You do not need your partner, family member, or colleague present in the room to radically transform the quality of your connections. Human relationships are complex, and when they are strained by chronic conflict, communication breakdowns, or a painful emotional disconnect, the toll on your mental health can be severe.
At Corewell, founded by clinical psychologist Dr Farzin Shaykhi, our experienced team of practitioners specialises in helping individuals untangle their interpersonal struggles from the inside out. Operating from our welcoming clinic space in Mitcham, our clinicians support clients across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, including Ringwood, Croydon, Ringwood North, Doncaster, Vermont and all around Melbourne, to identify subconscious relational patterns, heal attachment wounds, and build deeply fulfilling, secure connections..
Navigating Complex Connections: Your Relational Patterns
When we experience friction with the people around us, it is rarely just about the argument at hand. Instead, it is usually a reflection of our internal emotional needs, learned habits, and automatic self-defence triggers.
The clinical team at Corewell helps you take back control of your interpersonal life by addressing the following:
- Conflict & Communication Blocks: Breaking out of exhausting “demand-withdraw” cycles or passive-aggressive habits, and learning how to assert your true needs clearly.
- Relationship Insecurity & Anxiety: Healing the painful, hyper-vigilant loops of jealousy, fear of abandonment, and the constant, draining need for reassurance.
- Navigating Separation & Divorce: Processing the profound grief, identity shifts, and logistical restructuring of a relationship breakdown, helping you “start over” with clarity.
- Co-Parenting Stress: Managing the emotional friction of raising children across split households while maintaining firm, functional, and respectful behavioural boundaries.
- Managing Anger & Frustration: Shifting away from explosive or deeply repressed anger and discovering healthy, authentic ways to express vulnerability and dissatisfaction.
Relational & Attachment-Based Appraisals
To ensure your therapeutic journey provides an accurate roadmap of your interpersonal style, Corewell’s team utilises specialised screening frameworks during your initial consultations:
Adult Attachment Style Mapping
We use evidence-based profiles to identify whether your relational blueprint leans towards an anxious, avoidant, or disorganised attachment style. This reveals exactly why you react the way you do during interpersonal stress.
Relationship Trigger & Reaction Auditing
Our psychologists break down your recent interpersonal conflicts step-by-step. We isolate the exact moment an internal vulnerability was triggered, tracking how your automatic defence behaviours impact the other person.
Boundary Strength & Accommodation Profiling
We assess whether you lean towards over-accommodating others at the expense of your own mental health (people-pleasing) or if rigid walls are keeping people at a distance, balancing your boundary health.
What People Are Asking
“Why do I constantly choose the exact same type of emotionally unavailable partner?”
Our Answer: We are subconsciously drawn to what is familiar, even if it is painful. If your early life required you to perform to receive love, your brain equates “earning” an unavailable person’s affection with true safety. Individual therapy safely breaks this familiar loop.
“How do I deal with a toxic family member without completely cutting them off from my life?”
Our Answer: You cannot control their behaviour; you can only control your access policy. We focus on building emotional tolerance, setting firm behavioural boundaries, reducing expectations of change, and finding highly practical ways forward.
Evidence-Based Therapies to Strengthen Connections
Because changing a relationship requires shifting your own internal framework, our clinicians use a sophisticated blend of individual relational modalities:
- Schema Therapy & Attachment Frameworks: Identifying and rewriting your core, lifelong patterns (schemas) regarding trust, worthiness, and emotional deprivation.
- Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) for Individuals: Helping you access and understand the deeper, primary emotions—like fear or shame—that drive surface behaviours like anger or withdrawal.
- Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) & Practical Assertiveness Training: Equipping you with concrete communication tools to express boundaries, tolerate conflict, and handle difficult family or workplace dynamics.
