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Life Transitions & Relationship Difficulties
Divorce, redundancy, a new baby, retirement, a move, an empty nest or the same argument in every relationship you have ever had. Individual therapy for the moments when the ground shifts.
One-to-one, no partner required
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Harjeet Hayre
Integrative Psychotherapist · BACP Registered Member · NHS-experienced Reviewed September 2026 · About Harjeet
Transitions
Even the good changes cost something.
Psychologists have tried for decades to rank life's upheavals. The famous Holmes and Rahe scale puts the death of a spouse at the top, followed by divorce and separation. When researchers re-ran it with a modern sample in 2023, almost every event was rated more stressful than it was in 1967 and pregnancy and the death of a close friend moved near the top. The same researchers are careful to say that events alone explain only a small fraction of who becomes unwell. How you make sense of a change matters as much as the change itself and that is where therapy earns its keep.
Some transitions carry well-documented risks. More than one in ten women experience postnatal depression within a year of giving birth and fathers and partners can be affected too. Losing a job roughly doubles the likelihood of psychological difficulty. Retirement, on average is protective for mood but retirement that is forced or unplanned is a different story. A large multinational study found every common mental health condition associated with divorce, often preceding it rather than following.
Loneliness runs underneath many of these changes. In early 2025, a quarter of adults in Great Britain said they felt lonely at least some of the time and it is 16 to 29 year olds, not older people, who report it most.
Relationships
Why the same pattern keeps returning.
You do not need your partner in the room to work on a relationship. Much of what plays out between two people is shaped by what each of them learned long before they met. Attachment research, from John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth's work with infants to Hazan and Shaver's extension to adult love, describes how early experience builds working models of whether other people can be relied upon.
BACP describes this work as learning to know when you are triggered and owning your own process. In practice that means noticing the pattern as it starts, sometimes as it plays out in the therapy room itself so that it becomes a choice rather than a reflex.
How I work
Steady ground while things move.
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Psychodynamic work looks at how earlier experience shapes the way you meet change and closeness now and how it shows up in relationships and at work.
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Person-centred space helps you work out what you actually want from the next chapter, rather than what you have been told to want.
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CBT-informed tools catch the anxious predictions that drive pursuit, withdrawal or people-pleasing in relationships.
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Somatic awareness tunes you into the physical signature of being triggered, which is often the earliest and most honest warning you get.
Where a transition has tipped into depression or anxiety, NICE recommends talking therapies including counselling, CBT, interpersonal therapy and short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. Where it involves loss, my grief and bereavement counselling page goes deeper. For the particular upheaval of midlife, see menopause counselling. And if the change has knocked your sense of yourself, self-esteem therapy may be the right starting point.
Yes. Individual work suits patterns that repeat across relationships, situations where a partner will not or cannot attend and anyone who wants to understand their own part first. BACP describes counselling as helping you identify the issues and find a way through.9
Attachment research suggests early working models of self and others shape adult relating. These are only modestly stable and therapy is associated with increased security, so the patterns are changeable rather than fixed.7, 8
Neither. People come before a change to prepare for it, during it to stay upright and long afterwards when they realise it never quite settled. All three are good reasons.
Sources
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Wallace, R.S., Cooper, S., Sel, K. and Russo, D. (2023). Social Readjustment Rating Scale revisited. PLoS ONE, 18(12), e0295943.
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Paul, K.I. and Moser, K. (2009). Unemployment impairs mental health: meta-analyses. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 74(3), 264282.
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Odone, A. et al. (2021). Does retirement trigger depressive symptoms? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 30, e77.
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Breslau, J. et al. (2011). A multinational study of mental disorders, marriage and divorce. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 124(6), 474486.
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Office for National Statistics (2025). Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: January 2025.
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Hazan, C. and Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511524.
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Taylor, P., Rietzschel, J., Danquah, A. and Berry, K. (2015). Changes in attachment representations during psychological therapy. Psychotherapy Research, 25(2), 222238.
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NICE (2022). Depression in adults: treatment and management (NG222).
This page is general information from a registered psychotherapist, not medical advice or a diagnosis. If you are in crisis, call 999, NHS 111 (option 2) or the Samaritans free on 116 123.
Ready when you are.
A free introductory call, no forms and no obligation. Just a quiet conversation to see whether working together feels right.