Practicing Relationships

Practicing Relationships

Do you ever wish you could practice relationships? Try new things where the stakes are low. Make mistakes, learn, come back again, make more mistakes and learn more. Stretch your comfort zone. Take in love, spit it out and be loved again anyway. Take a risk. Learn to...
Yours to Keep

Yours to Keep

“But, can I lose my gains?” sayeth multiple patients over my years as a psychotherapist. No, you can’t. You can’t unlearn what you know. You can’t turn off the lights to a dark room once you’ve found the switch. Growth is permanent. Now, can you distract, deny,...
Accountability

Accountability

Who are you at your relational worst? A crazed lunatic? An ice queen? A critical tongue-lasher? Shiny Teflon? An Olympic runner? In other words, what is your favorite adaptive behavior that you learned early and use adeptly and automatically? If you don’t know, ask...
Stay in Your Lane

Stay in Your Lane

I am not a cyclist. Unless, of course, you count those unsightly occasional my dying in the back row of a Soul Cycle class that my daughter has convinced me to attend as “mother-daughter time.” Nope. Walking, swimming and yoga are more my taste. But, from the cyclists...
Empathy

Empathy

Me too. Me too. No, it’s not about you right now. It’s about the emotional experience of the person sitting across from you. The one you claim to love and care about. But, I can relate. Isn’t that empathy? Yes and no. When you emotionally connect with another person,...