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Therapists’ BlogSharing Inspiration from my Volunteer Work
There’s a scene in The Little Mermaid after Ariel trades her voice for legs and makes it to land to have dinner in Eric’s palace. New to the human world, she picks up a fork – and starts brushing her hair with it at the table.
The audience laughs, knowing surely this is not what a fork is for!
This whimsical and lighthearted scene may seem fit for just Disney movie fantasy, but I can tell you it also rings true for a group of kids in Africa.
Over the last 8 years, I’ve been working in resettled refugee communities in Kenya. With the organization Village Impact [formerly called World Teacher Aid], Pete and I and our daughter Molly have helped build 14 schools including 120 classrooms and helped educate over 5,000 students. … Read more... Fighting Chronic Misunderstanding about Traumatic Brain Injury
By Lori Weisman, MA, LMHC
I want to share with you my reaction to the recent news story reporting President Trump’s remarks about the concussions that American service members received from the blast in Iraq. The original number was 34, but as of January 29, the Pentagon reported over 50 troops sustained brain injuries. This tragedy and the news that followed went straight to my heart since what we heard about brain injury is so far from the truth. I specialize in helping clients with traumatic brain injury, and I have seen the very real and very debilitating fallout of such injuries.
Here is some of what was said:
“….I… Read more... Building a Foundation for Working with Highly Distressed Couples
When working with a couple that’s in deep distress, it can be a challenge to get each partner to look at his or her own role in the problems. More often than not, both partners blame and try to make the case that the other is at fault. What neither partner wants is for you to expose their vulnerability.
I have an example from nature that illustrates what this looks like in couples’ therapy. It’s about the killdeer – a bird that lays its eggs on the ground. When a fox or a predator gets close to the nest, the momma bird jumps up and spreads her wings wide to attract attention. Then the bird drops one of its wings to the ground as though injured.… Read more... Couples and Addiction
My advanced online training group recently has been focusing on working with addiction issues in couples therapy. For this blog, I thought I’d share some important insights from Sue Diamond, a couples therapist who specializes in treating addiction.
Many couples come to therapy with addiction as an undisclosed issue. In fact, the addict has had many years, maybe even decades, to build up defenses that unconsciously deflect their awareness and prevent them from facing their addiction.
Also, when a couple decides to come for therapy, confronting an addiction may not be their top priority. They may be more concerned with their hostility or broken agreements.… Read more... Choice Points in Disrupting Symbiosis in Conflict-Avoidant Couples: Moving These Couples Forward
When you are working with a conflict-avoiding couple, it is especially difficult to create positive forward moving momentum. These couples merge boundaries often and it can be a challenge to disrupt the status quo. If you search for openings in the issues they present, you will find choice points that enable you to disrupt their symbiosis.
First, start by supporting their interactions that are truly positive and that are part of a healthy relationship. This is important because, once you start disrupting their symbiosis, it will be scary for them. So, the more they sense that you're in their corner – with them as a couple and as individuals – the safer they're going to feel, and the more able they will be able to risk new behavior.… Read more... What Would You March For?
Dateline Hong Kong August 18, 2019
Protestor March, 5:03 PM
I am standing in front of a mall in the middle of Hong Kong as thousands of marchers parade by me in the rain.
No violence. No threats. No police brutality. Some chants in Chinese but not too much or too loud.
Some marchers are couples holding hands.
Some couples are pushing strollers with babies and toddlers getting an early taste of what it means to march for freedom.
They walk past me by the thousands. It seems like a never-ending stream of peacefully moving humanity. So far this parade has been 45–minutes long and still no end to it.
Watching this flow of frustrated freedom seekers, I feel as safe as I would on Sunday afternoon in quiet Menlo Park, California. … Read more... Using Initiator-Inquirer to Support Growth in Couples
One of the reasons I find the Initiator-Inquirer process especially valuable in our work with couples is that it exposes so much about where they are developmentally. It helps us see the cutting edge of their development and reveals ways we can challenge each of them to work at their growth edges.
Now if you are unfamiliar with the Initiator-Inquirer Process, you can find out more about it here.
As you use this process, it’s important to learn how to look at what your clients’ edges are. What are the places where they fall apart with each other when you’re not around?
For example, I often see couples who are stuck because they lack the self-capacity to allow one of the partners to come forward.… Read more... Getting Started with an Enmeshed Couple Moving to Early Differentiation
Couples who marry young often establish enmeshed relationships that inhibit individual growth. They have not had the opportunity to mature and do much differentiation work prior to getting married.
When partners organize their relationships in an enmeshed way, their own desires are usually obscured and are often presented in terms of: “We are alike in so many ways.” There’s very little self-definition or ability to articulate individual desires. Everything is framed in terms of “we” or “us.”
When they arrive for therapy, they may have one partner still trying very hard to maintain symbiosis, and the other partner making tentative forays out of it.… Read more... Working with Partners Who Aren’t Equally Committed to Their Relationship
In a recent blog post I outlined some of the ways I work with couples who are caught in patterns of externalization and blame in their relationships.
If you missed it, you can check it out here.
In that blog post I presented some ideas for pushing the growth edge in these partners. I ended with the question, “But what if you’re beginning to sense that one of the partners isn’t as invested in this process as the other?”
If you’ve been working with couples for any length of time, you’ve likely seen instances where one partner doesn’t seem as invested in the relationship as the other.
For example, let’s say that you’ve been working with a couple and given them an assignment to come up with a plan for spending more time together.… Read more... Intimacy Avoidance Comes with Externalization and Blame
In spring of 2018 I wrote a blog post about the cycle of externalization and blame. This dynamic is a familiar one for couples therapists because so many of the couples who come to see us organize their relationship issues around external symptoms or problems.
How many times have you heard complaints like these?
“He drinks too much.”
“She spends too much money.”
“He never makes time for me and the kids.”
“She treats her parents like royalty and me like dirt.”
For people in discomfort about their relationship, it’s much easier to deflect responsibility and attention from themselves and blame their partner than it is to self-reflect.… Read more... |
