The Journal

A Journey Towards Personal Resilience Within the Context of a Painful Relationship

Is a relationship that is important to you, hurting you?

Do you feel it is bringing out the worst in you?

  • If you are tired of the ups and downs of hope and disappointment 

  • If you find yourself reacting to someone in a way that leaves you feeling ineffective and ashamed

  • If you find yourself over-expressing your emotions or alternatively swallowing and keeping everything inside 

  • If you find yourself oscillating between blaming the other person and blaming yourself for what is going on

  • If you are regularly battling grief in a relationship you’re still holding out hope for

  • If you are someone who is ready to do the work, only you’re not quite sure what or how

Then you are the person The Journal was created for

When a close relationship is wrought with pain, it can require daily recalibration to navigate the relationship while maintaining your own equilibrium and well-being

WHAT IS THE JOURNAL?

The Journal is an actual journal created over years, based on the stories of people in painful relationships and the therapeutic processes that they found most helpful.

It consists of a collection of sections with guiding specific prompts that cover key processes of building resilience.

 

If you are in a complex relationship, then you already know that there are no magic answers, and you have already discovered that over-simplified promises or cliches leave you disheartened, frustrated, and questioning if there is anything to be done. 

We recognize that and we are here to walk you through the various tasks and steps that you can take to create a personalized, nuanced, resonant and multifaceted approach to showing up for yourself and your relationship based on clarity, integrity and respect for yourself and those you care about. 

Our Commitment to You

Although we believe in the power of this work - we won’t make empty promises about oversimplified magic answers

Although we will seek to help you identify where you have power and may be able to effect change - we won’t suggest that the health of your relationship is single-handedly in your hands

Although we will support you building your own internal resilience - we won’t suggest that you can be happy despite your circumstances following a few simple steps - as if it were that simple or easy

Although we will help you clarify your own sense of hope and possibility - we won’t promise an outcome that we don’t honestly know to be the end of your story

Although we hope this will help you improve your relationship - we won’t mislead you into believing that all relationships are salvageable

Although we hope you’ll get your clarity on where you stand in how connected you want to remain to the person - we won’t condescendingly dictate to you who you should or shouldn’t keep in your life 

We Will

Respect the complexity of your situation

Create space for the pain, grief, frustration, and confusion that you are experiencing

Be honest about the overwhelming influence our closest relationships have on our emotional well being

Be honest about the fact that the other person is their own person, has their own free will, and will make their own choices

 

Who Am I and Where Do I Come In?

Hi, I’m Rikki. I am a therapist and I spent years studying the topics of abuse prevention, relational trauma therapy, navigating complex relationships, and building internal resilience.

I believe that our sense of safety in our closest relationships has a tremendous impact on our well-being and I have devoted years to researching how to help people increase their safety in themselves and in their relationships. 

Over the last 15 years, I have worked with people trying to make heads or tails out of the painful dynamics in their closest relationships. The vast majority of them had no idea how to even understand what was going on, struggled with enormous confusion and self doubt, wondered if they were completely crazy or completely to blame, and fluctuated between desperate hope and deep despair. 

The thing about relationships is this: many of the things that we need the most are invisible, difficult to define, and exist on a spectrum. Love, care, respect, appreciation. Acceptance. Emotional safety. Adequate empathy. The security that someone we rely on can handle the ups and downs of life. The ability to communicate. The need to be known. To be seen and to be heard. A working balance of connection and space. 

I have seen people desperate for clarity, coming up with a new diagnosis for someone in their lives, monthly. And then turn it around, claim they were exaggerating, and completely blame themselves.

I have seen people come out of couples or family therapy looking haunted by the confusion they experienced in a setting that they thought would offer clarity and support. Not being able to articulate what went wrong but saying vehemently that they are never going back. 

I have seen people told that they need to leave a relationship deemed abusive by one well-meaning mentor, only to be joyfully promised that the solution was simple by the next one. 

I have had people tell me that perhaps the worst part of all of it was the confusion. That if they could only make sense of what was going on, they could perhaps make peace with it and learn to deal with it. I have had others tell me that they would fight to the end before accepting a reality of the other person that they knew to be true. 

Many, many felt that they had lost integral parts of themselves - that they had lost the ability to be who they had once known themselves to be. Living in survival had robbed them of their very Personhood.

The pain is real and it is excruciating. The Journal was designed to help you reclaim those lost parts yourself and your emotional equilibrium.

I have looked into the eyes of the people I consider heroes. I have been curious and committed with them, and I have been amazed to see the clarity and resilience that slowly emerged for and from them. 

I have dreamed of sharing the steps that got them to that clarity and resilience with other people in similar situations.

And with immense gratitude, I have finally put together a project built around The Journal to accompany people as they journey through similar situations.

In an ideal world, you would have an understanding and supportive person to work this through with. I hope you can and will pursue that. This project was developed to offer various levels of participation to allow for accessibility, affordability, psychoeducation, and various options of support. I respect your autonomy in figuring out which option is best for you at this point in time. 

Warmly,

Rikki