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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Trauma Shapes Our Relationships

Trauma 101 Peter Levine, Ph.D., a pioneer in body-oriented psychotherapy, describes an epiphany he had while treating a woman who suffered from excruciating agoraphobia (an extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places) and a host of other symptoms:  …her body learned that in that time of overwhelming threat (a childhood trauma in […]

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Why go to couples therapy if you already have a great relationship?

If like me, you were raised to believe that therapy meant something was wrong with you, you are not alone. I have come to learn by personal experience and witnessing others’ experiences that therapy can be both a path to transformation and a path to learning skills and tools to maintain healthy minds, emotions, and […]

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Dating in the Age of Apps

A cheat sheet for dating in a digital world Human beings are wired to be in relationship.  Connection is fundamental to our wellbeing, and people who are in positive relationships are healthier mentally and physically. According to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, “Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy […]

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Can We Talk About Sex?

Is there a pattern here? “When was the last time you two had sex and was it satisfying?” Couples coming to me for the first time will be asked this question. I usually tell them that some therapists say that “if you fix the sex, the rest will follow,” and others say: “if you fix […]

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