Why It’s So Hard to Build Healthy Relationships After Growing Up in Chaos
When we grow up in emotionally chaotic households, we face challenges in establishing healthy adult relationships. When chaos is the norm, we get accustomed to living with what feels bad and scary. We learn to silence our experience because it feels too dangerous to speak up for ourselves or call anyone out on their behavior. As children, […]
Are Healthy Relationships Possible After Growing Up in Emotional Chaos?
When we grow up in emotionally chaotic households, we face challenges in establishing healthy adult relationships. When chaos is the norm, we get accustomed to living with what feels bad and scary. We learn to silence our experience because it feels too dangerous to speak up for ourselves or call anyone out on their behavior. As children, […]
Freedom: Taking Ownership of Your Own Happiness
“Lily doesn’t listen,” had been Shelly’s refrain about her partner for years. She had complained many times to me about this issue, and yet somehow her wife’s behavior didn’t change, and Shelly’s anger and frustration about it also didn’t change. Lily’s inability to listen had created tremendous conflict in the family. A conversation would happen over dinner, […]
Is Your Relationship Evolving or Devolving?
Viv, a composite client, has been married for 25 years. For the past 10 years, she and her husband Alan have experienced intense conflict and emotional turbulence. Neither partner, however, has been willing to leave the marriage, and there are increasing signs that the relationship may indeed find its way back to goodness and peace. And yet, despite glimmers of […]
When It’s Always Someone Else’s Fault
Bill came to see me because his wife “never takes ownership of her own behavior.” Bill is married to a blamer. No matter what difficulty she experiences, there’s always someone or something else to blame for it, but not her. As he put it (with exasperation), “She is never, ever, ever, but I mean ever the […]
How to Protect Yourself From Passive Aggression
Mary told her husband (respectfully) that his comment felt hurtful. She suggested that he could have spoken to her differently and offered a response that would have felt supportive and kind. Her husband erupted with anger. Who was she to be judge and jury of him? He wasn’t interested in being controlled by her with […]
How to Accept What We Really Don’t Want to Accept
Right now there’s something going on in my life that’s very difficult, something that I definitely don’t want as part of my life. I don’t want this to be my reality and yet it’s clear that all of my wishing it weren’t so has done nothing to make it not true. As is always the case: […]
When the Truth Sets You Free
For years, I’ve had an ongoing conflict with a family member. It’s a conflict that I think many of us can identify with. The issue, in a nutshell, is that this other person believes that I should be providing something for her that (she believes) I am not providing. And, she believes that not providing this for her […]
Because Our Thoughts Make Sense Doesn’t Mean They’re True
Trying to find peace with the mind is like trying to open a lock with a banana… Carol came to see me with a serious agenda. She and her husband had had a disagreement the evening before our session and Carol wanted to explain to me why her husband had said what upset her, and […]
Mindful Speech: Using Your Words to Help Not Harm
When we want our kids to express themselves in ways other than tantrumming or throwing peas at the dog, we say “Use your words.” But I often wonder, do adults really know how to use our words skillfully, in ways that help and don’t harm? This morning I was on a train listening to a mother […]