How To Recognize The Basis Of The Inner Critic
Depression teaches us that we are not deserving of a normal, fruitful life. We go through long periods of believing that there is something inherently wrong with us. One of the major factors in this process is the formation of an inner critic which is a major underlying cause of depression and low self-esteem…
When Codependents Become Resistant To Therapy
It is wrong to assume that if codependency is identified as an issue, the person concerned is codependent with everyone in his or her life. There is usually only one or a number of people (or thing, e.g work, substances) but the typical behaviour associated with codependents does not necessarily get projected on everybody…
A New Year. New Codependency Issues, New Approaches
I read an article recently about happiness written by a journalist who works for the Times in London. He was commenting about a book he was reading, given to him at Christmas, about how to find happiness. The title doesn’t really matter, as there are many such books on the market and as his article said, most of the book he was reading mirrored most of those…
How To Be You In 2021 And Forget The Old
(The audio version if available for this post). It would have been very easy to write another post about the pandemic, still the most troubling aspect of our lives at present. While, with some luck, we might be rid of it sometime in 2021, that seems a long way off for many people. Our hope is the vaccine and we need to wait to see the results of this. So nothing about the pandemic but a look forward to my hopes for specific groups of people in 2021 based on what I see every day in my practice. However, first something personal…
We Will Likely Never Be The Same But Hope Prevails In Love And Understanding
(Listen while you work: the audio version of this post is available) What a Year! At the start of 2020, no-one could have predicted how the world would change as the year progressed. Even if we factor out all other issues that happened during the year, the big story was the pandemic and what it meant for us as human beings. After going through two lockdowns and likely a third in January, I know what it means for me in a positive and negative sense but we are all individuals and we would all have been affected in different ways…
How Resentment Is The Silent Killer Of Relationships
In my daily work as a therapist, I deal with couples who are struggling to keep their relationship together. There are many reasons for this and some are more successful than others at working on the issues that divide them…
A Self-Challenge: Identifying The Parts Of My Own Thinking
I have been quite active lately promoting the use of tools and methods to challenge and potentially overcome blocks in thinking that keep one stuck in the proverbial “hamster wheel” of inaction and overthinking…
Codependents In The Midst Of Corporate Narcissism
Something you may not know about my career is that I used to work a lot with corporate clients, especially banks and financial institutions. I would be called in to help managers, key employees and eventually board members deal with stress and burnout. Much of what I saw in the corporate world horrified me in terms of the attitude of the people in charge…
Stay Or Go: It’s A Choice And Every Choice Has A Consequence
There will be many people who have started the year with the thought that they need to change their relationship status from attached to unattached. Those same people might also have had that thought last year and the year before and maybe even the year before that. The daily grind of ineffective communication, sweating the small stuff, arguing and being unhappy takes its toll in the end. Most couples have, at one time, thought about ending their relationship but can usually find a balance between what is good and not so good. They strengthen the positive and work on the not so positive for the good of the relationship and they find a way to move forward. This is the hope for all of us who have committed to a future with another human being…