Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

Doing Life Together

You are home and bored. There must be something to do. Look around. On the counter, you see a bag of opened chips. You are not really hungry but so what!  Boredom gets the best of you and you reach for the bag. A few minutes later, you have polished off the entire bag and…

“What was the name of that man who worked on our cars for years?  I can see his face. Ahh, I can’t think of his name!” A few minutes later….”Oh, yes, it was John Smith!”  As you age, is it normal to forget a name or detail occasionally? Or does this mean you have early…

We know that teasing can be harmful to children. It can result in feelings of rejection, discrimination, peer relationships problems and limited group and social interests. Because of this, parents should make every effort to confront teasing when it happens. We don’t really know why, but some children can effectively handle teasing and avoid being…

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I often talk about what it takes to build healthy relationships. But perhaps another question is, what does it take to derail a relationship? How do you push someone away? In other words, what contributes to becoming a bad partner?  Here are 10 points to consider. They are…

Blame. We hear it on a daily basis now. No matter what you listen to or watch, someone is blaming someone for something. Frankly, I am tired of it. It is exhausting in the national discourse and it certainly doesn’t work in relationships. When relationships falter, look for signs of blame. Highly defensive people blame…

A child struggling with weight issues has to face an unsympathetic world–one steeped in the idolatry of the body, glamorizing thinness at all costs. “Thin is in” and the pressure to conform is enormous. When your body doesn’t measure up, the reminders are everywhere. Social rejection is not an easy pill to swallow. The stigma…

A big change in Tiffany’s life was about to happen. Her husband was considering a job change and she was feeling anxious. If her husband took the new position, so much would change in her life. She would lose her job, have to move out of the area and search for new employment. After a…

There are a lot of angry people in our culture today. Troll your social media. Anger is spewed toward people with no regard to potential consequences. And listen to newscasts on all the different stations. I do this daily and there is  a common thread. News people try to sir up anger which leads to higher…

Are you easily angered? Do you have a low tolerance for frustration? Does any little thing annoy and frustrate you? Are you tired of feeling out of control? If so, consider this. Some people are born more edgy and irritable. You see this in children. You can tell the ones who cry more often and appear…

In doing couples coaching, I draw heavily on the three decades of research by John Gottman, Robert Levenson and colleagues at the Gottman Institute. This group has contributed much to our understanding of healthy relationships through their research with couples. Gottman describes couples as “masters” or “disasters” of relationships. As you would guess, “the masters of…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners