Don’t know much about biology

Strong relationships lead to long, healthy, happy lives.

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Reclaim Your Lost Parts, You are Worth It

Brilliant Adaptations As adults, other people’s character traits trigger us in intimate relationships Take a closer look at the characteristics that precipitate our mean-spirited response with those closest to us.  Meanwhile, in other settings, we display a loving, conscious, and empathetic pattern.  We respond to triggers with the traits that we most need. Defense responses […]

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Living in the Space Between

I imagine, we all know the difference between a genuine warm welcome and a half-hearted, reluctant gesture that is meant to pass for welcoming. We know this deeply in our nervous systems, well before our brains assign meaning to the feelings that arise from a lack of genuine engagement. Our amazing and brilliant survival system is generally excellent at gathering data and sorting it into safe or not-safe buckets. It knows the difference between warm and welcoming and fake hospitality.

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Close encounters of our times

In 1977, I was both captivated and alarmed, along with the rest of the movie-going world when Steven Spielberg’s dream movie came to local theaters. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a sci-fi movie hailed for its child-like wonder of the unknown. The phrase close encounters of the third kind refers to human encounters with extra-terrestrials. […]

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Good Enough!

How Are You? Good enough! The first memorable time I heard that phrase was when my supervisor responded to my query “How are you?” I was surprised, delighted, and curious when he said, “Good enough!” with a delightful upward lilt and a chuckle. What does it mean to be good enough? Is it “okay” to […]

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Welcome to the Relationship Hall of Fame

Hall of Famers At Bat John Gottman’s research tells us that 67%* of the differences between partners are unresolvable and THIS is the good news. Recently I was talking shop with my brother, whose field of work is vastly different than my own. I mentioned this fact to him and his immediate, and absolutely fabulous […]

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New Year, New Us

As we looked back on the last year, my husband said, “we have had an amazing year, despite all of the hard things that have happened.” I looked at him blankly and said “I heard you say that we have had an amazing year, despite the hard things. And I just can’t feel the amazing […]

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Things to do to calm your inner yikes!

Desperate Times Just when we thought it was safe enough to live again, all of our hope, optimism, and relief were rudely yanked away. Just like that, we are back to living in the reality that there is little we can know with certainty regarding what will happen next in this time of pandemic-monium. In […]

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What is biology doing in relationships?

Would you like to get a cup of coffee? That moment when he first walked over to me, my heart was pounding. I can still see myself all of these years later. I think I may have blushed. He leaned forward and asked if I would like to get a cup of coffee. We had […]

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What was it like when you were a child during the pandemic?

I imagine today’s generation of young people being asked this question by their children in the next generation. This is a historic moment, one that will be a point of demarcation, like the race riots of the 60’s, the assassinations of pivotal men, the Great Depression, and the 2008 Recession. We will look back and […]

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