How Learning to Facilitate PACT for Couples Helped Me Finally Meet the Love of My Life
I had no idea when I took the PACT training to become a couples therapist that it would affect my personal life so dramatically. I can confidently say now that the reason I’m in a secure relationship is because I took the PACT training and learned how my attachment style affected my dating life. Through PACT, I gained the understanding and skills that helped me to find the love [...]
5 Ways to Help Anxious Attachment and Love More Securely
Knowing your attachment style can be incredibly helpful in any relationship, but especially in your romantic ones. Attachment styles are how we learn to relate to the people we care about, formed by how our parents/caregivers treated our emotional and physical well-being when we were young. Anxious attachment is just one of those styles. If you have an anxious attachment style, you probably learned from aloof or often absent caregivers that to [...]
5 Ways To Help Avoidant Attachment and Create Security Now
5 Ways To Help Avoidant Attachment and Create Security Now Knowing your attachment style, or how you relate to the people you love, can be incredibly helpful in romantic relationships. Attachment styles reflect how we were parented, and as most parents are fallible, our attachment styles aren't always secure. Avoidant attachment is one of these styles. If you’re an avoidant attacher, you probably learned from your parents/caregivers that reaching out [...]
Are You An Avoidant Attacher?
See if any of these scenarios feel familiar to you: You’re arguing with your partner and start to feel overwhelmed. Even though they’re asking you to stay, you need to get out of there. You leave and ignore your partner’s calls for several days. Your partner wants to snuggle up with you on the couch, but you start to feel annoyed and angry with their clingy and needy [...]
What People Are Not Talking About Around Consent
The conversation about consent has reached a fever pitch and is getting some well-deserved attention that allows us to look more closely at how we approach sex in dating and beyond. But there’s still something missing; something that I see in my couples counseling practice more often than you would believe: There’s no conversation about how extremely difficult it is for people to talk about sex in general. I [...]
Avoid This Mistake Made by Most Divorced Couples
Pitching the idea of going to couples counseling to your partner is uncomfortable, to be sure, maybe even scary. It can be difficult to address getting counseling because, once the fight is over, you don’t want to rock the precarious boat that finally feels somewhat okay. Maybe you don’t think couples counseling will help because you can figure it out on your own, without talking to a stranger. Do [...]
Are You Anxiously Attached? Here’s How to Find Out
Imagine this scenario: You’re in a disagreement with your partner and things are getting heated. In the middle of the fight, your partner says, “Fine! I’m leaving and going to a friend’s house. I can’t deal with you right now.” How do you feel? If you answered shaky, nervous, abandoned, panicky, or inconsolable, you might be anxiously attached. Attachment styles are the framework of how we relate to being close [...]
Is Your Diet Making You Depressed? How Food Helps Dictate Your Wellbeing
Do you have a sense of how your diet and exercise contribute to your wellbeing and mood? Many of the clients that I see complaining of anxiety, depression, lethargy, or sleeplessness are surprised when I ask about their food and caffeine intake. It’s not that they don’t care what goes into their body, but oftentimes they’re unaware of how what they eat and drink is affecting their system. A [...]
Feel Like You’re Walking on Eggshells to Be Politically Correct? Try This Instead
I had a revelation a few days ago, about a conversation I’ve seen happening online and in person where someone asks for a little more sensitivity around an issue like racism or sexism, and the other party says, “I don’t think so. I don’t want to have to walk on eggshells.” Understandable. We all want to be able to be our authentic selves, and not have to edit [...]
Assuming The Best Of Your Partner
When your partner is really making you angry, do you assume that they’re doing it because they’re trying to piss you off? Or assume that they don’t care, or that they’re just mean, or lazy? You’re not alone. Many of the couples that I work with have a tendency to assume the worst about their partner. For example, when their partner is running late, the immediate assumption is something like, [...]
Why Taking Space Isn’t the Only Option For Cooling Off During a Fight
Many couples think that the best way to get through a conflict is to take space from each other to cool off. Unfortunately, taking space isn’t always an option. There are times when you need to make a quick decision, you’re stuck in the car together, or you are at an event where you can’t take space and staying connected is preferable. The couples in my practice don’t often realize [...]
It’s Not About the Content
Content versus connection Oftentimes when I’m working with clients, their central concern is a desire to discuss issues about work, money, children, or their sex life: aka content What couples often don't understand is that it is very difficult to talk about any kind of content if you are not connected to each other. Trying to talk about important issues while you’re feeling defended or angry leads to fighting, and [...]
How Curiosity can Save Your Relationship
When your relationship is in strife it can feel like the world is falling apart. We can feel even more alone, hopeless and seperate than when we are single. However, when relationships are going well they can be the thing that bolster our lives and help us be our greatest selves. The Dynamic: There is a common dynamic that I see over and over again in relationships. It’s where one [...]
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But Can You Be Your Own Best Friend?
Sure you can Complete the hardest problem In the book And answer The trickiest equation. But can you Sit with yourself When you don't Know the answer And love Your own company? Sure you can Finish all Of your business Faster Than the average Jo. But can you Feel the awkwardness Between you an another When they cry And not run away? Sure you can Make money In the market With [...]
On Getting Fired
Getting fired is a lot like going through a breakup. It can be devastating, relieving, shocking, really difficult, surprisingly easy or all of the above. It shakes your stability and your routine. If getting fired from your job is in the devastating category, here are a few tips: 1) Remember that getting fired is like a death. With death comes grieving and a lot of feelings. Grieving typically has 5 [...]
5 Ways to Determine You Are Under an Inner Critic Attack
Often when I am working with my clients it is clear that one of the major reasons they are experiencing suffering is because they are having an Inner Critic Attack. This part of the self has lots of names. Traditionally known as the Super Ego; it also goes by the Judge, the Gatekeeper, the Critical Parent and many other names. In other words, the Inner Critic is a part of [...]
20 Questions to Ask Yourself When You are Searching for Your Purpose
Many of my clients come to me unsure about what they want to do with their careers. They do know that they want to make a difference in the world. But they are not sure what they want to do, and how they will support themselves doing that thing. Here are 20 Questions you can ask yourself to get closer at identifying your purpose: 1) What (if anything) do you [...]
Expressing Grief Brings Us Closer to Life, In Remembrance of Luanne Blaich
Sitting in my office today with the midday sun streaming through the window, my eyes continue to be drawn to a small bouquet of white roses from the memorial service of my friend Luanne Blaich, held last night. Their beauty is a perfect reminder of the amazing opportunity that Luanne's death has been for me and many others. Luanne died after a 3.5 year battle with Leukemia, in which her brave fight deeply [...]
Transforming Hopelessness- Tip of the week: Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know
Sometimes when I am working with clients they feel hopeless because they have identified that there is something that they don't know how to do. Sometimes this is a capacity that they haven't learned (such as creating boundaries or sharing from their heart). In other cases it is a practical skill that was never taught to them (bookkeeping, scheduling). Sometimes it is just that the future is unknown, and they [...]
Counseling with Coaching for Women
Are you looking to create the relationship and life that you love? Do you feel like you give so much that your own needs are not attended to? Looking for compassionate support to move through blocks in your life? As women, we can tend to give to others to the expense of our own needs. We can be riddled with self doubt and anxiety. We can get stuck in comparing [...]
An interview with Tad Hargrave on Transforming the hopelessness around marketing
Recently I did a series of interviews with people on the theme of transforming hopelessness. I had the pleasure of interviewing Tad Hargrave (www.marketingforhippies.com). In particular, he had some great things to say about hopelessness as it comes up in business marketing (his specialty). Tad is an amazing resource for conscious business owners who want to market with heart. 1) Can you tell us a little about how you help [...]
Citizens of the Earth, take heart
I once read a book on reincarnation called "Life Between Lives" by Michael Newton. In general, I have mixed feelings about reincarnation. Sometimes I believe that it is a metaphor for the many lives that we live in one lifetime. A grand description of how over and over again we are offered the chance to start again. For example, I don't know about you, but my childhood feels like 5 [...]
Transforming Hopelessness #2
"The doorway To your creation Is your wanting. Desire gave birth To the world. Let yourself want my friend, Each wish is a blessed Treasure. Let yourself want my friend, The Earth longs To hear your Whisper. Let yourself want my friend, For your yearnings Are not too big, Not impossible In the scope of all That is. Let yourself want my friend, I promise it [...]
Carried
The eagle soars In circles Just for the pleasure Of the wind Under its body. You too Are carried By the winds of the world. To feel The currents holding you up, Fall Toward your joy.
Transforming Hopelessness #1
Hopelessness—it hits most of us, one time or another. Sometimes I feel like most of my clients are trying to convince me that some part of their lives is hopeless. They have all kinds of reasons that they can't have the relationship, the career, the health, the money or the peace that they want. At the same time, a part of them desperately wants to know that it is actually [...]
The Dragon’s in Our Lives
I love this poem from Rilke: "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." I think about it a lot when I am working with my clients. So often we have strong feelings of pain, jealousy, disgust or rage [...]
Inspiration from Rilke
Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it. Rainer Maria Rilke
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