“Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station.” ~Paulo Coelho God is the One who has laid down the railway tracks of our lives. My husband Steve and I have a mutual…
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Author: Imported Blogs
“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers – the experience of knowing we always belong.” —Bell Hooks If we have accepted the Lord as our Saviour God says…
The post Do You Belong in Your Marriage? appeared first on Start Marriage Right.
“Every time I tried to tell you, the words just came out wrong, so I’ll have to say I love you in a song.” —Jim Croce Most of us find it difficult to express the emotions that at one moment excite and the next enervate us. Rich and I often commiserate with couples who express…
The post Love is a Song appeared first on Start Marriage Right.
Linda Graham, MFT and author of Resilience: Powerful Practices for Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty and Even Disaster, shares an exercise to help cultivate your wiser self.
When we’re facing a difficult decision – leaving a job that’s no long in alignment with our values and passions, seeking new possibilities but risking failure, or staying in a job that provides reliable financial security and a rewarding social network but risking dying on the vine in a stultifying inertia…
It’s valuable to be able to consult with someone who has our best interests at heart and who can provide truly wise counsel, guidance, and support. And the best resource for that wisdom and care may be our very own wiser self.
The wiser self is an imaginary figure, evoked through guided visualization, real to the brain, who embodies the positive qualities that would lead to resilience and well-being: wisdom, courage, patience perseverance. This wiser self is someone who truly cares for you and offers you their understanding, support, guidance to help you change and grow. Your wiser self could be a version of yourself five or ten years from now, when you have fulfilled your aspirations for strength, competence, empowerment. Your wiser self could be drawn from a
“I feel like I’m getting grinded down. I’m starting to lose my resilience,” a friend said to me today when we stopped to chat 6 ft apart with masks, both on evening walks with our dogs. We talked about how we each were faring in the pandemic.
We are collectively still in a battle with Covid-19. Unless you are under a rock, you likely know someone whose life has been touched by this virus in some way involving health, the general stress of months of the unknown, economic uncertainty or even life lost. Now facing the steepest virus climb and fallout yet, people are stressed, preoccupied and exhausted. Many with vulnerabilities to anxiety or depression continue to be triggered. And those without such histories are also struggling emotionally in their own ways, all reasonable reactions to such an unusual ongoing event.
The need for us all to lower our shoulders and exhale deeply is profound. But though the tunnel is dark, there is light ahead. We just need to get there.
Pandemic fatigue is legitimate no matter what lens you are viewing it through. Whether you are in survival mode at one end of the continuum or fortunate to have health, financial means
With the collective challenges of 2020, my annual “Best of Emotional and Relationship Health” featured post to ring in the New Year is a little different. Typically I share my most popular content of the past year only but this time I have cast the net widely over the vast library of LoveAndLifeToolbox.com to find what I believe to be the most relevant and helpful emotional health and relationship content to get you through the pandemic.
Emotional Health
Pandemic Fatigue is Legit, Lisa Brookes Kift, MFT
This has been a marathon of sorts for months and people are tired. With light at the end of the tunnel but not quite here yet, it’s important to continue to find ways to hang in there emotionally. Here are some ways to do that.
The Neuroscience of Resilience (series), Linda Graham, MFT
When things are tough, it can be difficult to notice the things that despite this, are going well. Linda says that gratitude allows us a “respite from the suffering, even for a few moments….(it) drops us into a space where our survival patterns of responding to hurt, danger, life threat aren’t operating…”
What is Family of Origin Work?, Lisa Brookes Kift, MFT
Anxiety and depression have been exacerbated
Rick Hanson, PhD and author of Just One Thing and others, reflects upon how to be better able to deal with stressful times, as others have before us. He believes we can too.
The Practice:
Take heart.
Why?
It takes heart to live in even ordinary times.
By “taking heart,” I mean several related things:
Sensing your heart and chest
Finding encouragement in what is good both around you and inside you
Resting in your own warmth, compassion, and kindness; resting in the caring for you from others; love flowing in and love flowing out
Being courageous, whole-hearted and strong-hearted – going forward wisely, even when anxious, knowing your own truth and, as you can, speaking it
When you take heart, you’re more able to deal with challenges like aging, illness, trauma, or conflicts with others. You’re also more able to take advantage of opportunities with confidence and grit.
Additionally, it takes heart to live in, live with, and live beyond times that are really hard. Your personal hard time might be bad news about your health, the death of a parent, or betrayal by others. Or it could be related to changes in your country and world, and your concerns about their effects on others and yourself; I’ve written
Many relationships have taken a beating over the past months. The preoccupation and distraction of COVID has had consequential impact on couples everywhere as their relationships have slipped out of focus. As a couples therapist, I’ve witnessed firsthand the impact of stress, more time together than ever, social worlds reduced to rubble and family challenges on marriage and long term relationships. We’ve had to adapt and think anew about so much and many couples are more irritated with each other and possibly just doing their best to manage their own individual emotional health.
Pandemic fatigue is legit but thankfully, there are slivers of hope and rays of light on the horizon. Hope can be a powerful ally in moving us all forward as signs of what “could” be materialize. For many couples, this is allowing them to shake off the dust and refocus on what’s important and possibly missed. I see this manifesting in my private practice as the heavy tilt from individual clients has begun the shift to couples seeking help in finally addressing the issues that have been back burnered.
Valentines Day, the holiday of love, romance and intimate relationships is almost here. While this heavily marketed holiday can be
Aude Castagna, MFT explores the reasons people can be compulsive pleasers and caretakers, even in the face of toxic behaviors and to their own detriment. She offers some guidance around how to start the process of change.
We start Life as helpless infants totally dependent on our caregivers, and we are hardwired to forgo their shortcomings for the sake of our survival, even at the cost of our safety or integrity.
Secure attachment
When a child’s needs are met quickly and reliably when she receives enough attuned attention from their primary caregivers, she develops a secure attachment that comes with a feeling that she is safe, unconditionally loved, and that she belongs/has a place in that family. From this solid platform, the child develops a sense of self, of who she is, what she likes and dislikes. She uses her confidence to know that she can safely explore the world, take risks, even make mistakes. Ultimately she will develop into a separate, independent adult.
Insecure attachment
With less present or attuned parents, a child develops an insecure attachment. He may not feel safe in this family, may not feel he can rely on it for support because his needs are not met, love is only
It’s been seven months since living in our coronavirus reality. Activities and normal ways of living are modified or all together blocked for many of us as we continue to ride our personal waves of angst, fear, preoccupation, anger, worry, frustration and sadness. One thing most of us can all relate to is the felt sense of disconnection. Whether you are generally out and spending time with a social pod or in a high risk group and home a lot, very careful with interactions, most of us have experienced far less contact with loved ones, broader friend groups and larger social experiences than before. It’s hard to believe we took for granted activities like youth sports, live music venues, large weddings and unbridled travel. They feel like distant memories for most of us now.
For me, there are many people in my community I ran into regularly who I haven’t seen for months because we have pulled into smaller and tighter groupings. I recently went to a grocery store I don’t normally and ran into a baseball dad. We are more or less on an acquaintance level but we stopped and chatted for many minutes, both of us seeming to be