Eight Ways to Avoid Holiday Arguments and Keep the Peace Every holiday all over social media I see snarky posts about the yearly tradition of arguing during the holidays. Maybe it is no surprise then that right after New Year’s Day couples therapist offices like mine are flooded with new clients seeking help for issues…
Befriending the Dragon: Decreasing Relationship Reactivity In attempting to help clients figure out how to decrease relationship reactivity during their relationships, I’ve come up with a metaphor that helps people begin practicing a more confident and peaceful responses. Before I get to that, I’ll describe high reactivity through the same metaphor. Imagine that your partner…
The most common presenting issue I hear is a need for “communication skills”. From my perspective, having done this work for a number of years, is that communication problems are often a result of attachment challenges. That is, the couple is caught in a dance that reflects their individual attachment styles. While there are three…
How to Get Over Resentments Resentments can poison a relationship slowly over time. For that reason it is very important to remove past resentments and to stop the process that is creating new ones. Maybe it will come as no surprise that dealing with resentments is a common problem that I help with in couples…
Couples Counseling Works: When and Why It is common for people who haven’t been in couples therapy to wonder if it works or not. Given that the reason I love my job is the rewarding feeling I get when I help a couple improve their relationship, and that this happens regularly, I wanted to offer…
How to Thank Your Partner Increasing expressions of appreciation in members of a couple can help them repair old hurts and to create new connections. But especially in long term relationships, a simple thank you can sometimes fall flat. This post describes a simple way of expressing appreciation and three ways to deepen the practice.…
Two years after I bought my car it started exhibiting some eccentricities. Sometimes, when stopped, the RPMs will spike above 2000. To stop this, with on foot on the brake, I put the car into gear and gently let out the clutch until the gears engage just enough to temper the RPMs back down to…
One of the most common things that I teach members of my couples is how to be empathic towards each other. Once I help a couple establish an empathic connection, most of the other challenges are relatively easy to solve because empathy makes solutions much easier to find and put into practice. As a therapist…
Emotional Relationships Need Empathy I’m going to go into a deeper description about empathy in a subsequent post but for now I’m going to identify that the keys to expressing empathy are (1) to demonstrate acceptance of the other person’s experience and (2) to demonstrate an emotional response that indicates a caring connection with the…
In my last blog post I presented 6 Essential Facts about emotions. These were intended to set the stage for this more advanced review of the role of emotions in relationships and how understanding emotions can help a relationship improve. Emotions are created by our perceptions and interpretations Most of our emotional reactions are significantly…