Petra Samlow Wellness

03/02/2026

Get to know your partner’s childhood. This will help you understand their reactions to different situations. Your partner may be reacting to how they had to react as a child, not to the current situation. If you get to understand your partners childhood, it can help you understand why they may react in certain ways during conflict. Conflict may trigger childhood responses that may not be a reflection of you, but a past parent or caregiver.

03/02/2026

https://youtu.be/BPGqfyjv8e4?si=xfmlPf2KdpuaJjLO
My new video on YouTube

If you’ve ever thought "It's like I can't regulate my own emotions", I understand myself really well and I've done so much work on myself, so "Why do I still...

31/01/2026

We are usually drawn the what is familiar, not necessarily what is good for you. This is true with relationships, if we meet someone who feels familiar we have a tendency to be down to them. The problem is, if that familiar characteristic is not good for us, we can still be drawn to it.

26/01/2026

Do you ever doubt yourself even when you know you’re right?
Do you replay conversations, second-guess your perceptions, or look to others for reassurance, even when something inside you already knows the truth?

Self-doubt is rarely a lack of confidence, and more often a learned adaptation shaped early in life. During childhood you may have learnt that self-certainty carried a cost. If your perceptions as a child were dismissed, or your parent always had to be right, or your parents simply ignored your opinions, then subconsciously you learnt that your feelings or opinions don’t matter. You had to mould yourself to what was acceptable to your care-givers.

Over time, doubt can become a way of preserving connection, regulating relationships, and staying safe, even when it no longer serves us.

Self-doubt is not a flaw. It is often a form of loyalty to earlier safety.

Full video is on my YouTube channel.

23/01/2026

As a child you may had to minimise your needs because your caregivers may have responded negatively if you had a need. You learnt to not ask for help, keeping your feelings to yourself.
As an adult you may then continue to not ask for help and not showing your feelings. This can be seen as being distant by your partner. It is not your fault! It is what you learnt as a child.

19/01/2026

You and your partner may have different responses during the same conflict. Perhaps you are fearful of raised voices, as during childhood this meant harm. On the other hand, raised voices and disagreement may have been a normal, daily occurrence during your partner’s childhood. Hence, during a disagreement, you may be fearful of harm, while your partners sees this as a normal part of life with no harm intended.
Full video is on my YouTube channel.

18/01/2026

You learn how to respond to relationships in your childhood by how your caregivers respond to your needs or to situations. What you learn as a child then affects how to respond to people or situations in adulthood. Especially when you are around the people who you love most.
Full video is on my channel.

17/01/2026

Relationships don’t struggle because people don’t care.
They struggle because old patterns get activated under stress.

Couples therapy isn’t about deciding who’s right or wrong.
It’s about understanding what’s happening beneath the conflict, the unmet needs, protective responses, and emotional histories each partner brings into the relationship.

At World of Wealth and Wellness Therapy & RTT, I work with couples who want to:
Communicate more clearly
Feel emotionally safe again
Break repeating cycles
Reconnect with understanding and compassion

If you and your partner feel stuck, distant, or caught in the same arguments, support can help you find your way back to one another.

Book your couples session with Petra
In person (Caringbah) or online
Sometimes, turning toward the relationship, together, is the most powerful step.

15/01/2026

If you had a harmful childhood, one caregiver’s harm may be obvious. However, possibly the other caregiver may have also caused harm; by minimising your feelings, by allowing harm to continue. It may only be during adulthood where you can see this. Because as a child you needed one of your parents to be good. You needed someone who you could feel safe with, you needed someone who would care for you. It is very painful then to see that the “good” parent may also have also caused you harm. Full video is on my YouTube channel.

14/01/2026

I've uploaded a new video on my YouTube channel, Petra Samlow Wellness. It explores self-doubt and its links back to childhood. Take a look!

12/01/2026

Denial is used by the brain as a defence mechanism to protect itself from anxiety or from overwhelm. As adults we may continue to use this as a defence mechanism as it is what we learnt to do in childhood. This is part 3 of posts about denial. Full video is available on You Tube.

11/01/2026

Choosing survival over truth.

Children are dependant on their caregivers, so if there is abuse or neglect, the child may suspend judgement in order to preserve attachment in order to survive.
Full video is available on You Tube.