Moms (and Dads) have their ways. They can be pretty powerful in good ways and in not so good ways. Much guidance and direction are needed when we are young, but when we find we’re still being directed, manipulated or controlled (often in our own minds) by our parents as adults, how do we stand […]
Tag Archives | Self acceptance
A Conversation of Love
Life is a conversation Actually many conversations, but they all share one thing in common. Every conversation is either based in fear or love. This is true for the conversations we have with other people, and this is true for the conversations we have with ourselves—inside our own heads. When we change our conversations from […]
How To Let Go
What do you need to let go of? I work with a lot of couples in my therapy practice. They come to therapy because they are discontented—and brave. That’s why I enjoy this work. These couples that come to me are motivated to make changes in the ways they relate to one-another. And they are […]
Being Human
Feel stuck? How do you un-stick yourself? By being human. I recently had a patient come in, a lovely, fairly successful, quite confident teacher in the field of personal growth. She was feeling stuck in her life. She could not motivate herself to do the things she needed to do to promote her work, something […]
Healing Ourselves
I think that most of us are chasing ghosts. The ghosts are our unfulfilled needs from childhood. Not getting the love we wanted. The validation we wanted. Not feeling valued. Not feeling safe. So, later in life we pursue ways of healing our old wounds, and many forms of therapy encourage us in this direction. […]
Happier World
Can You Redo Yourself? This morning while driving our grandson to school, his mother called him on his iPhone. (I don’t think 12-year-olds should have iPhones, but his father bought it for him and his parents are divorced—and well—you can imagine the rest.) At least he uses the speaker phone so not to expose his […]
Apologizing
What if you thought of the act of apologizing— not as admitting that you were wrong—but as a mature choice that you get to make to reconnect with someone you love. Just to be clear—I do know people who are chronically apologetic—that’s not what I am talking about. I’m talking about […]
Being Kind
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” Dali Lama A patient recently shared with me the difficulties he was having relating with his mother. There were parts of her—certain behaviors and attitudes of hers—that he was having difficulty accepting. He recognized that those qualities in her were not going to change. She […]
How To Free Yourself — part III
Do you want to free yourself? In part 1 of this article I asked if you want to break past the obstacles that are in your way. I suggested that to move beyond old obstacles it helps to ask yourself three key questions. The reason these key questions are so powerful is because—if you answer […]
How to Free Yourself — part II
Do you want to change some of your behaviors? In part 1 of this article I asked if you want to break past the obstacles that are in your way. I suggested that to move past old obstacles it helps to ask yourself three key questions. The reason these key questions are so powerful is […]