A gentle note: Couple’s skills are meant to support healthy connection. If something in your relationship feels confusing, belittling, or unsafe, it can be helpful to first read Is Verbal Abuse Really Abuse?   before practicing communication tools. Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now captures something many couples struggle to name: how easily certainty hardens, and how quickly understanding slips away when emotions take over. In close relationships, moments of conflict often fee

Originally posted January 30, 2018. Banish those negative feelings! Nurturing your connection is important. It’s important to connect positively every day! Research by John Gottman, Ph.D., the grandaddy of marriage counseling, shows that for every negative interaction, five positive ones are needed to compensate to keep up a positive balance of feelings. Happy, stable marriages naturally fall into the 5:1 ratio. The good news is you can consciously make an effort to

Originally posted July 7, 2016. Topic: Codependency, mindfulness, and the examined life Kathy Morelli, LPC This interview originally appeared on PsychCentral several years ago. The original article is no longer available online, so the full interview is reposted here for archival purposes. What do you mean by an “examined life”? What does this look like? The examined life refers to a quote credited to both Socrates and Plato: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To lead

Complexity of Marriage Therapy, Part Three: Dr. Sue Johnson and Emotion Focused Therapy: Modifying Adult Attachment Patterns Originally...

Originally posted October 15, 2013. Losing a baby through miscarriage or stillbirth leads causes an increase in suffering, including disbelief, grief, shock, denial, anger, sadness and anxiety. These strong and primal emotions can take a toll on your marriage relationship. Recent research published by Dr. Katherine Gold and her colleagues in the journal, Pediatrics, indicates that couples who experience miscarriage or stillbirth have a greater chance of divorce than coup

This post shares a personal reflection related to perinatal experience. It is offered to foster understanding and connection, not as clinical guidance. Comparing Scars The course of a marriage is often turned, sharply, by incidents that might pass in a moment but can define them for years, until another incident becomes another corner. Looking back on my marriage, there are three of them that I now realise shaped our new family. The first was during late pregnancy with ou

Originally posted April 11, 2012. "Pets respond eagerly to care and attention, offering unconditional love and non-threatening...

Originally published March 12, 2012. Mindbody practices have so many benefits, you’d have to order online from outside the US to be able...

Originally published February 11, 2012. You remember the intensity at the beginning of your relationship: you were enveloped in an...