What a fun journey it is that leads us to marriage – the spark of interest at that first meeting; the marvel of discovering someone who shares your beliefs, interests, and sense of humor; the joy of reconnecting after you’ve been apart (no matter how long); the breathtaking leap into planning a future ...

Learning to embrace life without a partner You used to be part of a couple. But it ended. Abruptly. Now, you’re quite unexpectedly on your own. Single again. What are you supposed to do now? Whether you are suddenly single because of divorce, death, or an epic break-up, the confused, lost feeling is the same. You need a transition plan. Something ...

Examining the impact of un-regulated stress on your mood You know about stress. It’s that “high-gear” feeling that pushes you to get things done, meet that deadline, rise to the challenge, or focus on an emergency. Feeling stressed is normal and often helps us do what needs to be done. But chronic stress makes life more difficult. Chronic ...

Learning to recognize and manage the meaning behind the dollars and cents How often do you and your partner talk about money? How does it usually go? Is it calm and reasonable? Or do those discussions usually end up insulting and unproductive? Financial fights can get ugly fast. The accusations about spending and irresponsibility sting. Huge amounts of blame and ...

How an experienced therapist can help revive your communication and recover your love Is your relationship over? Is it too hard, too exhausting, or too dramatic to keep you motivated to keep trying? Or maybe you’re simply all talked out. Every conversation is a debate. Every debate ends in an argument. Every argument ends in an impasse. It seems to ...

Why is it that teens and adults with ADHD seem to commonly also combat obesity? While no definitive answer is available, there appear to be at least two links between ADHD and weight gain that are worthy of consideration. One focuses on the natural brain functioning of those with ADHD, while the other focuses ...

Congratulations! You are interested in changing something in your life. You’ve decided to seek therapy. You’ve found a therapist, researched what your insurance will cover, and gotten yourself to the office. Time to relax? Time to turn your troubles over to this professional who will hand you all the answers you are looking ...

Going into couples therapy is not an easy decision for most people. It requires you and your partner to take a number of difficult steps. First you must admit to yourself that there’s something wrong with your relationship and you don’t seem to be able to fix it on your own. Then, you ...

The only sensible answer to this question is the fact that there is still ignorance about therapy — among individuals who could benefit from it as well as the general population. The American Psychological Association reported in 2004 that 30 percent of us are afraid to have others learn if we are seeing ...

When people think of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), many think of unruly kids who can’t seem to sit still or pay attention. However, many adults with ADHD have similar problems, often unaware that they have adult ADHD. Experts aren’t sure of the precise causes of ADHD but common suspects include genes, of course, ...

You cheated on your partner. Trust has been broken and feelings are hurt. It may seem like the end of a good relationship. But it doesn’t have to be. If staying together is important to both of you, be grateful for that. You’ve learned something about yourself, namely, that despite what happened, you ...

So, you found love again. Now you want to blend your families. All you have to do is change everything. Adjust. And like it. Easy, right? Unfortunately, not. Not for two adults in love, learning the ropes by choice. Not for kids managing new siblings, a new household, new rules, and new worries simply because you asked them to. Things might get ...

Roommates are great. They split the rent and share the cost of groceries. They keep the home fires burning so things don’t feel quite so lonely. They do their thing. You do yours. Unfortunately, when sexuality dwindles in your relationship, you may realize that your partner has become your roommate. And things are far from great. Home fires are not ...

Learn how to be a caring, attentive friend to yourself When your best idea fails, you miss the deadline, you forget your anniversary, or you disappoint your best friend, how do you handle it? Do you stress and fret? Do you smack yourself on the forehead in frustration and run yourself down with self-directed ...

If you have recently retired, you might encounter a problem you didn’t expect. Finding things to do was never a problem when your days were consumed by work. You planned to do things before work or after work or on weekends or vacations. The time allotted for leisure activities were framed by a ...

Emotional abuse is also known as psychological abuse, and rightly so. This type of abuse can be progressively traumatizing. A regular stream of verbal abuse, mistreatment, and deferred love wears you down. You start to believe that you really do deserve to be punished or ignored. Anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder are often the slow-healing scars ...

OCD makes a misery of the lives of those struggling with the condition. Their heads are filled with unrelenting, irrational warnings – do this or something horrible will happen to you or someone you love. They can feel the dirt and germs of everyday life staining their hands and can’t rest until they ...

Your child is embarking on an exciting, challenging, confusing, and scary adventure. Between Jr. High and High School many students lose their way, at least temporarily. Attendance suffers and grades drop. Students lose confidence or stumble into damaging friendships. Among the issues your student may be dealing with are: Lowered status: Your child ...

Divorce is hard. And scary. And stressful. And sometimes it’s really, really sad. Ask any child who’s been through it. When parents break up, they may be unprepared for the season of hurt, confusion, worry, and anger their children express. Be encouraged. Coming out of this chapter with a positive outlook is entirely possible. You can help your kids deal ...

Recognizing the fear, defenses, and pain that keep you from moving on Essentially, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a broken “fight or flight “ response. The danger passes, but the alarm persists. PTSD has the potential to hold a sufferer hostage, perpetually stuck in the memory of the worst pain, fear, or crisis of his ...

Death causes grief. It’s overwhelming and painful. We all want to help ease the transition of a family in their time of loss. When they’re dealing with grief, people don’t always behave rationally, especially if the grief is due to a suicide. Suicide is an unusual death circumstance which can be fraught with ...

Recognizing chronic fear and distress in your mind and body Is fear getting in your way? Is your worry way out of hand? Anxiety is not uncommon. It isn’t bad. It isn’t abnormal. The urge to fight or flee a situation is important and useful. Unless, anxiety rises up unexpectedly or shows up too often. Anxious thoughts should not ...

Depression is the number one mental problem in the world and gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals are up to twice as likely to suffer from depression as heterosexuals. A meta-study (study of studies) revealed lesbian, gay and bisexual people are one and a half times more likely to be depressed and twice as ...

How can you keep your relationship from crumbling beneath the weight of a crushing financial crisis? Whatever you and your partner are facing; lay offs, foreclosure, credit card mismanagement, or mounting medical debt–the break up of your relationship doesn’t have to add to your troubles. Survival, for any couple, starts with a strong relational institution, ...

You’re stupid and incompetent. You don’t contribute anything. No one really likes you and they certainly don’t rely on you. Look at you – is anyone less attractive? Don’t even bother trying, because you’re just going to mess this up like you do everything. If a family member, a friend, or a co-worker talked ...

We all experience anxiety from time to time. Whether from life in general, school, work, or relationship problems, the list of causes can seem endless. There are many things we can do to help us cope when our anxiety begins to rise. The following seven represent only a handful of the coping tools ...

You know he or she needs you and you want to be there to help Your loved one is down. It’s more than just the blues. It’s more that a few bad days. If your loved one is battling depression, he or she is fighting for every healthy thought. Peace of mind seems a long ...

Loving and being loved by a pet can be an extraordinary exchange of unconditional love, companionship, and loyalty. Losing that relationship can be devastating and intensely painful. When a pet dies, some people feel like they’ve lost a family member or their closest companion. For children, it may be a hard first lesson about death. ...

At some level, conflict is unavoidable in life. No two people think exactly alike or behave exactly alike, or have exactly the same expectations, so when any two people are together, the potential for conflict exists. The longer any two people are together and the more intimate they become, chances of conflict arising ...

Although depression and anxiety represent two distinct disorders, they often occur together and they can often be treated similarly. To help manage and reduce the symptoms of both, a treatment plan should be developed with the individual in mind. It makes sense to first treat the one that’s causing the most suffering. However, often ...

Everyone knows what it’s like to be sad. Sadness is a normal response to certain events. For example, the death of a family member (including a pet) naturally causes sadness in the survivors. It’s a sadness that might never entirely go away. But sadness fades with time, perhaps revisited on anniversaries. From their ...

Our dictionary describes grief as deep distress caused by death or loss of someone or something you have an emotional bond with. Grief is a difficult emotion, both intense and complicated. It’s also a process. Grief can affect our lives differently. Losing pets, homes, and jobs; loss of money, natural disasters — all these ...

The answer probably is Yes and Yes. Money is the number one topic couples argue about, as reported by men and women in survey after survey. Given the importance of money in our lives, it’s not surprising that many of those arguments are legitimately about money issues. There are a lot of important decisions to ...

You probably believe that you and your fiancé know each other completely and are delightfully compatible, that your present dewy-eyed regard for one another will last throughout your lives. Most couples start out with that same boundless optimism, but more than 40 percent of marriages don’t make it anywhere near “so long as you ...

The easy answer is, “Because she (or he) wants to.” Making your spouse happy is maybe the best reason for fitting in regular cuddle sessions, but there are a number of other reasons why you should stop glancing at your watch and get into the snuggle fest. It promotes bonding. When you engage in ...

How the conversations you have with your therapist are an integral part of the cure. Is Social Anxiety limiting your life? Maybe it scares you to think about making the toast a wedding. Perhaps every interaction is cause for overwhelming apprehension and a run for the nearest exit. Either way, you’re not in control ...

Oh my gosh, there’s a baby in your house. Of course you and your partner have known for a long time that this day was coming, and most likely you have been looking forward to it all along. But now that baby is here, there’s a whole other person in your world, ready ...

Is that you, Jack, your eyes bagged, that outfit you picked out so carefully … was it yesterday? … a wrinkled mess, your nose firmly pressed to the grindstone? Everyone who’s heard the story of the ants and the grasshopper knows that work is a good thing. If that’s so, more work must ...

Creating your perfect wedding together – the cake, the flowers, the dresses, who’s going to sit next to whom – is exciting, exhausting, and fun. It also takes a great deal of time.  Preparing for your future happiness deserves some time too. Realistically speaking, no marriage (not even yours) will ever be perfect, ...

Today’s society places a good deal of pressure on the social status of the way we look: Luxurious hair (and not one had better be gray!), long lashes, the trendiest fashions, and probably the most important of all…how much we weigh. Ugh! The love/hate relationship we have with our bathroom scale has been ...

Despite awareness campaigns and celebrity admonishments to “do something,” there is a kid out there somewhere who will choose to intimidate or humiliate another child today. Again and again, that bully will use anything he or she can to control another child: a cell phone, a laptop, or an old-fashioned face-to-face confrontation will be ...

Depression isn’t really about feeling blue. It’s worse than that. Depression is gray. All the colour and interest is sucked out of life. Everyday is low contrast and low energy. It’s as though the details of your life are no longer vivid and meaningful, but cloaked in a hazy, restless fog. Is this the state ...

Ready or not, babies insist on arriving. You’ve probably already done a lot to be ready for the newcomer. You’ve read a stack of books tracking the fetus’ life day by day. You’ve run through the exertions of labor with a room full of panting strangers in Lamaze classes. You’ve hung just the ...

Hey, you know how to talk, right? You’ve been doing it since you were two years old. You talk all day long, so what’s wrong with your partner that you have to take on a miserable-sounding chore like “communication” to keep things happy? Well, of course you don’t have to change a thing, ...

Stress takes its toll in countless ways. It is commonly found to be at the root of many emotional, cognitive, and behavioral problems. Stress can also cause physical damage. When a person is stressed, a physical reaction is triggered. The body’s natural response to stress is a release of chemicals designed to protect. This ...

Memories of sexual abuse can feel like a screen that separates you from all those around you. They are leading normal, safe, intact lives and you are forever damaged by what was done to you. You live in a lonely land populated just by yourself. Isolated as you may feel, you are far from ...

If you’ve lived even the smallest portion of your life, you have suffered a loss. You may not yet have suffered a devastating loss, but even losses that may seem trivial to others can throw us off our equilibrium – How could your best friend just dump you like that? It wasn’t the ...

Maybe you’ve always known or maybe you only recently were shattered by the realization that you were sexually abused as a child. The degree of your trauma depends on factors like your age at the time, the degree of the violation, and the number of times it occurred. Most damaging though, is how ...

If you have lost a loved one, let me begin by saying that I’m sorry for that present pain. We’re told that grief makes us stronger, and that is so, but nothing makes it an easy journey. Even if you are one of the rare individuals who haven’t yet lost a loved one, ...

Being stressed out is no picnic. You’re jumpy and distracted. Your mind runs over and over the same worrisome situation without ever reaching a useful plan to move forward. Your head aches and so do your muscles. Your heart pounds and your stomach churns. Your intestines – well, never mind. If it gets ...