All Posts

In my work with couples, I assess self-esteem in conflict. Does the client go one up over their partner in grandiosity, as in: there is something wrong with you, or does the client go one down into shame: there is something wrong with me? As couples therapist Terry Real says, the feeling present in both positions is contempt. In grandiosity, the contempt is directed towards your partner. And in shame, the contempt is directed towards yourself. The more couples I work with, th

Relationship work can have paradoxical effects. Often the more directly one tries to change a partner, the more the relationship tightens around the very pattern one is trying to alter. Efforts to control the other tend to create resistance, not because the other cannot change, but because pressure shifts the relationship into defensiveness and self-protection. In that sense, change usually does not begin where attention is fixed on the other person’s behavior. It begins wher

Good communication involves thoughtfulness, not just expression— it is the ability to slow down enough to speak about our emotions rather than from them, and in doing so, to bring calmness, clarity, and greater understanding into the conversation. A person may be frustrated, irritated, angry, or overwhelmed. So how can they say things with more measured communication? Besides habit, what would hold them back? They may feel that sounding calm or kind when they are fuming insid