I was listening to a news program the other day and was shocked by how many billions of dollars we spend on war. Then I became very curious. I wondered: how much do we spend on building peace? Our relationships are getting worse because we are more invested in fighting each other and less invested in building peace…
Emotional abandonment is one of the silent killers of relationships. Its anthem is an ice cold, white noise that is ultimately impossible to compartmentalize. Its color is the darkness of a deep hole. Its smell one of a deserted coal mine. A partner can provide money for rent/mortgage, gifts for Valentine’s, put you on their…
I have worked with Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) throughout my professional career as a therapist and I am an Adult Child. Today, I want to offer adult children and those who love them a positive message … a message of hope. Adult children are typically sensitive folks, sensitive to the feelings of others, loyal, humble…
Many adult survivors of incest/sexual abuse have undergone therapy, perhaps joined support groups and even confronted the perpetrator(s). No matter how much healing we do, it seems that we are never truly healed and the effects of what happened are so deeply embedded in us that they become a part of our core identity. We…
Many of us struggle with Validation and/or Validating others because we have a “Fear of Difference.” The fear comes from: The belief that there is a RIGHT way of seeing, describing, understanding, and valuing everything – i.e what is going on. The limited capacity to be aware that others are different, or to respect, appreciate, or…
I have been with my partner for about 9 months now. He has a reputation as a womanizer, and of late has been showing me this side of his personality. It started with letters from ex-girlfriends that were descriptive of things that they would do to each other, and just today I found that he…
The word anger comes from the Latin “angere,” means “to strangle.” Defined, anger is a strong sense of displeasure and antagonism that arises when a need isn’t met or an expectation isn’t fulfilled. What typically gets us angry is being treated unfairly, manipulatively or with disrespect, especially if it’s intentional. Also feeling unappreciated, feeling threatened,…
There seems to be a common misconception that when we stop drinking and using, out of nowhere we will become these perfect people. Alcoholics and addicts (non-alky’s too) have an inner need for perfection. From time to time in recovery, I hear this thought-process: “I was only bad when I was out there drinking and…
It’s challenging to learn new talking and listening boundaries in recovery. In fact, it’s evolutionary. Our efforts to learn how to talk and listen to the people we want to be intimate is generally interrupted by internal signals within that get transmitted to us from our past. Many of us read these signals as we…