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 Are Good Relationship Boundaries? 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 others with “poor” boundaries take advantage of others. Yet having “good” boundaries doesn’t just mean the opposite of those behaviors.…
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.…
Can Therapy Work If Prior Therapy Failed? I recently enjoyed celebrating the successful completion of treatment with several clients for whom prior therapy failed. In this post, I describe what I do differently when a client comes to me after prior therapy failed. I divide this into two types of therapy a client might have…
This is the final installment in this three-part series on the most common interventions that I use in relationship therapy. In this post, I present four final interventions: Attend to the Relationship Ecology, Nonviolent Communication, Forgiving Injuries, and Sensate Focus. Attend to the Relationship Ecology Especially given that I see couples in Silicon Valley, I often see…
Sometimes when I speak with a potential client they ask how couples therapy helps. This blog entry is designed to give you an idea of what I actually do during my sessions and how each intervention helps the couple get out of the negative pattern that brings them to my office. In this post I…
The Bay Area has concentrated some of the most talented, intelligent, and high-performing people in the world. Often, when people call me for therapy, they are in that high-performing group. They often hesitate in the initial consult because they believe in many of the myths about high-performing people and about therapy. About high-performing people, they…