Holidays don’t always bring out the best in families…no matter how hard you may try. This is the time of year when individuals often succumb to the “perfect family” goal. Furniture advertisements abound, as do flooring ads. At this time of year more than any other, we want our homes–and our families–to be perfect. The […]
If you’ve ever been around a two year-old, you’ve seen defiance. At two and a half years, most children become excellent at saying “No!” From a developmental perspective, we know that kids this age are just learning to separate themselves as individuals. They protest and refuse almost everything and they usually do it loudly. These […]
After several weeks or months of therapy, some of clients just go away. And this is okay, although I do prefer them to cancel or just not reschedule. No shows are a waste of my time and are particularly frustrating when I have others waiting for open appointment times. Still, I get it. Knowing how to leave […]
“I have 2 sons and a daughter. My oldest son is married 10 years with 3 kids. His oldest is a step-daughter, who’s 15. He also has 2 younger sons, ages 10 and 5. When my daughter came to visit recently, I tried to spend as much time with her as I could. She invited my daughter-in-law to go shopping […]
“My father has admitted to having an affair with a woman a few years ago. At the time, my mother was very upset and even threatened to leave, but somehow they worked it out. However, he still seems to be seeing this woman. They talk on the phone for hours at a time, he visits […]
We live in a very complicated world and sometimes we get depressed. Many choose to take medications to help with this, but a recent Harvard study showed that depression medication–for those who are mildly to moderately depressed–has no more impact than that of a placebo. For the severely depressed, medication was found to have more effect.For some […]
Everyone has moments they’re not proud of–mistakes they made or bad choices they regret. Some, though, have secrets they hide in shame. Clients sometimes tell me about these, confessing in hushed, halted voices to sins they can’t forget or forgive themselves for.They fear the consequences of these secrets ever becoming known, but more than this, they […]
“My husband and I have a happy healthy relationship for the most part, but it changes when he goes to work. He works out of town every other week and it seems like every time he leaves we start arguing. The minute he gets home we are as happy as can be. I don’t know […]
Let’s just start off by saying there are usually many right ways to accomplish whatever, but many individuals still insist they’re right about pretty much everything.Admittedly, being right feels good. We’re like kids in the classroom, eagerly raising our hands when we know the answer. We love winning–being right!–so much that many of us are tempted to cheat […]
We focus a lot on resolutions at the first of the year–often the same ones every year–and after getting a gym membership and a personal trainer, subscribing to a diet service or promising ourselves we’ll live better lives in various ways, we often fail. Let’s admit it, sometimes we suck. We don’t tell our bosses […]