Kicking Toxic Love

The last man that used the words “I love you” used them to control me.  He used them by not saying it back, ever, when I said it.  He used them by smugly making me say it when he wanted to hear it.  He used them by only ever saying them himself when I would work up the strength to try to end things.   He used them to make me feel bad when I didn’t “behave” how he wanted me to.  He used them to convince me of a false future that he had no intention of ever providing.  The words “I love you” meant absolutely nothing. They were alternately a crowbar, a hammer, a master key… in a box of tools of [...]

By |2020-01-16T07:00:51-08:00January 16th, 2020|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

Overcoming Savior Behavior

As a therapist working with clients who express having codependent tendencies, as well as being a recovering Type A workaholic and codependent who entered treatment in 1993, I am well aware of the dynamic of “savior behavior.“ I attempted to fix, heal and kiss all the boo-boos of the people in my life to make them all better. I had a mother who modeled that for me and did it so well. While I know that kisses have medicinal properties, much like chicken soup, a.k.a. Jewish penicillin, I have come to accept that all the love in the world may not completely obliterate the scars left by traumas that some experience throughout their lives. I do have hope when I sit with clients who [...]

By |2019-12-25T07:00:01-08:00December 25th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

How to Really Support a Loved One Who’s Struggling with Their Mental Illness

You know your friend is struggling with depression or anxiety or some other mental health issue, but you don’t know what to say. You feel like anything you think about saying just sounds stupid and patronizing. You also aren’t sure what to do. After all, you don’t want to intrude. You don’t want to be pushy, or bulldoze over their privacy. Or you already feel overwhelmed by something difficult in your own life. Still you want to help. You just wonder, How? Psychotherapist Colleen Mullen, Psy.D, LMFT, noted that many of us worry that we’ll just make the other person more upset or uncomfortable by revealing that we know something’s wrong. Or maybe we don’t realize the extent of their pain. “I’ve seen [...]

By |2019-03-31T09:56:19-07:00March 31st, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

Book Review: Somebody Hold Me

Imagine sending an email to about a dozen friends proposing a four-hour get-together “to do a little experimentation around human touch.” You assure your friends that nothing sexual will be involved, clothes will stay on, and the gathering will not take place in a bedroom. Are you up for that? Epiphany Jordan, author of Somebody Hold Me: The Single Person’s Guide to Nurturing Human Touch, hopes you are. For at least five years, she has been running a business, “Karuna Sessions,” in Austin, TX, in which clients can cuddle with two practitioners as part of a ritual of human connection. In Somebody Hold Me, Jordan wants to persuade people to take the initiative to incorporate more “nurturing human touch” into their own lives, [...]

By |2019-03-28T12:45:09-07:00March 28th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

Why Feeling Left Out Can Feel So Painful—And 7 Healthy Ways to Cope

You see a Facebook post with a picture that immediately gives you pause and—as cliché as it sounds—your stomach plummets. It’s your close friends at a party, and you’re not there, because you weren’t invited. Or maybe you get to work, and everyone is talking about the cool event they went to the night before—and no one asked if you wanted to come. Or maybe it was something else altogether. Either way, the fact remains, you didn’t get an invite, and you feel awful. You feel left out. Why does feeling left out feel so painful? Why does it affect us so much? It’s so powerful because our desire to belong is primal. It’s vital to our survival. As clinical psychologist and yoga [...]

By |2019-03-26T07:30:00-07:00March 26th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

7 Pointers for Setting Boundaries When You’re A True-Blue People Pleaser

When you’re a people pleaser, setting boundaries can feel painful. We worry we’ll hurt someone’s feelings. We fear we’ll fracture the relationship. We think saying no is rude or cruel or not compassionate—and we see ourselves as the opposite of these things. And we simply don’t have much practice with setting boundaries. And so, it’s so much easier to simply not set them. It’s so much easier to stay quiet. But it’s certainly not healthier. Many view boundaries as walls. But, according to psychotherapist David Teachout, LMHCA, boundaries are more like sponges. “Nobody can escape the world they’re in, so we’re constantly being slowly saturated by our experiences until we’ve reached a personal limit and/or ‘squeezed’ ourselves to let go of what has stuck [...]

By |2019-03-20T07:00:39-07:00March 20th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

Savoring Communication: What It Is, Why It Matters

“I’ve always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we’ll have.” – Anna Godbersen New research from the University of Arizona demonstrates how we tend to savor certain specific types of meaningful conversations. Intrigued by the research that builds on evidence from the field of positive psychology that savoring can enhance well-being, relationships and overall quality of life, I spoke with the author, Maggie Pitts, associate professor in the communication department in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona. Pitts studies the concept of savoring in human communication. Her paper was published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. What is savoring communication? Savoring is prolonging, extending, and lingering in a [...]

By |2019-03-19T08:44:11-07:00March 19th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

How to Succeed at Influencing People in Difficult Conversations

The current political climate has made talking to one another easily polarizing and adversarial. Common approaches to emotionally charged conversations often unwittingly invite reactive rigid responses, control struggles, and resistance to new information — reinforcing the beliefs we hoped to challenge. Whether trying to dispel a myth, offer an opposing belief, or impact family members around a difficult topic, we are more likely to succeed if we recognize and use informed approaches, instead of defaulting to the ill-fated instinctive ones below. Don’t convey an attitude of certainty or superiority or try to convince the other person they’re wrong — even if they are. Samantha became fearfully fixated on an idea promoted in a YouTube video that she believed was true. Her dad was [...]

By |2019-03-15T07:00:25-07:00March 15th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

Book Review: Say What You Mean

This brilliant book opens with a perfect analogy: “Communicating is a bit like learning an instrument. Playing scales is essential, but the aim is to make music.” I smiled and entered the book with an eagerness that’s often lacking when I read other books that prescribe a rigid list of rules and “shall nots.” Sofer encourages readers to use this book as a field guide, to try the suggestions and see how they work, and to start small, in low-stakes situations. Fluent, open communication develops with practice, he notes, and this book provides useful approaches to help you learn how to put your own nonviolent communication into practice, and into the world. At the highest level, the book is organized in four parts: [...]

By |2019-03-14T12:24:19-07:00March 14th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments

Book Review: The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

In The Unexpected Joy of Being Single, author Catherine Gray is single and happy at the end of her story. She even realizes that she would still be happy if she stayed single for the rest of her life. For someone with her inauspicious beginnings, that joyful perspective on singlehood was totally unexpected. Gray, who lives in London, spent most of her adult years as a self-described love addict. She was that person who obsessively checked for messages from her boyfriend, who was devastated by each break-up but quickly lunged into the next romantic relationship, who kept a photo album of her exes and devoured self-help articles on finding and keeping “the one.” She unironically said shmaltzy things about her boyfriend such as [...]

By |2019-03-12T12:20:54-07:00March 12th, 2019|Categories: Relationships|0 Comments