Happiness

What even is happiness? How will you know when you are happy? Happiness can seem like an elusive beast. Just as you grab it it slips through your fingers. I believe that happiness comes in moments of joy peppered throughout your life. I do not think it is a constant state of being. I think that the goal of being happy all the time is an illusion. It’s okay if happiness comes and goes, flits and floats in and out of your life. The question is are you ready for it when it does pass by? Can you enjoy it in the moment it arrives? Are you creating a life in which happiness is allowed to swing by more often?

There are ways to increase moments of happiness, including as Brené Brown states, gratitude. Every night try writing down three things for which you are grateful; your strong lungs which breath in and out all day, a child’s laugh, your partner’s bad jokes which make you wrinkle your nose and laugh on the inside, that yummy lunch…whatever brought you one moment of joy. Shift your attention, look for the moments to be grateful for. If you want to talk more about how to seek out happiness, and remove what might be standing in your way of it, make your appointment today.

Boundaries

Do you feel like people take advantage of you? Do you feel like you give too much? Do you always say ‘yes’ when people ask you a favor? Do you wish there was some way to say ‘no’ sometimes? Do you worry that no one will like you if you say ‘no’? Do you wish there was a way to ask for what you want? Together we can explore why you feel like your needs are less important than the needs of everyone else and we can talk about ways to set up and maintain good, healthy boundaries. Call and set up your appointment today, taking care of yourself too is a good thing.

Being Married is Hard

I get asked often, “why did you choose to be a marriage and family therapist?” and the answer to that is; even when it’s good being married is hard! People need help with it and I would like to try to do that. It’s ok to ask for help if you think your marriage might need it.

My first tip would be to come into counseling before you think you need it. Even when things are good we know there are aspects about our partner’s that we find annoying, we all know about that unresolved fight that we keep having, and we all have things that worry us. When things are going well is the easiest time to talk about and work on those things. It is when both parties are more willing to discuss and possibly make changes. So make that appointment. If you wait until something is really wrong it might be too late.

My second tip is to stop trying to read your partners mind. Phrases like “I know what they are thinking….” or “They should know what I meant….” are possible red flags within a relationship. Unless you or your partner have psychic abilities (which would be really cool) there should be no mind reading. Ask what your partner is thinking, say what you like. It’s a myth that if you are meant to be with someone you will “just know”. Nope. If you are meant to be with someone you will have strong communication skills. Come on in and let’s work on those.

Fine tune your relationship today for a stronger relationship in the future. I am here to help.

Letting Go

Letting go of things not meant for us is one of the hardest things to do. We are programed to hold on to every hurt, every slight, everything thing we think we’ve done wrong. Biologically holding onto pain was helpful; we were then able to learn from our mistakes and make sure the same bad thing didn’t happen again. When you are talking about fighting saber tooth tigers and your life expectancy was 21 that was a useful tool for humans. Now is different, and yet we still try to survive the same way. We aren’t fighting saber tooth tigers anymore, we are trying to manage this new world of relationships in a way that has never been done before. Most of us don’t have to do back breaking work from sun up til sun down without the aide of machines and tools. We are no longer down by the river squeezing out our laundry all day. It is now safe for us to let go of old pain. This doesn’t mean we forget lessons we have learned, just that we stop letting the past hurt us in the present. By putting down the pain we can fill that space with love, we can interact in new ways that help us feel peace in our lives, we can grow into the best versions of ourselves. The first step is saying our pain out loud. There is a lot of power in verbally releasing pain from our bodies. If you need help, if you need someone to talk to please call and make your appointment today.

Trust yourself

Trusting yourself is one of the most essential skills in being able to get through life. In fact if you don’t trust other people it is really because you don’t trust yourself. As you grow and start to believe in yourself it becomes less important what other people do because you know, whatever it is, you can handle it. What would it be like to be free of worry because you trust yourself?

There are many reasons why you might not already trust yourself. We are told as children not to believe ourselves, but to believe in what adults say, to follow the rules, to just do the thing. Learning to listen to our own voice again takes time and practice, but it can be done. I will be happy to sit with you and go through all your doubts and fears and help you get to a place where you trust your own wings so that you can fly. Call or text to set up your appointment today.

The Quest for Perfect

Many people worry about doing everything perfectly. And they worry about what will happen if they fall short. These thoughts set us up to fail! There is no such thing as being perfect and by placing such enourmous expectations on ourselves we are bound to feel stress and worry. In session we will challenge these thoughts that we need to be perfect. We will look at what that even means, where we learned it and, most importantly, how to start to set that expectation down. Set up your appointment today and start to live with some lighter, more obtainable expectations.

Therapy sucks.

Therapy can suck. It is hard to talk about all those uncomfortable things that we hold inside of us. We worry about being judged, or that saying them will give them power. However, the opposite is true. Speaking your story, even the horrible parts, especially the horrible parts, takes away the weight and space that they take up inside of you. Release your story, release your pain. Let me be witness to your life, to your story. You do not have to carry around the pain anymore. Is it time? Make your appointment now.

But therapy is hard!

When you come in to therapy there may be some difficult sessions. You may leave the office feeling bad. I like to say it is like going to the gym, when you have a good work out your muscles will be sore for a couple days, but that is when you know you are making progress. The same can be said for some sessions in therapy. Moving through the darkness is hard and scary, but it is the work that needs to be done to move you into the light. I will be here as a guide, but ultimately the hard part is done by you. The good news is there is light at the end of that work. You can move to a new space in which the darkness of your old pain doesn’t cast a shadow on your present.  If you are ready to move into a new space, one with no shadows call or text to make your first session now.  

It isn’t selfish to take care of yourself.

I have many clients who are concerned with the selfishness involved in asking for what they need, or taking the time to care for themselves. I like the analogy of being on an airplane and always putting on your own mask first before even trying to help others. Why is that? In low oxygen situations passing out happens quickly, if you don’t put your own mask on you will pass out and then you and those that need help will not have their mask on either, basically you can’t help anyone until you help yourself. And yet we say yes to projects we don’t want, yes to parties we don’t want to go to, yes to everyone that asks because saying no makes us feel selfish. Untrue! It is actually more selfish to think that projects and people and everything will suffer if you aren’t involved. If helping or showing up is a gift you have to give, then by all means, please do! Share that gift with the world. However, if that 5th party or that 10th project makes you feel drained, resentful and foreboding then saying ‘no thank you’ is actually the less selfish option. Give yourself permission to put on your own mask first, breathe, and then look at what you can take on.

Don’t Fight to be Right

You are bound to disagree with your partner. There is just no way for two people to agree on everything all the time. The trick is how do you settle disagreements in a way in which brings you closer together? Many couples come in to tackle these communication issues. The crux of when discussions turn into fights is when we stop trying to understand the other person and start trying to prove that we are right instead.  Often times fighting ends up with hurt feelings and neither party feeling heard or understood.  Does that sound familiar?  If so, please feel free to schedule your appointment today and come in to learn new discussion skills.  It takes practice, but once you have the tools to having a good discussion you are much more likely to understand and be understood by your partner.