Archives For Relationships

Creating Emotional Intimacy

February 13, 2014 — 7 Comments

Intimacy isn’t just sexuality! True intimacy begins with deep emotional connection and then blossoms out into friendship or intimate sexuality, depending on whom you’re connecting with.

Creating Emotional Intimacy

It can be just as satisfying to connect deeply with a dear friend
as it is to connect with an intimate partner,
when you’re both sharing your true self with each other.

The word intimacy can be broken down into four parts ‘in to me see.’ That means in order to have true intimacy you have to allow someone to see who you really are. People often have fears of emotional intimacy. Allowing someone to see who you really are means taking the risk of being criticized, judged or rejected.

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Relationships are the school of life. They give us the opportunity to learn valuable life lessons that can help us to become healthier, happier people.

In my work as a psychotherapist, almost everyone who walks through the doors of my office is struggling with a relationship in their life. One question that people often ask me is “What is a healthy relationship?” I’m going to answer that question today and I’m also going to share 3 important keys to creating healthy, happy relationships in your life.  Continue Reading…

A few months ago I wrote a blog called “How to Heal Your Body, Mind and Spirit,” which included a book review of Dr. Lissa Rankin’s recent book “Mind Over Medicine.”

Today I’ve got a special treat for you. Dr. Rankin has given a TED Talk that I want to share with you. In it, she presents wonderful news for all of us about the fascinating connection between our minds and bodies.

The talk is just 18 minutes long. Find a time when you won’t be interrupted and then sit back, relax and ENJOY! I know you’re going to love it!

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All of us have experienced hurt feelings at some point in our lives. Generally it’s something someone says or does that just leaves us feeling hurt, misunderstood, unappreciated or unloved.

Getting Past Hurt Feelings

Getting through those difficult feelings and getting back to feeling happy again can be very challenging. Sometimes they stay with us for days, or weeks or months, even though we really want to be free of them.

What Causes Hurt Feelings?

When someone says or does something that hurts us, our first impulse is generally to look at what’s wrong with the person who hurt us. We often think, “How could he have said the things he said? What kind of person is he (or she) to behave like that?”

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In Emotional Healing and recovery work, emotionally healthy men often feel like they’re getting a ‘bad rap,’ because all they tend to hear about are the negative, hurtful things other men have done.

Appreciating Healthy Men

Because men have not been encouraged to express their feelings in our culture, many men in the past have acted out their emotional pain in unhealthy ways, creating pain and suffering for their families and friends. But fortunately there are millions of good men in the world, who truly care about the world and the contribution they are making.

It’s important to appreciate these emotionally healthy men in our lives. They make a huge difference to all of us everyday by contributing their kindness and wisdom.

What is a ‘Good Man?’

Women often talk about a ‘good man’ like he’s a rare commodity. It’s pretty common to hear surprise in a woman’s voice when she talks about someone she knows who’s a really ‘good man!’

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Women love to complain that their husbands or partners never express their feelings. Often women get angry because they think that their partners don’t have feelings and don’t really care.

men feelings

In my work as a psychotherapist, I help men learn how to express their feelings every day. I know from many years of experience that men do have feelings, and that when they feel safe and supported, they can definitely learn to express them.

Healthy relationships do require that men and women learn to discuss their feelings with each other. I believe that we, as women, need to help our partners overcome the old programming that says real men don’t show their feelings.

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A dear friend was asking me about forgiveness the other day. She asked ‘What’s wrong with me that I can’t forgive people? Even though I’ve tried to forgive them many times, why do I just keep thinking about what happened again and again?”

The Truth about Forgiveness

As we talked, I realized that this was a conversation that you might like to hear, too. Nowadays, everyone is writing and talking about the need for forgiveness, but why is it so hard to do?

What is Forgiveness?

The Encarta Dictionary defines forgiveness as “the act of pardoning somebody for a mistake or wrongdoing.” Forgiveness is not condoning a wrong that has been done to you. It’s simply letting go of the emotional pain of what happened so that you are free to move forward in your life without your past still holding you back and dragging you down.

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Relationships are the school of life. Through our everyday relationships, we discover our own capacity to love and be loved.

Creating Healthy Relationships

When our relationships feel loving and supportive, our lives feel rich and blessed. But when we struggle with challenging relationship issues, we can sometimes feel hopeless and discouraged, like giving up on life or running away from it all.

It’s Not Your Fault!

If your original family was not emotionally healthy, you may not even know what a healthy relationship would be. You probably feel confused and wonder what you’re doing wrong, because you simply didn’t have the role modeling to know what is healthy and appropriate in relationships.

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We live in an interesting world today. We have telephones, televisions, computers, internet, e-mail, cell phones, texting and ipads, but we still don’t know how to connect heart-to-heart with each other.

lonely man

With all of these modern methods of communication, we should be more connected than we have ever been, yet many of us still feel lonely and isolated.

Social Isolation and Loneliness

The experience of social isolation or loneliness comes from not feeling safe to share your real self with others. This pattern often originates from difficult experiences in your life, such as going through a divorce, the death of a loved one or moving to a new area.

Feelings of loneliness and social isolation can also originate from negative experiences or abandonment in past relationships. Sometimes we feel lonely or isolated when we are carrying huge responsibilities in our lives or when we think we are too busy to pursue friendships.

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No matter where we grew up, who are parents were, who we’ve been in relationship with or who we’ve worked for, all of us have had some version of ‘The Legend of the Lousy Bastard’ in our lives.

‘That lousy bastard’ undoubtedly hurt us, betrayed us, used us, abused us, overpowered us or abandoned us in the middle of some horrific time or situation in our lives.

Legend of the Lousy Bastard

In our personal legend, ‘that bastard’ generally didn’t listen, didn’t care, didn’t try, wasn’t honest, wasn’t fair, wasn’t trustworthy or wasn’t kind. He or she didn’t validate us, acknowledge our right to be human, or give us the love and respect we so desperately needed at that time.

Our ‘lousy bastard’ may have been male or female, young or old, rich or poor, smart or stupid, but whoever or whatever he or she was in the world, he or she obviously never treated us the way we deserved to be treated.

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Finding a safe place to express your honest feelings can sometimes be challenging.

You can do it through finding a counselor or psychotherapist that you trust, through developing a deep friendship with someone in your life, or you can learn to express your feelings in your own journal.

Journaling to Express Your Feelings

Any way of releasing your feelings is good, so long as you don’t express them in negative ways that hurt someone else. But when no one else is available to support you, the one thing you can always do is write in your own journal.

Your Personal Journal

The good news about writing in your own personal journal is that you can literally say anything you want. You don’t have to censor what you say at all. Whether you write in a spiral notebook or on your computer, your personal journal is for you alone.

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Laughter as Medicine

February 19, 2013 — Leave a comment

Laughter is a powerful healing force and the most inexpensive medicine you will ever find! Laughter can strengthen your immune system, increase your intellectual performance and improve your cardiovascular flexibility.

Instant Vacation

Laughter is also an instant vacation. It can help you see the world from a broader perspective, expand your creativity and allow you to feel more deeply connected to the people you love. Laughter helps you release your stress, anxiety or depression and puts you back into the flow of life.

The Many Benefits of Laughter

In 1979, Norman Cousins wrote a book called “The Anatomy of an Illness” where he described fighting a life-threatening illness through humor. His remarkable story of triumph is still inspirational today.

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Stuck in Negativity

February 12, 2013 — Leave a comment

Negativity is very common in our 21st century way of life. Although it is incredibly debilitating and destructive, negative thinking has become our culture’s everyday norm.

Stuck in Negativity

Negative people can be very difficult and challenging to be around. They seem to notice only the negative aspects of anything that is going on around them. They also point out the negative possibilities of anything that could change things for the better. They even joke sarcastically about other people who are making an effort to improve themselves.

Negative energy has become so common that many people think it’s just the way life is. Often it doesn’t even occur to them that their own negativity is keeping them stuck right where they are, with no way out and no hope for a better future.

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Control is a very destructive emotional pattern in a relationship. A controller takes away his partner’s right to make her own choices, through over-powering his partner or using guilt, put-downs, rage, zingers or destructive mind-games.

Overcome the Control that is Keeping You Miserable

Sometimes a controller is obviously abusive, but sometimes he (or she) is so subtle that you don’t realize what the problem is until your relationship has already been damaged beyond repair.

If you are currently being controlled, you may have already lost the feeling of love you originally had for your partner. When someone continually takes away your personal freedom and your right to be yourself, it often leaves you feeling flat, empty, frustrated and disinterested in that person.

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It’s challenging sometimes to know what’s wrong in a relationship. If you’re like most people, you probably want a loving relationship more than anything else. Maybe you’ve tried and tried and tried to make your relationship work and yet somehow you just seem to be going back over the same old arguments again and again.

Is Your Partner a Controller?

Maybe you have already suspected that there is control in your relationship, but you find it difficult to find a clear definition of the issue. If you’ve been searching for clarity, here are some questions you will want to consider.

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Boundaries are the limits that we set in relationships to let people know what we will or will not tolerate in our lives. Setting healthy boundaries is a very important part of having healthy, loving, supportive relationships.

How to set boundaries

Image courtesy: © Thinkstock photos/ Getty Images

The problem with setting healthy boundaries is that many of us grew up in dysfunctional families where we had no boundaries. All too often we had to tolerate the negative talk or behavior that was happening around us in order to simply survive in our unhealthy families.
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I was doing therapy with a beautiful young woman recently when she looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked “What happened to my happily ever after?”

I was struck with the intensity of her emotional pain, but at the same time I realized how commonplace her feelings are.

Happily Ever After

Most of us grew up hearing fairy tales about how everything will work out someday. For little girls, we believe that someday our prince will come and everything will be beautiful after that. For boys, it’s expecting that someday you’ll be that knight in shining armor and save the day for your beautiful princess, and then you’ll both “live happily ever after.”

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Give Unconditional Love

December 10, 2012 — 1 Comment

Love is a topic that is written about and sung about more often than any other word, yet, unfortunately, it is still misunderstood by the majority of people we encounter on a daily basis.

Love is the energy

From the time we are very young, we desperately yearn for love and often we’ll do anything and everything to be able to receive it, even if it means giving up who we really are.

What is Love?

In the process of psychotherapy, many people will tell me they don’t know what love is. Often my clients ask me sincerely to define the meaning of love.

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Stop Tolerating Abuse!

December 2, 2012 — Leave a comment

Sadly, abuse is still very common in our 21st century culture. As a psychotherapist, I often see clients who are tolerating abusive relationships or abusive behavior in their everyday lives.

Stop Tolerating Abuse!

Although I’m always very grateful that the person I’m working with has made the choice to see professional help, I also feel sad that there are so many others out there who are still being abused. Too often, the most beautiful people simply don’t realize what the problem is or that they could make a choice to better their lives.

Why You May Allow Abuse to Continue

There are many reasons why you may allow abuse to continue in your life. Some of these include:

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So your ex has come back into the picture. He says he’s sorry about the past. He says that he really loves you. He says that he wants to try again.

You feel torn. Your life without him has been challenging and difficult. Money is tight. The kids are hard to handle all by yourself. But is it really the best thing for you? Should you let down your guard and let him into your heart one more time? Remember that the decision you make today could affect many years of your future life and your children’s future lives!

your ex4 Crucial Points to Consider

Before you hand him the keys to your heart, please consider these crucial points:

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You probably thought your thought your marriage was going along quite well. Yes, there were challenges and difficulties, but you really believed the good outweighed the bad. Through the ups and downs you hung in, hoping in time that your partner would see the light and decide to treat you with love and respect. You hoped in time that you would be able to live the dreams that you held precious in your heart of hearts.

divorce decree

Then came the ugly word DIVORCE. You were shocked! You cried. You pleaded. You begged for another chance, but the answer was still NO. Divorce papers were served. You were left picking up the pieces of a life you thought you had shared.

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The concept of verbal abuse is still new in our world. Many of us still don’t really know what verbal abuse is or how to deal with it. For that reason, I often recommend Patricia Evan’s book The Verbally Abusive Relationship to my clients.

As a psychotherapist, what I like about the book is that it spells out the characteristics and categories of verbal abuse, as well as our basic rights in a relationship.I’m going to list them here so that you can better understand the concept of verbal abuse.a couple fighting

Verbal Abuse is Disrespectful and Hurtful

Verbal abuse is a negative way of talking that is disrespectful and hurtful. It attacks the nature and abilities of a partner. It can be overt or covert. It can be voiced in an extremely sincere and concerned way. Verbal abuse is manipulative and controlling. It disregards, disrespects or devalues a person. It’s often unpredictable.

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It finally happened! He asked you to marry him! You’re probably feeling excited and a little overwhelmed. For many people like you, today is the day you’ve dreamed of for a lifetime.

All your life you’ve been told that some day someone special will ask you to marry him and that day will be the beginning of a whole new life together. You were probably told that you would get married and build a home and have children and raise a family and eventually grow old together. How very lovely it all sounds!

bride

Avoid a Divorce Before Making Wedding Plans

It is truly lovely when things are right between you and your partner, but there is an important issue you should consider before you make wedding plans. You need to be very sure that this man is really the right partner for you. Do you want to raise a family and grow old with this person? Have you discussed your important values and issues with him?

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Everyone has heard about the high rate of divorce these days. More than half of all marriages are doomed to end. Most of us don’t want to look at the ugly truth of what brings about divorce.

Some of you already know your marriage is in trouble, but you may not be not sure what the problem is. Too often, we are blind to our real issues until we have already done the irreparable damage to our marriage.
Questions to avoid divorce

For those of you who are wondering what you are doing that is making your partner unhappy, I’ve put together a list of questions that will help you understand what the real problem could be in your marriage.

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Your marriage is in trouble. You don’t know what is wrong. You want more than anything to make it work. Reluctantly, you make the appointment for marriage counseling. You show up for the first interview feeling nervous and scared.

Many questions run through your mind. Will the counselor attack you? Will s/he tell you there’s no hope? Will s/he blame you for everything that went wrong? Will your partner tell you it’s all over?

marriage counseling

Feeling Safe and Relaxed with Marriage Counseling

Your marriage counselor welcomes you. S/he tries to make you feel safe and comfortable. S/he lets you know there is nothing to fear. You can relax and let down your guard. It’s safe to cry if you need to.

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