Psychotherapy • Consultation • EMDR
Some of the unhappiest people I’ve ever met are “injustice collectors,” an evocative phrase which most of us intuitively understand as soon as we hear it. Injustice collectors ruminate continually about the Bad People who have harmed them. They are preoccupied with the injustices that they believe they’ve suffered; and as a result they…
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In this final installment of three columns examining Dr. John Gottman’s research on successful relationships, the focus is on what he discovered about how successful couples approach conflict resolution. One of his discoveries was that most conflicts in successful relationships – 69 percent to be exact – are never resolved at all. Tom is…
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Last time I summarized some of the ground-breaking research of psychologist John Gottman into what makes relationships work or fail. To recapitulate, he identified four patterns which, if unchecked, are so lethal to a relationship that he termed them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Most couple counselors…
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After watching a couple communicate for just five minutes, psychologist John Gottman can predict, with 91 percent accuracy, whether they’ll break-up or stay together. He learned to do this by observing many volunteer couples interact in over night stays in a specially fabricated apartment in Seattle. The couples were instructed to act as naturally as…
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Q: I’ve been with my partner for two years and I love him deeply. He wants to get married, but for me the problem is that we have a good sex life, but not a great one. It’s nice, but there isn’t a lot of passion in it. With my last boyfriend, the sex was…
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Rubin and his partner Alan, the couple I’ve been discussing in this series on effective speech, are trying to resuscitate their dying relationship by doing couple counseling. They genuinely love one another, but they’ve become lost in a downward spiral of destructive and hostile speech which they know will doom their relationship if things don’t…
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Last time I said that the first step in practicing effective speech is to keep our eyes on the prize – to be constantly mindful of our intentions for speaking in the first place. What do I want in my life? I want to give and receive love. I want relationships with others to…
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Rubin and his partner Alan are trying to resuscitate their dying relationship by doing couple counseling. Rubin begins this week’s session with a long, angry monologue detailing his partner’s faults. He is, by turns, snarky, self-righteous, shaming, accusatory, self-pitying, sarcastic, and demanding. I interrupt him to suggest that he examine the way he’s talking, and…
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Q: Would you write something nice about monogamy? I never hear anybody in the gay community say anything positive about it. My partner and I have been monogamous for a little over three years. Once in a while we still like to hang out at the bar where we met. Sometimes when we’re there,…
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Q: I told my parents I was a lesbian ten years ago and have been with my wife for eight years. They refused to come to our wedding, and, in fact, made it clear that she isn’t welcome in their house. This year I flew back East alone and spent Christmas with them. It was…
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