Did you grow up believing that anger is wrong?

Maybe your parents told you, "we don’t do anger in this house.” Maybe expressing that you were upset led to orders to calm down, stop being so dramatic or to cheer up. Or maybe you were ignored whenever you were acting in a way that suggested you were unhappy or frustrated. Maybe it is your partner who responds toward you in this way today.
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Whether it’s explicitly stated or implied, inhibiting anger prevents us from having a healthy relationship with our emotions.

Growing up in an environment where certain emotions were not welcome limits our willingness to authentically experience all of our emotions. It creates feelings of shame that cause us to miss essential messages from our minds and bodies. 

It is critical to cultivate an understanding within yourself that all feelings are okay. There’s nothing wrong with worry, jealousy, or anger. To the contrary, the ability to experience all of our emotions is a key component of being a hea...

Attention and Intention:

2 Powerful & Extremely Potent Elements for Personal Transformation

INTENTION
Mind-body therapies and practices employ two complimentary processes: top-down processes and bottom-up processes.

Top-down processes begin in the mind and include honing one's attention and setting of one's intention.

Research has shown that regulating attention and setting an intention contribute to decreased psychological stress.

Regulating attention and setting an intention also impacts body systems, hypothalamus-pituitary axis and sympathetic nervous system activity, which modulate immune function and inflammation. Top-down processes are starting with the mind to influence well-being in both body and mind.

Bottom-up processes begin in the body. Bottom-up processes include breathing techniques and movement practices, which influence the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and nervous systems, hypothalamus-pituitary axis and sympathetic nervous system activity, which create po...

 What is Courageous Authenticity?

Courageous authenticity is:

• Outwardly expressing your true self;
• Having the courage to speak and be true to what is true for you in your heart without altering or betraying yourself in order to please another;
• Daring to share your uniqueness with the world.
•  Courageous authenticity involves alignment between our hearts and our brains.

Courageous authenticity begins with the relationship we have with ourselves and then moves outward into our relationships with others.

 How can I apply courageous authenticity to my life?

Think of an experience you have had either with a person (with a partner, friend, roommate, family member, neighbor, co worker, etc.) or in an area of your life where you wanted to be authentic, but you were not true to your authentic self.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What am I afraid would happen if I shared my true self with this person?

2. How will not sharing my true self with this person make me feel?

3. ...

Looking-Glass Self Theory

The looking glass self theory suggests that we evaluate ourselves based on how we believe others see us and feel and act accordingly.  

The theory suggests we develop our self-concept in social settings by observing the way others perceive us. Social interaction acts like a type of mirror .

The theory details evaluating ourselves based upon how others see us in 3 steps:

1. When we are in a social situation, we imagine how we appear to others.
2. We imagine the way others in the social situation see us and how they are judging us.
3. We develop feelings and responses to the perceived judgments.

 We observe the other's posture, their words, whether or not they make eye contact,their level of attention toward us, and their body language in order to determine who we are in another person's eyes.

It is in our human nature to strive for alignment between our internal and external worlds. This is where the theory becomes controversial or the exercise of using...

Self Compassion

You had a hard day. You did not meet your productivity goals. You said something that hurt your friends feelings. In any of these situations, most of us would automatically be hard on ourselves. To be kind to ourselves might feel self-indulgent or guarantee we continuing making the same mistakes.

 Self Compassion isn't self-indulgent.

When we acknowledge our emotions in a non-judgemental way we process our experience in a way that allows us to learn from it.  You are not wrong for feeling pain, sadness, regret or any emotion.

Imperfection is the human condition.

When we accept that we are still growing and learning and subject to making mistakes, we acknowledge our humanness and can realize that we are not alone.

Self-compassion means treating yourself as kindly as you would treat a friend who needs that support.

Self compassion includes adopting healthier behaviors that support your physical and emotional strength.

Being hard on ourselves isn't motiva...

How many times have you heard the warning not to assume our partner can read our minds?  This tip is often proffered just after we have shared that we want something from the relationship that we are not getting. Asking for what we need increases the likelihood of having our needs met in the relationship.

Our needs being met is not the only goal of relationship. With our needs met we may still be lonely. This is especially true if we don't feel a connection with our partner that is strong enough to support healthy conflict.

If we seek deeper intimacy and connection in the relationship, we must be willing to face conflict with each other and in the relationship.

I want to share one extremely potent communication technique that couples can use to deepen their connection with each other and their ability to work through conflict.

Narrating Inner Experience

Narrating Inner Experience is a great technique for deepening understanding and intimacy in your relationship.

What is narrating...

After many years working with happy and unhappy couples, one element I have found in successful and enduring relationships is for both people to actually love their partner each day.

More than grand gestures.

More than a recitation of your continuing promise to always, always be there.

Love as an active verb.

Love as an act each day.

Every day.

Even when angry.

Even when busy.

Make the conscious choice to indeed love your partner.

What that looks like will depend on the context of that very day.

What is going on in their world today? In yours?

Be curious about their inner experience.

What might be capturing their thoughts and feelings today?

What is one small thing you could do that would be felt as an act of love on this day?

What is one small thing you can do to show:

I see you.

I care about you.

I'm excited to be with you.

We're in this together.

 Looking for help breaking out of destructive communication patterns? Schedule your Therapeutic Relationship Co...

What Does Friendship Mean to You?

Explore this list of questions for insight and clarity into the meaning of friendship in your life and in relationship with your partner.

• What does it mean to you to be a good friend? Do you feel that each of you is a good friend in this relationship?
• Is it important to have a balance between giving and taking in this friendship? How are you doing in that regard?
• How important is it for you to be able to express your true feelings to one another? 
• Is it okay if you and your friend tell each other when you feel angry, sad, or afraid?
• What’s the role of acceptance in this friendship? Can you rely on one another to feel affirmed? Supported? Valued? Is that important to you?
• What’s the role of truthfulness in this friendship? Is it important for you to share honest opinions? Is it okay to disagree?
• Is it okay to feel jealous or resentful if this friend has close relationships with other people? Is it okay to express those feelings?
• How important
...

Withdrawal, Blaming, and Agreeing to Never Disagree

Conflict with a partner or someone we care about can feel intensely uncomfortable. To avoid the discomfort, we may engage defense mechanisms such as withdrawal, blaming, and agreeing to never disagree.

Withdrawal

One way we protect ourselves from the discomfort of conflict is to withdraw from the person with whom we are experiencing conflict.

Withdrawal is a defense mechanism that is enacted in different ways.  For some, withdrawal from conflict looks like checking out or acting distracted. For others, withdrawal looks like shutting down emotionally and/or sometimes physically.  Stonewalling is another common form of withdrawal. However, of all the ways to enact withdrawal from conflict, the one seen most frequently is pretending we don't care.

Mindy shared that she cultivated a cool girl persona when she was in her at twenties.

"I pretended I didn't care about anything. If whoever was my partner at the time wanted to do thing...

Kaileen shared,

"I am a fighter. I'm an only child. My room was always very quiet. Leaving my room, I did a lot of watching and observing. I observed my parents either arguing or ignoring. My father was consistently the parent with the power. I wanted to defuse their fiery and alternately icy cold encounters.  I wanted their conflict to stop so I did all that I could to please my parents and be the perfect daughter."

As children, we lack the power to influence our environment.

We want the bad things taking place around us to stop. We want to make things better. Kaileen's power stopped at the border of what she could draw attention to or draw attention away from.

Marvin shared that as a teenager he fought with his parents at every turn. His way of protecting himself was to fight for what he believed was right or to prove that he was right and that his parents were wrong.

Marvin's mother was emotionally manipulative and engaged in gaslighting. Gaslighting is to manipulate a...