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…
I think we look at love all wrong! Especially when we get hurt. We blame love. But love doesn’t hurt us. Someone who doesn’t know how to love hurt us, and we get confused between the two. I also think that after we’ve been hurt by something that what wasn’t love we build cages around…
Love is not a prison. It’s not butterflies in your stomach. That’s just chemistry. Love isn’t blind; it sees but chooses not to make a fuss. Love isn’t yesterday’s offenses brought forward to support today’s argument. It doesn’t slam doors or smash things. Call insanity by its name lest it be mistaken for something else.…
Thich Nhat Hahn wrote, “Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.” In the conundrum of being human…
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…
Infidelity happens for plenty of reasons. None of them good. It happens because there’s a moment when the opportunity is wide open and full of aliveness and temptation, it’s exciting, it’s there and it acts like it can keep a secret; and as though it won’t do any damage at all. One small, stupid, opportunistic…
Do you know what keeps conflict and the power struggle in place? Yep! Criticism. Criticism kills love. Criticism can kill a marriage. There is no such thing as constructive criticism in intimate relationships. When we criticize others we hurt them and we hurt ourselves. When we criticize our partner we freeze them in the very…
The “shadow” is a psychological term for everything we cannot see in ourselves. The shadow side are essential aspects of our personality that we have learned to hide or suppress in order to protect ourselves. I understood how important knowing my shadow was when I began my journey in 12-step recovery and again in my clinical…
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…