Thoughts From a Therapist
Family
The ‘family’ category is filled with subjects relating to family systems.
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What Makes Your Partner Feel Loved? The Pathways to Importance
People feel loved in very different ways. A therapist’s map of the pathways to importance – from desire and felt safety to being truly…
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When Politics Isn’t Really About Politics: Curiosity, Culture, and the Operating Systems We Share
Most political arguments inside families aren’t really about politics. They’re a way of asking whether our value systems still overlap. A look at culture…
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Co-Parenting with an Emotionally Immature Parent | Staying Oriented Within Unstable Relationships
Co-parenting with an emotionally immature parent often becomes less about collaboration and more about managing instability. When one parent struggles to hold responsibility or…
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Why Do People Get Divorced? | The Myth We Blame and What Is Actually Happening
Most people believe divorce happens because couples fight too much. In reality, conflict is usually a symptom of deeper relational structures. Understanding differentiation, systemic…
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Double Binds in Co-Parenting After Divorce
The parenting plan is essential post-divorce, as it navigates the emotional conflicts partners face regarding time with their child. It provides a pre-negotiated structure,…
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Five Core Tasks of Adolescent Development
The guide highlights adolescent development’s complexities, emphasizing five core capacities: Regulation, Identity, Foresight, Relationship, and Agency. Adults play a crucial role by modeling behaviors…
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Nature, Nurture, and the Rhythm of Our Relationships | When Strengths Become Overused Skills
This content challenges the notion that all relational patterns stem from childhood experiences, emphasizing the importance of both nature and nurture. It highlights how…
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Adversity and Advocacy: When Suffering Stops Building Strength
The piece discusses the balance between teaching patience and empowerment in the face of adversity. While challenges can foster growth, excessive or nonsensical adversity…
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Codependence and the Quiet Agreement Not to Grow
The content explores how comfort can create a codependent environment that stifles personal growth. It highlights that prioritizing stability often leads to enabling behaviors,…
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When Intimacy Feels Unsafe: Understanding Fear Responses in Trusting Relationships
We flinch from the very thing we long for. This is one of the most painful paradoxes in human relationships. In moments where trust…
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Helping Diabetes Management in Teens | Identifying the barriers to achieving desired A1C
Assisting people with improved diabetes management behaviors has been a specialty of mine in my psychotherapy practice since 2009. My Wife has a…
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Double Binded Communication
Often we send ‘mixed messages’ to people. It can be a source of dis-ease in a relationship when a partner or loved one is giving…
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Fear, Competence, Values and Anger in Parenting Rambunctious Children
This post will investigate how our perceived parenting competence impacts our fear and resulting emotional and behavioral reactions. We will focus on how fear…
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Respecting Elders in a Society of Rugged Individualism
My intention is to stir up a conversation as to a possible answer to why there seems to be a decreasing degree of ‘respecting…
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Parenting fundamentals – The basics for co-parenting your children
Quick summary: I will very briefly outline what I have found to be the most common ideas shared in the immense amount of parenting…
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Parenting questions for couples – Questionnaire to increase synergy, collaboration, empathy, and overall understanding for couples who are co-parenting a child.
The intention of this exercise is to foster an open dialog surrounding the different parenting philosophies and different desires/dreams that each individual has for…
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Play therapy explained | How to use play therapy | Attuning to your child | how and why it works
Quick Summary: Play therapy is an effective and developmentally accommodating way for a child to communicate emotional or otherwise ‘complex’ information to an adult.…
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Empathy building exercise – learning to be empathetic – increasing emotional understanding
Quick summary: In difficult times often we really want someone to ‘just be there for us’ and to ‘show compassion and understanding for what…
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