No matter what category a relationship falls into, it acts as a teaching tool for you to understand the lessons that your soul needs to learn. It can help you to understand, change, or enhance your individual qualities. Every relationship is an opportunity for soul growth.

Different types of relationships have an uncanny way of showing you where you need to work in your life. At times, they reveal your vulnerabilities and insecurities, or your need for attention, approval, and acceptance. Equally, they can identify where you may be stuck in a rut, or where you need love, peace, healing, or joy in your life.

Working as a psychic medium, I have come to appreciate and to look at people on a soul level. This helps me to express love through my heart, and to experience the interaction as a soul. When I’m faced with a difficult person, I always try to connect with them on a soul level—I try to make a soul-to-soul connection.

Trust me, I know sometimes it’s not that easy, but I look at that person from a divine perspective. I try to understand them through my own soul, my heart center, and by tapping into and using my intuition.

I see them as a Divine Soul, instead of what my eyes see or the reaction from my conscious response. It enables me to see the real person and the good that I know is inside all of us. Sometimes that divinity, that goodness that you know is there may be buried. Often it’s suffocated by years of torment, negative behavior, mental conditioning, or unhealthy relationships.

Sometimes the hardest and most painful relationships can act as our best teachers and guides. A few years back, I moved back to Massachusetts after living in California for many years. I took a job as an office manager for a high-powered businessman who worked in the travel business. It didn’t take me long to settle into the new position, and I developed a good relationship with my boss.

Everything seemed to start off really well. However, after a few months, the relationship began to change, as the respect he’d shown in those early months suddenly evaporated and was replaced by demands often barked across the room. He became more aggressive, and there were times when his temper got so bad that I didn’t know what to expect. These were the times when I kept my head down!

I’m sure this is an all too familiar story. Because I needed the job, I stayed on, suffering in silence.

It was early one morning, and I’d just returned to the office with his morning coffee. He yelled another command from his office about his upcoming travel plans before he departed in his usual whirlwind without even a thank you. I sat there trembling, feeling upset, confused, and angry. I thought, “Why am enduring this work relationship?”

As soon as I asked the question, I knew the answer. I was reliving my whole childhood relationship with my father all over again. I was so keen for approval and attention that I was allowing myself to be treated like a child. It was totally unintentional, but at least I realized it before it was too late.

In my eyes, my boss and his behavior was a reflection of those challenging times I had growing up—the alcoholic outbursts from my father after long drinking bouts, the abuse of a torrent of taunts and obscenities, being made to feel small, and living with the anxiety of never knowing what he was going to do next. I was reliving it all over again 20 years on.

There wasn’t any alcohol involved this time, but the same feelings and emotions prevailed. I’d inadvertently taken on the role as a child again. I thought I’d worked through these issues of my relationship with my father but apparently not. They’d risen to the surface again.

The situation was teaching me a painful lesson, but one I clearly needed to experience one more time. I realized that I still needed to work on myself, my self-esteem, and my courage—and to focus on healing my soul.

Unbelievably and as strange as it may sound, I actually thanked the Universe for what it was showing me. I forgave and thanked my boss within myself, and shortly afterward quit the job.

The combination of moving on from that job and some intense work on myself enabled me to break the pattern that many of us get in to with unhealthy relationships. I finally got the lesson. Interesting enough, it was the last job I had before I became a professional psychic medium. You can see why I thanked the Universe for the wonderful opportunity to advance myself.

Today, my old employer and I get along great and he’s respectful of the work that I’m doing.

Sometimes life has a way of putting the same lesson in front of you until you get it. If it’s necessary, you’ll find yourself in a recurring cycle until you finally learn how to deal with it. It’s a way, really, of life kicking you in the ass and helping you to move to the next level.