Dry January - Choose Your Own Adventure Style!
Overtime, things like alcohol, substances, technology, or even shopping can leave us feeling out of control. Doing a sober month can help us feel better and recognize when we need extra support.
When Family Time Drives You Crazy
Dreading an upcoming family get-together? Here are some healthy ways to navigate and cope during inevitable family difficulties.
Together, but Alone. How Did My Relationship Get Here?
Feeling disconnected from your relationship is hard. Learn how distance forms in relationships and what you can do to reconnect with the person you love.
When Self-Soothing Turns to Self-Sabotaging
Have you ever thought, “Why can't I control myself?” What was once a way to calm your pain and emotions is no longer working.
Discussing Sex in Therapy: Why and How it’s Helpful
Why is it important to talk about sex in therapy? While it may be nerve-racking, there are a lot of reasons why bring up sex is important and how talking about it with your therapist can help in your healing.
Becoming Empowered: Moving from Reacting to Responding
What is the difference between reacting and responding? Although the two words have similarities, they are quite different. Knowing the difference can really help you feel empowered and better connect with those around you.
Trust: When to Extend and How to Rebuild
Deciding when to trust is hard, and finding the balance between when to or not to extend trust is essential to protecting your well-being, safety, and ability to fully thrive in your relationships.
Setting Boundaries in Early Addiction Recovery
Recovery takes effort and intentionality. With the right tools, support, and dedication in place, you can provide yourself with the safety net that is needed to find stability.
12 Layers of Betrayal Trauma
Infidelity within a relationship causes a ripple effect that impacts multiple facets of the betrayed partner's life and lived experiences. It impacts our mind, body, and spirit. This multi-layered betrayal results in a type of trauma that is referred to as betrayal trauma.
Befriending Your Nervous System: How to Help Yourself Regulate
Dysregulation occurs in varying levels of intensity and for many different reasons. When you can track and map your nervous system, you become more able to intervene with your own body and emotions.
Gray-Area Drinking: Is It Problematic?
If you have ever wondered why you can sometimes have one or two drinks and other times your drinking seems out of control, you may be considered what’s termed a gray-area drinker.
The Aftermath of Deception: A Roadmap for Partners Overcoming Betrayal Trauma
The trauma of betrayal is earth-shattering, penetrating nearly every corner of life. Although the journey to betrayal trauma recovery is long and painful, many betrayed partners walk through these 5 steps, and with the support of their therapeutic team, overcome debilitating pain and reconnect with an even stronger self.
Intent vs Impact: Which Matters Most in Repair?
Within your relationship, did the impact of your words or actions not match your intention? This happens all too often. Luckily, there are tools to use with your partner that are helpful no matter what the situation was that caused harm.
Gaining Clarity: Is My Relationship Worth Saving?
Do you find yourself wondering if your relationship is worth saving? Or do you feel emotionally flooded by your partner's ambivalence? This is not an easy place for either partner to find themselves. Learning about where we are in the dynamic and taking steps to get connected to ourselves first will support us in making a grounded decision.
Sobriety Versus Recovery: What is the difference?
Sobriety is about avoiding harmful coping strategies, while recovery is about healing so you don’t need them. In recovery, we don’t just avoid our medicators (ex: porn, sex, shopping, etc…). We heal our relationship with them. We discover the antidote to addiction: connection. We identify the underlying emotional and psychological needs we were attempting to meet, and we learn to get our needs met in new, healthy ways that feel good to us and to others.
Fear and Fantasy: Tips on How to Become a Healthy Dater
Re-entering the world of dating can be “intimidating.” However, it also has the potential to be really exciting. If you have experienced the butterflies that come with connecting to someone special, you know what I mean. But sometimes this excitement can take over into something bigger - fantasy. So, how do we enter into the world of dating without falling into fear or fantasy?
A Recipe for Resentment: What is Resentment and What Do We Do With It?
Resentment poisons our relationship with self, others, and the world at large. But what is resentment really? The formula I’ve come up with for resentment includes anger, blame, and secrecy over time. Let’s discuss some ways that we can combat resentment, freeing up our energy, our heart, and our relationships.
Patterns of Sex in Your Relationship: Understanding More with EFT
When feeling distant, some people reach out for intimacy to get reassurance from their partner. For others, having sex to reconnect feels too intimate and vulnerable, especially if they are already feeling disconnected in their relationship. The theory of Emotionally Focused Therapy can help us make sense of these reactions, and the cycles we get stuck in when it comes to sex with our partner.
Enmeshment and How to Set Clear Boundaries
Enmeshment is the blurring of boundaries that separate your thoughts, feelings, and responsibilities from someone else’s. Imagine you are standing in a hula hoop with your partner. If they move, your space is affected. Now apply this idea to a real life situation - maybe your partner has had a bad day and now, because you are enmeshed, you take ownership for their bad mood. Thankfully, you can move into healthy differentiation by setting clear emotional boundaries in your relationship. In doing so, both parties' separate thoughts, feelings, and responsibilities are honored.
When Trauma Manifests as Addiction
If trauma is left unhealed, unprocessed, and even ignored, the pain finds a way to manifest. In fact, our trauma wounding has the potential to become re-enacted through patterns of addiction, including sex addiction and process addiction. Fortunately, there is hope for healing.