• Relationship Blog

    • Change is possible.

    Helping you tune your relationship.

    Don’t know where to turn to for guidance and support during relationship breakdown?


    Trying to understand more about the relationship with yourself? and why you overthink everything?


    Looking for a life coach? For career or relationships or procrastination?


    Understanding ourselves may be made more difficult as we transition into retirement, for example, and our sense of who we are changes.


    Also when we have experience parents with mental health issues, we don't always have permission to be ourselves.

    Don’t know where to turn to for guidance and support during relationship breakdown?

    Searching for a new relationship?

    Trying to understand more about the relationship with yourself?

    I Will Help You Understand, Maintain, and Mend Your Relationships with Both Others and Yourself.


    Free 15 min phone consultation for new clients

    BOOK NOW

    The Listening Guide offers compassion and support through your experience of emotional upset, anxiety, confusion, difficulties with relationships or marriage breakdown, grief, step-parenting, loss, family of origin problems (siblings and parents) or the balance between life and work. 


    The primary relationship we have is with ourselves and this is what we bring to relationships with others.  Understanding more about yourself is the key to having better relationships in general. If you are single and looking to change, I can assist with particular strategies to understand what patterns may be playing out in your life, and how to change that.  


    Mariyon can also guide you through the tumult and grief of divorce or relationship breakdown.

    About The Listening Guide

    Mariyon Slany - couple counsellor and psychotherapist

    Hi, I'm Mariyon Slany, Counsellor and Psychotherapist

    Expert in All Things Relationship

    In any relationship, be it romantic or platonic, it is inevitable and perfectly normal for problems to arise every now and then. You may be able to resolve most of them on your own, but if you feel overwhelmed or keep dealing with repetitive issues, it’s time to turn to the resident relationship expert at The Listening Guide. I offer a wide variety of counselling and psychotherapy services, understanding that the kind of relationships we have with others stems from the relationship we have with ourselves. Self understanding and self realisation are key tools to better relationships with others, as we not only get hurt in relationships but heal in relationships as well. 


    Based in West Perth, I serve clients over 18 all over Western Australia with both face to face and online appointments, and across Australia via Zoom or phone appointments. Read on to learn more about what I do, and feel free to call or email me with your questions.

    Read More
    Life coaching and psychotherapy services Perth

    Short-Term Counselling Services

    Couples Counselling

    Psychotherapy Services

    Remote Counselling or Life Coaching via Phone or Zoom


    Training Courses

    • Toxic Relationships
    • What Does Commitment Mean?
    • Being Too Nice

    Let’s Talk

    Do you want a change, but don't know where to begin? Or even where to start in the conversation? No question is too silly. I'm here to help you get started on knowing yourself and knowing yourself in relationships. 


    Call or Book using the form on this page today for a preliminary chat.


    The 15-minute initial phone consultation is free of charge to clarify what you would like to achieve and answer your questions about the process. I will also assess if working with me is the most beneficial option for you.  I have various areas of specialisation, including helping people transition into 'who they are' as retirement looms, dealing with Borderline Personality Disorder impacts from family members, and the big impacts of attachment in our earlier lives.


    Happy to answer any question, big or small. When it comes to matching with someone who can help our personal growth it's is an important decision as we need to ensure we feel comfortable with that professional.

    Contact Us

    Services

    What People Say About My Services

    How psychotherapy works

    How Psychotherapy Works 


    There are times when, for some reason, people tread paths that prove harmful in the long run, such as opting for a stable yet unfulfilling career or making poor romantic choices. Doing so may be the result of not knowing exactly what they want, and that is where psychotherapy comes in.


    Psychotherapy is a way for you to disclose your thoughts to a therapist and discover your motivations and unconscious drivers in the process. Once you know what the driving forces behind your actions are, you can start to take charge of them and take your first few steps toward contentment and fulfilment. Therapy sessions offer a safe space where you are free to speak whatever is on your mind.

    How Can Therapy Help?

    

    “In therapy, the therapist acts as a container for what we daren't let out, because it is so scary, or what lets itself out every so often, and lays waste to our lives.”

    

    - Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

    3 people talking by the water's edge and having conversation

    The impact of overthinking on conversation

    By The Listening Guide • 14 Jun, 2023
    The gradual screening of phone calls was something I have observed increasing over the past 15 years, with the associated upswing in having appointments to catch up rather than just organically dropping in on friends. I have also noticed this coincides with the phrase 'overthinking things' which is so prevalent today. My mind reflects that when clients tell me they had a conversation, or discussed an important issue with a friend, room-mate or partner finding that it is more than likely they are referring to a text based message, and not a face to face conversation. Perhaps 'overthinking' is associated to writing, rewriting or deleting a text based message prior to sending it. A client mentioned that an ex partner didn't want to speak on the phone because of potential confrontation; the assumption being that a phone call will lead to conflict. Is this a generational experience? That ellipsis's or silences can only be permissable if we have grown up assuming there is an organic nature to conversation that allows for the other to respond both verbally and non verbally. If you can't craft the perfect response then you don't' want to engage with the other person. It's almost saying - I want to put you on pause to allow myself to think of the perfect response. The saying that 'conversation is an art' goes back 100s' of years, and yet is never true-er; with people predicting the end of conversational art from the 1950's. Now it seems emotions becoming status updates rather than something to be explored in a conversation . “The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.” ― William Hazlitt, Selected Essays, 1778-1830 The invention of the rotary phone in 1892 already caused people anxiety. The fear was that telephone communication was somehow magical and we might be 'taken over' by using the phone to talk with someone. The modern rotary dial came in from 1919 which is when 'dialling' starting to be used in our lexicon, and of course the ubiqitious mobile phone from the 1990's. This seems to have led to a reluctantence now to pick up the phone to just chat? These are some reasons I've heard: We feel that we are short of time; That texting allows us to multi-task; That we can't predict what will happen in the conversation and we are becoming used to curated information at all levels; We may not know what to say; or we simply don't want to have that much personal connection because we feel overwhelmed by out lives as it is. We are losing out on allowing the other to enter into the conversation and influence what we are saying or feeling. Providing a pause for the engagement of other to come into the conversation is part of dialogue rather than polemical statements. I have a metaphor that I use which is 'my antennae are way out of on stalks' to indicate when someone is more sensitised to the world and other people's emotions. Perhaps we are trying to protect ourselves from the raw experience of other's emotional selves which results in pulling out antennae back into ourselves like a snail.

    Happiness can be found in the rituals of our relationship

    By Mariyon Slany • 05 Jun, 2023
    Predictability versus excitement is a battle that all relationships have to contend with. What does happiness have to do with it?

    Going back and forth constantly can use a lot of brain energy!

    02 Jun, 2023
    The last week there has been lots of new information and I'm constantly feeling tired. Is this related to what I call "emotional hangover"? Plans for my husband to travel back to Europe to visit his very sick Father, a Manager leaving a role where I work part time and fundamental to my role there, and re-engaging with family members when there hadn't been much communication. All of these experiences were 'new' to my brain and adding to the amount of every day work my brain was trying to get through. However I was still amazed at how exhausted I felt. Our brain is a decision making organ. Of all the thousands of pieces of information that I absorbed every day, my brain was having to decide what to put into long term procedural memory and what to keep in short term memory every night when I slept. Disturbed sleep means my brain hasn't had a chance to do all of that good work. What I sometimes call the 'emotional hangover' from the day before dragging into the next day due to lack of REM sleep (distinguishable by not having as many dreams). Hence, the next morning, I was bringing the previous day's information into the next lot of business, meaning I was less able to stay focused for longer periods of time and was tired, quicker. Multi-tasking is actually our brain moving very quickly from one focus to the next and Johann Hari says in Stolen Focus: Why you can't pay attention , that it means our ability to concentrate is rapidly reducing. He has quoted research that says, if office workers are interrupted it takes 23 minutes to get back focus, and many workers never get back to focus on a task after becoming distracted. Additionally we touch our phones over 2000 times in 24 hours. It's like we are getting lost in our own lives. Dr James Williams is a researcher on attention, and says that we need to give attention to the right things. That we need to deal with attention problems before achieving any other sustained goal. Hari states in Stolen Focus that fracturing of attention is causing crises in our whole society. When attention breaks down, problem solving breaks down. In terms of understanding my fatigue this past week, I take this away from Stolen Focus ; it boils down to two things - either you are awake and aware, or asleep and the brain is cleaning up. The best thing for me to do, I decide, is to not focus on all the implications from all these changes, and deliberately focus on one thing every day. Also, spend some time distracting my brain by listening to music, reading a relaxing book, or simply staring out the window to allow a re-calibration of a calm centre.
    Share by: