Your Brain Can Sabotage Your Relationships Have you ever felt that you are in negative overdrive? Every little thing your partner does is driving you crazy, and you only seem to focus on what they are doing wrong. The reticular …
Category: Wellness
How to Shift a Criticism into a Complaint for More Effective Communication
If you grew up with a lot of criticism around you, as an adult it is likely that you have a loud critical voice in your head. Usually that critical voice is directed inwards, but in intimate relationships, many people …
How to Escape the Toxic Criticism and Defensiveness Cycle
When someone comes at you with criticism, the natural response is to defend. Criticism is a form of attack, so it is natural to protect instinctively unless you know how criticism and defensiveness play out in a relationship. Those of …
4 Tips for Building Resilience
Resilience is “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress” and can be developed by everyone.𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡:What can I do to increase connection …
Tips for the ‘Struggle’ Stage of a Relationship
It is normal to have conflict and struggle in a relationship. When you begin a relationship, you usually spend a while in the honeymoon phase and lose part of yourselves as you enter the intoxicating phase of merging. As your …
Questions for You During the ‘Differences’ Stage of Relationship
This is the phase where we step back from the intense merging of the honeymoon phase, we take off the rose-tinted glasses and ask ourselves if we can live with the reality of the other person. It is easy to …
Why are Family Secrets Toxic?
𝐃𝐢𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲? Keeping secrets in families, especially across generations can be harmful for the family and the holder of the secret.Take the example above. Here the mother and child …
The Five Stages of Relationship
Reminder: it is NORMAL to have conflict in a relationship. Excellent relationship researchers, the Gottman’s, discovered that it was not the number of disputes that determined if a relationship was robust or not, but how the couple resolved the conflict. …
Using the Five Love Languages on Valentine’s Day
We all feel love in different ways. It might be that you could spend hours and hours together, but if you were not touched, you would feel completely unloved. Or it might be that you could be hugged and kissed …
How Can I Let My Partner Know I Love and Value Them?
All relationships need nurturing. I like to think of relationships like plants. If we leave a plant in sandy soil, give it too much sun and not enough water, it will quickly die. No two plants are the same. One …