Pia Byron, LMFT &
Relational Therapist
Los Osos, CA
MY APPROACH
In my psychotherapy practice, I incorporate holistic, societal, ecological, and neurobiology perspectives. Essential to my work are three underlying foundations.
First is, our early life experiences impacted our adult beliefs and behaviors
How we were nurtured by parents and caregivers can contribute to how we respond to stress and return to safety and calm.
How we have experienced and internalized these figures and relationships are crucial in shaping our adult selves and understanding of the world around us.
So many of us had injurious childhood experiences and therefore have wounded childhood parts in us. They live deep within and then can come right up to the surface when we feel triggered, provoked, anxious, shameful. The key here is recognizing these parts of us and getting to know the fears that provoke them.
The reason for my focus on relational work is that too often our upbringings combined with society-at-large truly do not prepare and afford us to live relationally -- in integrity with full respect, compassion, boundaries, and accountability.
In couples sessions, I encourage exploration and acknowledgement of each partner's own formative childhood and how it impacts your current relationship.
If you are seeking individual therapy outside of a romantic relationship, this work is a useful part of therapy and a valuable exploration.
The second foundation is Somatic psychology which addresses mind and body.
In terms of our wellbeing, the body’s immediate and real-time sensations are as relevant as intellectual understanding and narrative beliefs. The Somatic approach is becoming widely appreciated and utilized, as research underscores how the body is integral to our experiences, trauma and healing.
In couples therapy, this is key to deeply understanding and working with each partner’s own feelings and behavior -- in order to encourage and integrate this awareness as part of daily living.
Lastly, all of our work together in session is in service of your relational growth.
This takes dedication on your part and a commitment to practice the work and skills, moment-to-moment, in your everyday life. A set of good ideas without the accompanying repeated interactions with others falls short.
I primarily use a style of Somatic work pioneered by Stanley Keleman called Formative Psychology™ and Terry Real's Relational Life Therapy™ which is a model of relational skills. If you wish to know more about any of these ideas, please don’t hesitate to ask and we can discuss your interest together.
More About Somatics In Therapy
Somatics is a holistic term and refers to the human experience in terms of thoughts AND sensations.
Getting to know yourself somatically is key to understanding yourself, learning compassionately about your patterns, and embarking on new possibilities. We'll explore questions like:
How are you influencing your self and your intimate relationship with your embodied attitudes?
"Embodied attitudes" are responses that get activated by contact with other people and include physical sensations and body language. They instinctively generate certain patterns in your thoughts and behavior, and impact your personal beliefs. These attitudes have origins somewhere in your earlier life.
How do you respond to various experiences in your life together?--
Your body's sensations are indicators of your expectations and signal how you respond to encounters, such as:
wanting, waiting, uncertainty, frustration, excitement, startle, disappointment, transition,
unexpected circumstances, and endings.
What happens in both your thinking and body pattern?
This question is about exploring with curiosity.
Uncovering what happens in your thinking and within your body sheds light on your beliefs and learned patterns of reaction. These instinctual patterns are alive in you. And these "somatic responses" spark your life choices.
Do you feel yourself drawn to any of these particular questions? Within your relationship, do your actions and behaviors satisfy you? Or do you want to manage yourself differently, have more empowerment and choice? Do you have tools to navigate being in relationship together?
Working somatically looks at behavior: HOW you respond and act (not just uncovering the emotions).
Gaining insight about WHY you do something is about looking at your past patterns;
discovering HOW is about noticing and examining how that pattern shows up in the present.
From this foundation, we can introduce significant changes to familiar patterns.
I'll guide you to engage in these new possibilities and actively practice and grow .
Relational Living For Couples
Couples fascinate me - romance, connection, intimacy, and love. These states of being are exciting, seductive, transcendent, mysterious, and so very challenging. They’re supposed to be. A relationship with a partner provides chances to grow and mature — as a unit together and as a human yourself.
Couples have issues and grievances. I suspect that at times in your relationship, each of you becomes an island: disconnected, reactive, defensive, and adversarial, unable to see or hear anything except “it’s me against you.” In the heat of battle your triggered selves appear, and instinctively fight, retreat, or freeze. Like ghosts from your formative years, your own family and society have played a major role in shaping you and your relational behavior. Sometimes, our deeply ingrained childhood experiences can manifest in unhealthy ways in our adult lives and relationships.
If you’re ready to take this opportunity to acknowledge, confront, and ultimately mature yourselves, what do you do now?
Discover relational patterns and their origins. Once upon a time, in your earliest relationships and environments, you learned your own version of self-esteem and boundaries. Back then, it was strength and armor. But how does it play into the dynamic of your relationship today?
Make this exploration together. Being witness to your partner is practice in vulnerability and compassion. You can support each other in seeing and healing old traumas, growing wiser and maturing in the process. Together, you can learn how to continually listen, speak, and move from harmony to disruption to repair.
What You Will Learn:
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Insight into the patterns of your relational dynamics and how to transform them
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Look inward with compassion -- to uncover triggers, reactivity and ineffective strategies
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Grow relational maturity -- set healthy limits and handle moments of conflict and disconnection with regulation, presence of mind, and wisdom
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Identify dysfunctional communication strategies that hinder understanding and connection and learn
honest, clear, compassionate communication tools
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Discover and practice strategies to navigate discord in a tolerable environment and resolve conflicts in a constructive manner
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Develop emotional skills to improve intimacy, presence, vulnerability, assertion, boundaries and self-esteem and create stronger, more meaningful bonds