Two years after I bought my car it started exhibiting some eccentricities. Sometimes, when stopped, the RPMs will spike above 2000. To stop this, with on foot on the brake, I put the car into gear and gently let out the clutch until the gears engage just enough to temper the RPMs back down to…
While equality in a relationship has a high value, sometimes manifesting equality around certain issues or decisions can feel impossible. For example, who gets to decide whether I take this promotion at work or not? The decision might affect everyone in the relationship but do both really get an equal say about which job one…
One of the most common things that I teach members of my couples is how to be empathic towards each other. Once I help a couple establish an empathic connection, most of the other challenges are relatively easy to solve because empathy makes solutions much easier to find and put into practice. As a therapist…
Emotional Relationships Need Empathy I’m going to go into a deeper description about empathy in a subsequent post but for now I’m going to identify that the keys to expressing empathy are (1) to demonstrate acceptance of the other person’s experience and (2) to demonstrate an emotional response that indicates a caring connection with the…
In my last blog post I presented 6 Essential Facts about emotions. These were intended to set the stage for this more advanced review of the role of emotions in relationships and how understanding emotions can help a relationship improve. Emotions are created by our perceptions and interpretations Most of our emotional reactions are significantly…
People have emotions. Yet we receive very little education about our emotions, how they work, or how to manage them in this culture. So, as I work with clients I’m often conducting a certain about of education about the nature of emotions. This is especially true when I’m working with a couple because the currency…
What Does “Good Boundaries” Mean Anyway? It is almost cliché to say that mature people have “good boundaries”. But what does that even mean? Some people with “poor” boundaries let others take advantage of them, while other “poor” boundaried people take advantage of others. Yet having “good” boundaries doesn’t just mean the opposite of those…
Sometimes I hear from one member of a couple that their partner is making a mountain out of a mole hill. This usually is said dismissively. A justification is then given to cast the partner as unreasonable. I’m going to review some of those reasons in brief, refute each of them, and end with a…
When prior couples therapy failed and I am the next therapist, it is a different situation than when someone comes to me for individual therapy after prior individual therapy failed. While many therapists helping individuals have a specific therapeutic orientation (e.g., CBT or psychodynamic), there are few couples therapists who work exclusively in one model.…
Though the lament of the challenge of work-life balance is heard throughout the United States at this time, I feel that Silicon Valley has a particularly intense case of this affliction. Where start-ups are rampant and two or three year old companies are bought for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, the number of…