Love Yourself: The First Step to a Successful Relationship

The developing adult’s natural tendency is to ask others what she should do. Often in therapy clients will ask me what they should do. They ask questions such as “Should I get married?”, “Should I quit my job?”, “Should I get divorced?”, or “Should I sleep with my boyfriend?” People want me to tell them what to do with their lives. They want me to

The issue for individuals is their ability to establish these boundaries in their daily interactions with others. This becomes especially important in the context of an intimate relationship. Having the confidence that you can establish boundaries in your personal life is the key to falling in love. This confidence allows a person to have that sens

Well, that was hard to hear at first, but then it started to make sense. If I was complete with both a feminine and masculine balance within my own psychological makeup, then I didn’t need a woman to complete me. I could say then with confidence that I want to be with a woman to share my life’s experiences without the dependency and fear of abandon

A common consequence later in life when a child’s self-esteem was connected to how they acted when they were growing up is that they become very defensive verbally when someone close to them has a problem with how they act. They take what that person has to say personally. This usually means that they get emotionally hurt, because to them, their si

They don’t believe that they need to defend or justify why they feel the way they do, it’s just how they feel emotionally. When individuals are able to validate their own emotional truth, they won’t tolerate being intimately involved with someone who doesn’t share their same belief or respect of emotions.

Some other dysfunctional “shoulds” I have changed with my own critical parent are the following: I shouldn’t make mistakes; this would draw attention, and I would be embarrassed. The result was that I couldn’t learn or participate in activities where I would make mistakes. I didn’t allow for any type of learning curve. The result of this “should” w

One analogy for the creation of the critical parent compares our brain to a blank hard drive disk. Our parents, grandparents, teachers, religious leaders, and/or the popular media sat down at the keyboard and programmed our brains with beliefs, rules, laws, and “shoulds” for how to be a person within our family, culture, or society. This is called

I see this pattern repeated over and over in the lives of my clients. When an individual starts living for what works for them, as opposed to what their parents want, that individual truly becomes an adult psychologically.

When men find themselves alone emotionally, they have a great opportunity for personal growth. They are at the crossroads of personal development, no matter what their chronological age may be.