My Approaches

It is important to me, even when faced with challenging differences or conflicts, to see and appreciate the wishes, needs, boundaries, and resources of each individual and the relationship. I try not to apply templates of a “good relationship,” but rather to work with you to find approaches and solutions that suit you. Especially in conflict situations, I often follow the key question: “How can we stop pushing the problem back and forth between us as opponents and instead work together to find a solution that is good for all of us?”

I work in a spirit of goodwill towards all involved parties and do not see myself in a role of judgement. I strive to create an atmosphere of appreciation and a friendly and responsible approach to mistakes. Questions and feedback are always welcome. If anything causes you discomfort, please let me know. We will then sort out together whether the discomfort indicates that the topic is important but challenging, or whether I have misjudged something or we have taken a wrong turn at some point. I cannot read minds or perform magic, nor do I expect you to agree with all my suggestions or ideas. I see counseling as a co-constructive process, i.e., a collaboration between all involved parties, in which we try, together, to better understand the situation, develop ideas, and explore options. It matters to me that we meet on equal terms, while taking our different roles into account.

Self-Exploration

I gladly support you in (better) realizing your own needs, wishes, desires, and boundaries and finding the words to express them. Sometimes it is helpful to look at possible barriers that may be affecting your perception or communication skills. Often, countermeasures can be strengthened, i.e., resources that support your perception and communication skills.

Weighing Different Options

I would be happy to assist you in exploring various options, e.g., regarding ways of life/lifestyles, relationship models, sexuality, etc. I would also gladly support you in weighing these options to see how they align with your wishes, desires, needs, and boundaries, while also considering their associated challenges. Sometimes it can be helpful to take a critical look at societal or community norms if they make it difficult to honestly engage with your own feelings, wishes, desires, needs, and boundaries. It is important to me to support you in finding your own way.

Creatively Puzzling Together Wishes, Desires, Needs, and Limits

It is essential to me to honor the wishes, needs, and boundaries of all involved. People rarely find happiness in a relationship when their actions are primarily based on notions of obligation or duty. Therefore, the goal is to find ways of interacting that treat both similarities and differences with goodwill. In my experience, it is often helpful not to negotiate the legitimacy of wishes, desires, needs, and boundaries, but to instead discuss ways of navigating them.

Sometimes, improved communication can solve many problems if it enables people to understand each other better, feel heard and seen, and break escalation spirals. This can also be helped by cross-checking each other’s problem analyses in order to better understand and appreciate wishes, aims, needs, concerns, and the motivation behind setting boundaries.

Sometimes it is more complex to find a good way of handling differences or hurt feelings. I have found it helpful in such situations to in principle welcome complexity and not automatically classify it as a disruptive factor. Based on this, it is possible to search for solutions with goodwill, to become creative together, and to treat unavoidable mistakes with kindness, while also taking seriously hurt feelings. I have repeatedly found it beneficial to understand the fields of tension from which conflicts arise and to untangle the knotted wool ball of conflict, and/or to see which threads we can pull to improve the way we deal with these issues.

There are situations in which we cannot get around either/or decisions. However, I find approaches such as queer theory and deconstruction inspiring to not accept either/or too quickly as a given. It often helps, for example, to look which qualities or deeper needs are at stake in situations where we cannot find common ground on a behavioral level. Time and again, this allows us to find new spaces and creative solutions between or beyond the either/or poles, where these wishes or needs no longer have to compete with each other.

Often, relationship conflicts involve polarization dynamics. In such cases, e.g., one person may become in charge of the wish for closeness and the other person of the wish for distance, one of the wish for commitment and the other of the wish for autonomy, one of the wish for structure and the other of the wish for spontaneity, etc. However, the people involved often each have something of both desires within them or can appreciate something in both qualities, and it is due to the dynamics or the sore points that are touched or how we perceive the other person one-sidedly that we drift further and further apart and eventually perceive each other as opponents. I will gladly work on approaches that loosen up these polarizations and again allow us to see what connects you and to perceive all involved as more complex beings. As a result, it can become easier to perceive the resource sides in one’s own and the other person’s wishes and behaviors and to puzzle out shared solutions for dealing with difficulties.

In order to facilitate such a constructive attitude toward one another, it can also be helpful to examine which triggers tend to cause those involved to close themselves off and feel the need to defend themselves or their own interests, and which ones encourage the involved persons to open up to one another. Things often improve when these triggers are dealt with more consciously.

Sometimes we also have to let go of certain wishes or needs in a specific relationship if they are incompatible, and sometimes we need space to mourn these or the corresponding incompatibility. Building on this, we can then consider how to go forward in a constructive way—without each other, or with each other, through good ways of dealing with these issues and by strengthening other commonalities.

Present and Biography

In dealing with interpersonal issues, I always start by focusing on the present and the individuals. During the process, we then explore together whether and how biographical reflections and individual growth and/or structural issues (social inequality, material aspects, etc.) are relevant to the topics and interests at hand, and how they can best be taken into account. Recognizing stressors is often helpful in this context, but I always strive to also focus on resources, agency, and how they can be expanded.

Approaching Differences with Goodwill

I have focused a lot both on societal inequalities and their impact on interpersonal relationships, as well as on navigating other kinds of differences, like individual, biographical, and milieu/lifestyle differences. Sometimes I find it helpful to analyze these differences as shown in the graphic below in order to see at which levels tensions arise and how they might intertwine. This can also facilitate a conversation about potentially divergent perceptions of where the differences arise and what causes the tensions.

In principle, I strive to foster an atmosphere in which we recognize differences and address them with kindness as a basis for the explorations and processes described above.

When it comes to social inequalities, on the one hand, it can be helpful to recognize that discrimination, privilege, societal socialization, experiences of injustice, etc., as well as individual biographical experiences, have an impact on us and our relationships. Some relationship conflicts make it clear that there is still room for improvement in dealing with these aspects, and it can be useful to reflect on this together and develop new options for addressing them.

At the same time, I also believe it is important not to reduce each other to these societal experiences. The personal is also political, but it is not only political; it is also individual. In my view, we cannot have good interpersonal relationships with someone if we do not also recognize them as a complex individual with individual wishes, desires, longings, fears, vulnerabilities, strengths, potential, etc., which cannot be reduced to societal experiences. In my opinion, relationship-fostering work on this topic therefore requires a willingness to engage on both levels. I will gladly support you in working on potential difficulties related to societal or milieu inequalities, power differences, and socialization, but also in recognizing and strengthening what is individual and what connects you.