Expressing empathy feels particularly hard right now!

“In order to empathize with your experience, I must be willing to believe you as you see your experience and not how I imagine your experience to be.” Brené Brown All my survival instincts are on high alert and every possible transgression, thoughtless action or selfish choice kicks me into a level of outrage that […]

READ ARTICLE

Breaking Through Projection and Reactivity in Relationship

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” ― Hermann Hesse I must have heard the above, or something like it, at least 20 times before I got it. I remember my epiphany: I was telling a group of friends […]

READ ARTICLE

What I learned observing a Men’s Group at the Imago Center

In today’s world, where we find so much information about how to cope with various issues, from our finances and investments to our own emotional and mental health, many times we might feel confused and uncertain about the choices we should make in those particular situations. Narrowing down to the mental health aspect, we continue […]

READ ARTICLE

10 Ways for People of Color to Deal with Racial Stress

“You have experienced a critical incident and have gone through a lot! Please take care of yourself.” This is something I often say when I travel to regions of the world as a responder to critical incidents. Here are some resilience-building strategies you can employ. Unfortunately, today I cannot say to African Americans “take care […]

READ ARTICLE

How to stay together when you’re never apart: Surviving couplehood during the coronavirus

In the past eight weeks of quarantine, my husband and I have regularly commented that we are not sure how we would have survived a lockdown if our now-grown four children had been toddlers or elementary school kids or even high schoolers, desperately negotiating to be with their friends…We have deep respect and appreciation for […]

READ ARTICLE

The Key to Managing the Stress of Covid-19 in Your Relationship

The novel coronavirus is causing anxiety on so many fronts. It’s the uncertainty of so many unknowns that is raising the collective anxiety around the world. People feel anxious about their own health and that of their loved ones, how to best take precautions and the impact of an economic downturn. The situation changes daily […]

READ ARTICLE

New Growth Opportunities in Stressful Times

The bombardment of the media makes it almost impossible to pay attention to anything else except the very disturbing impact of the Covid-19.   My clients, friends, and family have backed up claims of the CDC that stress during an infectious disease outbreak can include: Fear and worry about your own health and the health of […]

READ ARTICLE

Take Control of Anxiety for Your Kids

Nearly one in three kids ages 13 to 18 now meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder (2018, NIH).  32% of teens report persistent feelings of sadness or loneliness (2018, CDC).  There are many factors that contribute to this escalation.  There is screen addiction and the constant comparison to unrealistically “perfect” lives of peers on […]

READ ARTICLE

Three Steps To “Hearing” Your Partner

Relationship experts observe that even in long-term relationships described as “successful,” differences and conflicts may exist that are never fully resolved. How is this possible? It’s possible because the failure of relationships lies not so much in the existence of differences and conflicts, which are inevitable but in the ruptured connection between the partners.  In […]

READ ARTICLE

Are you having an affair… with your phone?

Do you ever experience anxiety or stress when you are separated from your cell phone? Are you afraid that you might miss something if you don’t compulsively check it? Do you find the seductive pull of social media hard to resist? If you answered yes to these questions, then you might have “nomophobia” (an abbreviation […]

READ ARTICLE