by Lisa Damour March 16, 2016
When raising teenagers, conflict usually comes with the territory. A growing body of research suggests that this can actually be a good thing. How disagreements are handled at home shapes both adolescent mental health and the overall quality of the parent-teenager relationship. Not only that, the nature of family quarrels can also drive how adolescents manage their relationships with people beyond the home.
In looking at how teenagers approach disputes, experts have identified four distinct styles: attacking, withdrawing, complying and problem solving.
Read More |
Contact Us |
by Shelly Bullard February 15, 2016
As a psychotherapist, spiritual guide and love coach who’s worked with hundreds of people, I can say without a doubt that your childhood plays a significant role in how your relationships unfold.
This can be incredibly frustrating.
We all want fresh, clean slates upon which to build our relationships — foundations that don’t carry the wounds from our past. But it’s not that easy.
Read More |
Contact Us |
by Stan Tatkin December 1, 2015
We fall in love at close proximity. I mean real love, not the imagined kind that some can conjure up through fantasy or at a distance, or that is really just lust masquerading as love.
The eyes play an important role in igniting real love. When you gaze into your partner’s eyes, you can see not only his or her essence but the entire play of the nervous system. You can witness the live, exciting, and rapidly changing inner landscape of emotion, energy, and reality that belongs to and defines your partner.
Read More |
Contact Us |
by Dr. Neha Sangwan
There’s usually something that makes us anxious. No matter how strong your confidence in certain arenas, there may be other areas that totally freak you out. While I can feel at ease in the midst of a medical crisis, I completely panic when swimming in deep water — even if I can see the bottom. That anxiety began after I saw the movie "Jaws." I’m serious.
But fear can also play a very useful role in our lives. Anxiety can help teach us to focus and meet a deadline. It can also motivate us to prioritize going to the doctor to get checked out. That’s a healthy relationship with anxiety.
However, when anxious thought patterns become the norm, it can bring on everything from mild physical discomfort to heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and even the dizziness of a full-blown panic attack. I’ve worked through bouts of unhealthy anxiety with myself, my family and hundreds of patients, to help resolve their physical symptoms through means of self-expression.
If you suffer from any form of anxiety, here are five quick, yet powerful steps to help you break free from this stressful pattern:
Read More |
Contact Us |
When I think back to my younger self, I wince at my ignorance about depression. Back then, I thought I didn't know anybody affected by it. Only later did I realize that there were indeed victims of depression close to me — it was just that they hadn't admitted to it and had passed off their symptoms as something more acceptable.
Now, nearly 20 years after being diagnosed myself, after a long battle and my eventual recovery, here’s what I wish I had known about depression:
Read More |
Contact Us |
Romantic relationships can create a valuable opportunity for happiness, love and personal development. One of the keys to achieving these things, is for both partners to be commit to examining the role they play in the relationship dynamics.
If you are ready to learn more about the part you are playing in your relationship, take some time to honestly reflect on the following four questions.
Read More |
Contact Us |
Three Daily Rituals That Stop Spouses from Taking Each Other for Granted
Don’t let your wedding day be the last day you truly appreciate your spouse
By PETER MCFADDEN JUL 16, 2015
When my wife and I got married, more than twelve years ago now, we were convinced that we would have a happy life together. Our courtship was exciting, and our wedding day was a dream. Little did we know that a switch flipped in both of our heads on the day we said “I do.” Indeed, the very next day—the first full day of our married life—my wife and I would begin taking each other for granted.
It’s only in looking back that I can understand what happened early in our marriage. At the time, the change was so gradual that we didn’t even notice it.
Read More |
Contact Us |
Why Do I Experience Anxiety?
Everyone experiences anxiety. Anxiety is functional in terms of acting as an inner warning system for danger. Anxiety becomes overwhelming when we are fearful of too many possible threats that don’t truly exist in reality for us. The difference between feeling overwhelmed by anxiety and having a good amount of threat-aversion anxiety that is needed to keep us safe, is learning how to watch for what is necessary anxiety and what is unnecessary anxiety. We must catch the anxiety that is unnecessary and replace it with more reality based thinking.
Here are some tips to catching that pesky unrealistic anxiety.
Read More |
Contact Us |