We can get at anger management a number of different ways. It is important to understand that anger serves a healthy function. In Marshall Rosenberg’s book, The Surprising Purpose of Anger he wrote that the purpose of anger is to alert you that your boundaries have been violated and give you the energy to take action to protect yourself.
Style differences in couples and NLP
Style differences in couples can lead to misunderstandings. Body language, eye contact, or lack thereof, how fast or slowly you talk, the words you use, thinking styles, and how you act can affect your relationships with people. In this blog, I talk about personal ways of being, noticing people’s interests, ways of processing when they’re upset and ways to make connection with people. Continue reading “Style differences in couples and NLP”
Stages of love relationships
Love relationships and the people in them go through stages. A couple may progress through the stages together or one person may be in a different stage from the other. Here’s a synopsis of that symbiotic stage of infatuation, the stage when we start to notice differences, then go out into the world and get closer again, later in life.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
People often make reference to “a part of me.” We say things like, “One part of me wants to go on vacation and another part of me wants to work hard, get recognition, and make a lot of money.” Richard Schwartz and others combined family therapy concepts with this concept of parts and created a new approach to therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS). IFS categorizes the parts into the Self, managers, exiles, and firefighters.
Erik Erikson’s Model of Growth / Development
When I am working with a client or a parent, I sometimes talk with them about what a person needs to learn over their lifespan and whether life circumstances prevented a person from completing the developmental task appropriate to a certain age or stage. Trust and hope, autonomy and will, initiative and purpose, industry and competence, identity and fidelity, intimacy and love, generativity and care, ego integrity and wisdom: These are the qualities developmental psychologist Erik Erikson believed an ideal adult acquires throughout a lifetime.
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Help for the Holidays–Resources for Stress Reduction
The good news is that there are no big secrets out there about how to reduce your stress or what will bring you happiness. You probably already know the answers. Knowing is different from doing. You have to, have to, have to, You Must Do Something! You can claim greater happiness for free, but you have to Do It! Here are some resources to remind you how to be happier.
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Four Holidays of the Apocalypse
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Valentine’s Day are hell for some people. They’re all about gathering, family, or love or gifts. How many people genuinely enjoy them? They are stressful; think of the family arguments, the stress of choosing the right present and the challenges to a person’s budget. Think bereavement, toxic families, lonely hearts, grieving exes… Here are a few suggestions and references. Continue reading “Four Holidays of the Apocalypse”
How To Deal With Guilt
THE PURPOSE OF GUILT
I think the positive purposes of guilt are 1. To help us learn from our mistakes and remember the lessons we learned; and 2. To get us to respect social norms and expectations. Let’s look at guilt and talk about ways to deal with it.