How to Heal Defensiveness in Close Relationships
Most of us are defensive in close relationships. If we’re not, we have to interact with people who are. It is the relational disease of our culture and the one that imprisons and destroys intimacy, and prevents love and connection between partners and friends. Why are we so defensive and what are we so afraid of? And… […]
CBS Radio with Nancy Colier and Dr. Pat Farnack
Nancy Colier, Psychotherapist and Author of “The Power of Off” Nancy Colier is a Manhattan psychotherapist, life coach, and author of “The Power of Off.” She talks about how use of our devices has really affected our entire world, and not always for the better.
The Key to Intimacy is Radical Listening
The key to deep intimacy in relationship is listening, but listening in a radically new way. Most of us, when listening, are doing one of two things and sometimes both. First, we are scanning for danger: is there something that our partner is expressing that conflicts with what we experience or believe. If so, then […]
How to Overcome Feeling Insecure in Your Relationship
Most of us feel insecure in relationship from time to time. But for some, it’s a chronic condition that never subsides. Insecurity in a relationship prevents us from speaking our truth, being genuine and honest with our partner and ourselves, and expressing what we really need and want. When we don’t trust the relationship, we […]
You Can’t Change Someone Else But You Can Do This
So many things bother us—people, mostly. But pretty much everything has the power to upset our basic sense of well-being. Our tendency, when things bother us, is to blame the other person or situation for getting it wrong and thus causing our suffering. Once we have identified what we consider the cause of our disturbance, we usually set […]
4 Steps to Stop Blaming
This is the third blog in a series on blame. I wrote the first two blogs to help those who feel consistently blamed, while this installment is for those who do the blaming. It was not my original intention to write a piece for blamers, but I was inundated with (and inspired by) emails from readers who self-identified as […]
Are You A Blamer? How to Break the Blaming Habit.
This is the third blog in a series on the topic of blame. The first two blogs were written to help those who feel consistently blamed while this installment in for those who do the blaming. It was not my original intention to write a piece for blamers, but I was inundated with (and inspired […]
What to Do About the People Who Blame You for Everything
My recent post: “When You’re In Relationship With A Blamer,” inspired overwhelming feedback, both from people who feel they receive blame and those who think they’re blamers. (Encouragingly, many blamers expressed the desire to change their blaming habits.) The questions I raised included: How do we proceed when someone that matters to us assigns us negative intentions that […]
The #1 Most Important Relationship Skill
I received an outpouring of feedback on my recent blog, “What We Really Want and Almost Never Get,” about the profound importance of listening in relationships. The comments confirm that what men and women alike most desire in our relationships is to be heard without judgment and understood where we are. So many have poignantly […]
What We Want Most From Relationships (But Rarely Get)
Most couples come to see me to learn better communication skills—or at least that’s what they say in the first session. What gets described as communication problems, however, are in fact usually listening problems. The truth is, we’re not very good listeners; we don’t know (and are not taught) how to listen to each other, at least not in […]