Posts Tagged ‘Boundaries’
Screens and Self-Control
Modern society struggles with self-control around the use of devices and technology. At home, if you parent, these struggles intensify as adults and kids react with irritability, anger and hostility when interrupted on a device, or told to turn off a device to do homework, get dinner made or get to bed. “It’s like my…
Ask for Help!
On this, the eve of the most horrifying presidential election in my lifetime, I would like to take this opportunity to admit that I cheated my way through my Civics class in High School. I took those classes by “correspondence.” In that age this meant you received a textbook in the mail, and you mailed…
Living and Loving with Borderline Personality Disorder
“One minute everything’s great, and the next minute she’s calling me fifty times in a row and leaving me these long messages about how badly I treat her.” “He makes me feel so awful about myself. He twists around what I say and makes me seem like such a horrible person. I can’t tell right-side-up…
How To Talk To Other Parents About Conflict Between Children
I am a successful businesswoman. I am a successful entrepreneur. I am a successful psychotherapist. And yet, in talking to other parents about conflict between my children and theirs, I frequently feel like a failure. Why is this such a challenge, and not just for me, but for most parents I speak to? How and…
Social Media Self-Care: Setting Boundaries on Facebook
I admit it. I get a lot of my news from social media. I’m not just talking about the latest in cuddly animal videos (though my feed is certainly at the cutting edge of documenting the hilarious antics of our fuzzy friends). I truly mean that a significant portion of what I read and watch…
Small changes are big changes
One November morning, when I was early in my graduate training to become a therapist, one of my professors stood at the front of the classroom, with his wild hair and even wilder eyes, and said slowly: “I want to talk to you all about something important.” The room fell silent. This man was known…
Laws for in-laws: why trouble in these relationships hurts, and what to do about it
“We were having lunch with my in-laws the other day and out of the blue my mother-in-law said, ‘I’ve decided I want to be cremated.’ I said, ‘Alright, get your coat.’” -D. Spivey Our culture has a lot of deeply hostile (and very funny) jokes about mother-in-laws—a sure sign that something important is going on underneath. Freud’s…
The “Being” of a “Good” Kisser
There is so much in a kiss: pleasure, intimacy, and connection. The mouth is built to receive and express. The lips, the door way of the mouth, are lined with a high number of nerves, where babies first receive nurturing and also explore their worlds. It is no wonder that kissing is the principal way…
Sharing the Road: how driving keeps us emotionally distant from one another
When I was 14 ½ I signed up for driver’s ed, just barely old enough to take the class. The day I turned 15 I passed my permit test. The week I turned 16 I took my behind-the-wheel test. Anxious to get in the beat-down old hunk of steel my older brother so generously handed…
A Couples Therapist watches TV — Parenthood
Like many others, my wife and I are eagerly looking forward to tonight’s premiere of the new season of Parenthood, though with considerable wistfulness that it’s the final season. With our kids off to college, we forsook our basic cable last year for a streaming box. Not only are we saving nearly $100 a month,…
Encouraging Discipline – Discipline that Helps Kids Grow
Left to my own devices, I am terribly afraid of making a mistake. Also, of getting it wrong, not knowing, and having to ask any question. A free-floating fear of punishment used to guide much of my decision-making. In fact, it took a lot of therapy for me to learn to keep those kinds of fears…
Anger is your friend: the restoration of anger
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the…