Validation at Work: Where to Find It and Who Should Offer It
The type of toxic workplace where employees feel unsupported, neglected, or unacknowledged gets little serious attention in modern culture. Most workplaces have increased efforts to limit and eradicate more direct forms of abuse, from harassment to verbal derision, but less effort has been made to understand the importance of validation at work. Validation is not…
Read MoreThe Best Gift to Give Yourself on Mother’s Day
For mothers, similar to those in relationships on Valentine’s Day, there can be a lot of expectations for Mother’s Day. There are hopes of breakfast in bed, partners taking over household tasks, cards and flowers, and kids trying to be extra good that day. It feels great to be appreciated by those who depend on you for so much. Mothers deserve this kind of admiration, and it can be disappointing not to receive it.
Read MoreWhen Your Body Knows You Are Depressed
Depression is an issue that we are all too familiar with and hear about often in our culture. Recent studies suggest that nearly one tenth of the U.S. population has suffered from depression at one point in their lifetime. It is a pervasive issue, and so the primary symptoms of depression are known by most…
Read MoreHow to Create a Behavior Plan for Your Child
Behavior plans are commonly thought of as something specifically for children with ADHD, but they can actually be useful for any child with behavior problems or difficulty focusing on or remembering tasks. A behavior plan is basically a system of requirements and rewards- if your child performs the required tasks, then they can earn something of value to them. The point of this is that you focus on and reward the positive behaviors your child displays while ignoring the negative ones that you would like to stop.
Read MoreDating Yourself: The Benefits Of Taking Time To Be Single
Being single is often viewed as a problem to be fixed. It carries a negative connotation and is often referred to as “being alone.” When you tell people you’re not in a relationship, they automatically start listing off their single friends they could set you up with or tell you “things will get better.” It…
Read More3 Things You Must Do Before Saying “I Do”
In addition to rising temperatures, rainy days, and budding flowers, springtime also marks the start of wedding season. Couples are in the midst of planning the final details of their nuptials, attending to each element of the wedding day with care and consideration. It is an exciting time, to be sure. While preparing to create…
Read MoreKeeping Score in Relationships: For a Partner to Win, the Relationship will Lose
An unhealthy phenomenon in many long-term intimate relationships is the tendency to keep score. It is not so much keeping score that is the problem but that when partners do keep score, they tend to unfairly focus on the negative. Rarely in couple therapy, my line of work, do I hear couples delineate all the…
Read MoreSigns and Strategies for Ending Toxic Relationships
There are toxic people in all of our lives, whether we are close to them or not. “Toxic” means someone who hurts you more than they help you, and tends to subtract from your life rather than add to it. This can be friends, family members, significant others, or even bosses or coworkers.
Read MoreHow to Communicate Well with Yourself
When you think of communication, what do you imagine? For most of us, we conjure up an image of two people talking to one another, engaging in a conversation. However, in addition to this interpersonal dialogue, we are also always communicating with ourselves. We sometimes do this through self-talk – the things that we say…
Read MoreDon’t Perpetuate the Unhappiness Cycle
Having a bad day? Fed up with a part of your life? Feeling angry with a loved one? It’s understandable that you may be suffering from negativity and in a bad mood. The problem is, not only does this bad mood affect you- it also affects those around you. When you’re feeling down and disgruntled,…
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