Several frustrating and anxiety-provoking days go by. Suddenly, I give up. I can’t do anything else until a technician comes to the house. I can’t get work done except here and there on the computer at the library. I have no choice but to accept that I am not in control.

To give our readers a better sense of what an effective mental health treatment plan looks like, I have been recreating a treatment plan here through a series of blog posts. To see other posts in the Mental Health Treatment Plan series, please click here.

Relationship—to God, self, family, friends, coworkers, and others—is for many of us the most defining, challenging, and rewarding aspect of our lives. Broken hearts, misunderstood murmurings, deep and abiding love, retreat, annoyance, inspiration, even anger, are the messy colors with which relationships finger-paint our days. While work, sports, even spiritual service and other activities may excite or dismay us, when it comes to our relationships we can never quite pin down our feelings—they are always in flux due to the ever-changing dynamics of intention, emotions, and shifting meaning.