Molly, 38 and single, entered therapy very depressed and hating herself. Her goals were to honor her own needs, be in a romantic relationship and feel more fulfilled at work. Although feeling desperate and as if she was beyond hope, Molly had nowhere else to turn. Growing up, Molly’s father was neglectful, abandoned the family, […]
1. You are attracted to each other. We start our relationships for a number of reasons. These reasons include physical attraction. While attraction will probably ebb and flow throughout the life of the relationship, you generally have to have it to begin with, if you are going to have it later. If either of you […]
(Permission by client granted; names and details changed.) Sally, a married 46-year-old mother of 5, came into therapy overwhelmed with the demands of her life. She was in extreme emotional pain. Sally was distraught with grief due to witnessing her youngest child, Cindy, have a stroke and require multiple brain surgeries shortly after her birth. […]
I wrote this article because this is an area where I can get scared. When I am in the state of needing to talk about something, and the other person gets triggered, I can feel myself tense up. My own history of not feeling heard emerges. I had to learn how to not keep trying […]
Sometimes our wounds collide in such a way that we hit a roadblock. One of us has an intense need to talk about something. The other can’t bear hearing about it.
When wounds collide, we suffer and we don’t feel safe. Our partner becomes somebody we no longer trust. It is one of the most painful aspects of a relationship. When we are scared, we act in ways that do not help our relationships. When we feel safe, our relationships can blossom.
Updated June 23, 2020 Looking Inward – Making Sense of Ourselves Pain can cause us to seek psychological health I witness a lot of pain in my work. People don’t come to see me because everything in their lives is working. They come to see me because something isn’t working because they are in pain. […]
Think about your relationship or what you imagine your relationship will be like. What do you long for? What do you dream about? What are the feelings you are looking for? Connection? Love? Safety?
It is a new year. Many of us have been reflecting upon the past year, and looking forward to a different time. For many, the past year has felt frustrating, frenetic and filled with limitations. Perhaps we will find more awareness, possibility, and peace in 2010. The Sanskrit word yoga has many meanings and is […]
Updated June 24, 2020 Surrender into Support Learning to go with the flow is essential in times of great change. As Choquosh, a Native American storyteller states, “The elders have sent me to you today to tell you that NOW is like a great rushing river. And this great rushing river will be experienced in many […]
“The more quickly either person goes from disappointment or hurt to anger, defensiveness, or emotional withdrawal and remains stuck there, the less that person is capable of having a relationship and the more the other person will have to walk on eggshells.” – Mark Goulston
When relationships stop working, there is often a wound that needs to be attended to. Many of us grew up in homes with various kinds of disconnection occurring. Whether our caretakers were preoccupied, angry, needy or impatient, we may at times have felt uncared about. We may have lost someone we loved, or have been completely disregarded or abused. As children, we had to survive this pain. We may have learned to push our feelings out of our awareness. Ultimately, we developed ways to tolerate and survive these disconnects. These are the survival techniques that we have brought into our current relationships. And they often don’t work.
Have you ever watched a child play? They have fun and explore within the context of what they know. Before they can walk, they play sitting. With each developmental step, the range of their play increases. As adults, we have the ability to play in bigger and bigger ways. But sometimes we don’t. Instead, sometimes […]
George had been very upset about the actions of an ex friend. Susan could feel his pain and asked him if there was anything that she could do to make him feel better. George replied, “I could think of something”. Susan retorted, “I wasn’t talking about sex”. George responded, “So what’s new?”
In relationships, each person lives in a different world. We will never live in the same world; never have the same past, the exact same experience or way of understanding our lives. We have different wounds and different sensitivities. When we are listened to, we feel less alone. We crave to be listened to without argument or interruption, to simply be heard. One of the things that make a relationship work is when we can listen to our partner, and conversely, know our partner will listen to us.
Post updated April 24th, 2020 Changing Victim Consciousness to Self Empowerment Sue and her husband Dave were talking in the morning before leaving for work. Dave mentioned that he had made dinner plans with a friend later that week. Sue immediately bristled. “You never make plans with me, everyone else is always first”, she hissed. […]
We sometimes believe that if we are “good” people, good things will happen to us. This is not entirely true. While some people are intrinsically better at certain skills such as making money, having relationships that work, or making art than others, it has nothing to do with their inherent worth. Instead, it has to […]
Making love last is a concern for anybody with a relationship history that has included disappointment, pain and loss. How do we do it differently the next time around?
What starts for so many as a blissful connected loving state often turns into sadness riddled with problematic behavior and seemingly un-resolvable conflicts.
How do we change the direction of our lives? Despite our histories, why do some people create fulfilling lives for themselves while others do not? As a therapist, and as a person who has made her life about self-transformation and then later, the transformation of others, this is easy to see. But for many people, especially those who do not know much about “therapy,” and the process it entails, this is more of a mystery.
How do we get stuck? Sometimes, our hearts hurt and need healing. We may find ourselves stuck in a painful or unsatisfying situation: it could be a relationship, a job, a pattern of behavior, or something else. Maybe I am in love with somebody who is not available or abusive, but I feel that I […]