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We all need personal time and space. This may mean alone time, or time with just our friends. Sometimes, fear of hurting, abandoning or rejecting your partner can make it hard to say, “I need some time alone.” Over time, this can leave you feeling depleted or resentful. Or it can have the opposite of the intended effect – you stay home with your spouse or partner, but avoid contact. One of you watches TV downstairs while the other is upstairs on the computer.

Bringing your...

Giving and receiving is essential in long-term adult relationships.

But in some instances it can feel like one person gives too much. In healthy relationships, each person is in charge of their needs, emotions and responses. It’s okay to say no – even if the other person gets disappointed. And it’s okay to get disappointed. It doesn’t mean the other person has to feel guilty or change their mind.

Signs that you’re out of balance:

• You give all the time in your...

When there is personality conflict,
it’s invaluable to have the help of a neutral third party
– someone who understands how divorce impacts everyone,
including parents and kids.

Co-parent Counseling benefits include:

• Keeping focused on the children
• Understanding kids’ developmental needs
• Helping kids adjust to the transition
• Providing a neutral and emotionally safe place for parents to create a new relationship, based on the best interests of their kids.

Co-parent Counseling...

Couples Therapy Groups produce transformations, both internally as well as within the couple relationship.

Being in a relationship can be incredibly healing. It can heal you in a complete turnabout from your family of origin issues. But it can also be challenging, stressful, and feel unharmonious at times when either member of the couple is struggling, or when there seems to be no camaraderie or “in-synch-ness” anymore. Sometimes we are in such different places from our partners.

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=whats-your-love-langugae

Do we make enough time for the two of us?
Often times, couples come to therapy and that’s the only conversation they have all week.

With so many obligations like work, taking care of the children, paying bills, maintaining the home, and social events, couples often don’t have time for each other or themselves. Stress becomes a very dominant theme in people’s lives and they feel like they don’t have enough quality connections with family or in their relationship.

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Everyone seems to think that relationships are things that just happen. Not so. Relationships need to be nurtured so they can develop into good relationships, or they become dysfunctional and fail.

Why do relationships fail? We may notice that we seem to continually get into patterns with lovers, friends, and family that don’t serve us or help us to grow. This brings us to a crossroads of deciding what to do next. One option is to decide not to have relationships for awhile and we throw...

We’ve been doing some really good work in the Couples Therapy group, learning how to build the foundations of emotional intimacy and discovering how to communicate better. The key points we’ve been focusing on are sensitivity to your partner, staying connected to your partner, and learning better methods of communication.

Sensitivity

Couples often have confusion about what messages each partner is sending, especially when the partner doesn’t truly understand their own...

In my previous blog posting, I talked about two of the three key points we’ve been focusing on in the Couples Therapy group – sensitivity to your partner, and staying connected to your partner. The topic of this posting is the third key point – learning better methods of communication.

Communication

There are different levels of communication, and different dynamics that occur in conversation. Sometimes when a person is speaking to their partner they tend to withdraw or act...

In order to create safety in relationships, both people must start talking about their triggers with each other. If you are feeling triggered, you have to first understand what the trigger is, where it comes from, and what you can do to help yourself. So it’s not only insight but also strategy, behavior change, and communicating with your partner. It’s not about having your partner resolve that trigger for you. Often times in relationships, we have our own trauma and sometimes our...