Trust is an essential component in any relationship, and is especially crucial to the health and longevity of intimate and marital relationships. There are various ways in which couples build trust and intimacy through everyday interactions. According to John Gottman, couple expert, the simple act of attuning to and recognizing your partner’s needs is essential. […]
Being assertive can be hard. You are often socialized from a young age to put others first and pretend everything is ok. Or, perhaps you grew up in an environment were people yelled to be heard. If either of these early environments rings true for you, you may be communicating either passively or aggressively. Assertiveness […]
Most people don’t realize that self-esteem is something that takes work. We assume it is a given or that we either have it or don’t. But this isn’t so. Self-esteem can be improved by spending some time working on three fundamental parts of ourselves: Our ability to value ourselves, to unconditionally love ourselves and to […]
Most people don’t realize the importance of sleep for their psychological well-being. While you sleep, your body is at work repairing pain, stress, anxiety, stabilizing your mood, improving your immune system and processing the knowledge you have gained throughout the day. We often don’t appreciate that our body needs time for itself at night to […]
Why Write? I recommend journal writing to all of my clients as a way to help them sort through how they think and feel. Writing helps to make sense of your thoughts when you are confused, your feelings when they are intense and your choices when there are many. Writing in an excellent way to […]
Within ourselves we have two sets of needs; self needs and relational needs. In relationships, it sometimes seems that our two sets of needs directly oppose each other. The feeling that our needs are being challenged, often leads to difficulties experiencing true intimacy. On one side we have RELATIONAL NEEDS of: Union: To unite with […]