Welcome to my first blog of 2015! If we haven’t yet met, you can see a little more of what I’m about at by watching my intro video and if you’d like you can contact me personally so I can “meet you back” (and by the way, infinitely more interesting and fun for me to have a two-way intro!).

So, I was driving to the office this morning, salted caramel non-fat (at least I hope it was) latte in hand, listening to a podcast by a well-known speaker. She made an observation I happen to agree with (and will share more about in another blog). However, I was struck by my bigger, more immediate reaction, which was, “I bet she got an awful lot of flack from the audience for that comment.” (And reminds me…Boy, did I get an earful (from clients and callers alike) in response to my admonition to wait before jumping heart-strong into a new relationship from those who had been happily married after having known each other a matter of weeks, but I digress.)

I got to thinking: Just about ANY subject these days is fodder for disagreement. You know what I’m talking about, everything from the use of GMO’s (c’mon, you know you’ve seen that acronym 100x in your Facebook newsfeeds by now) to legalization of same-sex marriage (which I support by the way) and just about every other subject you can think of under the sun.

It’s probably true – for every problem, its own solution; for every life, its own path. When I suddenly thought of an exception, maybe JUST ONE. You see, I became less concerned about the polarizing effect of this speaker’s opinion (and the hot debate my own blog post had sparked) the moment I recognized and became grateful for the free-will and individuality that disagreement itself implies. What freedom of choice! Direction! Solution! More gratitude=less fear. More gratitude=more ability to be present.

In fact, there are more than a couple of psychologists who have done a whole lot of research on the study of gratitude. GRATITUDE? Yes, gratitude. Stay with me…

Some of us deal with work challenges through one-on-one mentoring or coaching. Some of us deal with personal and relationship challenges through one-on-one counseling or psychotherapy. But there is another form of problem-solving that is arguably more effective for some of us at certain times—peer group coaching/counseling. My brand of peer group coaching/counseling allows for keen insight about self and others in a safe setting that includes goal setting and forward movement.

My groups (there are currently six—see below) address challenges specific to work, challenges specific to home, and challenges specific to self. They combine coaching and psychotherapy in an objective, non-invasive format for professionals looking to explore specific issues, gain perspective from others, and benefit from the experience of others. Most importantly, peer groups allow for accountability that is affinity-based and organically developed.

Say you are suffering from “Working Mom Guilt” (one of my groups). You may resist input from your husband or friends about how to address this. You may use your husband and friends as “shoulders to cry on” rather than “solution seekers.” Friends and family are attuned to you and are very good at picking up what you are putting down as far as what feedback is safe to give you. You may get lots of, “That’s hard, yeah….Uh-huh….Well, of course you’re right….What can you do?….Yeah, no one understands.” Who wants a spouse or friend telling you what to do, anyway?

You may not get a lot of concrete suggestions and solutions—both pragmatically- and emotionally-driven–that you can implement and report back on. You may not get honest input from others experiencing Working Mom Guilt about how it affected them or how they succeeded or failed to handle it.

Now think of what I’ll call “Passenger on a Plane” phenomenon: Sometimes our most honest, insightful exchanges are with strangers—people to whom we have no ego-investment, with whom we can be honest about our flaws and responsibilities and people who in turn will share theirs with us. Group therapy provides this unique combination of “passenger on a plane” honesty with the productivity of a like-minded, professionally run discussion.

I bring together like-minded professionals coming at a similar personal or professional problem from different angles to uncover new perspective and new options. My groups are safe and confidential. I am a solutions-focused therapist/coach and in my groups you will find that being accountable in this setting is both natural and liberating.

Contact me for information about dates/times for any of these group therapy sessions in San Diego and determine if one of the groups is a good fit for you. Most groups meet weekly for one hour and cost $30 per session.

I’m known among clients, colleagues and friends as a pretty positive person. I can find solutions. I did it for 20+ years in the corporate world for companies that needed help matching their products with the right customers and I do it now as a therapist for clients who need help matching their troubles with the right solutions. I am good at “Finding What Works” (one of my mottos). So… (wait for it) here’s a bit of advice that may (at first) take the wind out of your sails, or look like something other than the right solution.

If you were hoping for a ring for your birthday, and then over the holidays, and now you’re hoping for a ring on Valentine’s Day, consider hanging up the hope (for now). Here’s why:

Mr./Ms. “Just Right For Me” may NOT be. I recommend you need at least 18-24 months to determine if you and your partner are capable of working together long-term for the relationship. Please re-read that last phrase—capable of working together long-term for the relationship. It is not only, as many justly point out, that you may not know a person before those 18-24 months have passed–although that is true. You and your partner are likely always changing and will (hopefully) continue to grow and change until death do you part if the relationship is to make it that long. The point is you need time to determine if you both have the desire and the ability to work at the relationship through those changes.

Relationship success is largely based upon attraction, attachment, and attunement. Examples of each:

Attraction: This is the sexual part of the relationship. You may meet for the first time and within 20 minutes feel drawn physically to each other.

Attachment: You and your partner share a physical bond. Attachment is why you can “love” someone you don’t even “like”. Attachment can include missing your partner when he/she isn’t physically present. It can also include a feeling you’ve “always known” your partner even though you’ve just met.

Attunement: This is very important and takes TIME to discover. Attunement involves you and your partner sharing thoughts and feelings. This means when you and your partner are having a discussion, you are as aware of his potential feelings and reactions as you are of your own. It is important BOTH OF YOU are attuned to each other—not just one of you and not the other. It is also important that you not subsume your own thoughts/feelings at the expense of your partner’s or vice versa. This is the characteristic that requires time—time to experience bumps in the road, to respond to them, to witness your partner’s response, and to see what happens in the same situation next time. Are you able to modify your responses to each other for the sake of the relationship?

Three areas where more time allows us to assess relationship staying power are 1. Rebounding, 2. Assumptions, and 3. Reactions.

I use social media—a lot. It is a good way for me to communicate with current, past, and potential clients, their loved ones, and those seeking a little inspiration to see value in relationships—to keep trying. My posts on Facebook and Twitter tend to be positive, practical, and sometimes funny.

Of all the posts I’ve shared, this one has hands-down resonated with my audience (especially the guys) the most:

“Don’t talk bad about your husband. To anyone. Ever.” (http://on.fb.me/Q9dFly)

To date this post has been “liked”, “shared”, or “commented” on nearly 900 times and has reached over 7,000 people.

Why? Here’s my take, as a therapist who sees as many husbands as wives; and who, with a history as a corporate sales professional, sees a relationship from multiple sides including that of primary bread-winner, primary care giver, from a “let’s get his done” perspective and from a “let’s connect again” perspective.

The women who respond to this post do so in solidarity with their partners and their own values surrounding how they represent their partner in social circles. However, the most interesting aspect of the post to me was to see male readers respond to it when they tend not to be as vocal with other post topics. It was as if someone were finally expressing a fundamental component of—almost a condition of–their trust and intimacy with their spouse. The public representation of a man by his partner as a husband, as a father, as a partner, as a person, is critical to a feeling of trust and safety for a man.

As a spouse, why follow this advice not to “talk bad about your husband,” especially if you’re having problems?

• Sharing vs Protecting: Women, to generalize, connect intimacy with sharing true feelings, both good and bad, sometimes hurtful, sometimes helpful. Men associate intimacy with safety, with a sense that their spouse has their back.
• The Man in the Mirror: As a spouse, the way you represent your husband or wife to others will immediately be reflected back to you. Our friends are our mirrors. If you complain about your wife or husband to your friend, watch how your friend reacts the next time you bring up your spouse. You will see a look of emotional recognition—“Oh, THAT person, THAT source of pain and frustration in your life [etc.]”. The source of your frustration (a missed date, a late night, a bad temper or lack of intimacy) may have passed, but the characterization of your spouse remains—sometimes FOREVER—in the mind of your friend, particularly if the friend does not have a relationship of his/her own with your spouse.
• Words Become Reality: The mirror effect described above can lead to words becoming reality. If your negative projections are mirrored back to you by your support group of friends, you are further encouraged to believe your spouse is fully to blame for a problem between the two of you. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Friends will support you in resolving problems, or they will support you in self-identifying as “right”, as a “victim”. How you position challenges in your relationship dictates what type of help you get from your network of friends.

You may be thinking: “We all need to vent. What am I supposed to do?” If you seek solace or help from a friend, express frustration with the problem at hand that is affecting your relationship with your husband. Hold the problem outside your sacred relationship with your partner. Keep the relationship sacred while holding THE PROBLEM up for examination. For example:

• “My husband and I are going through a rough patch. He wants to spend the holidays with his family every year and I understand that—his family is big and loving and a lot of fun. Plus they have strong relationships with our children and there are lots of cousins for our children to play with. But my family, who lives farther away and doesn’t see us as much, wants a chance to share the holidays with us and to create memories with their grandchildren and cousins. My husband won’t budge about our spending the holidays with his family. I need help in dealing with this so it doesn’t damage our relationship.”

In today’s typical family there is no ‘typical’. Individuals with perhaps non-traditional relationships to a child (i.e., not just Mother and Father) may have good access and sensitivity to a child’s struggles or troubles. These people may include close friends, step-parents, mentors, girlfriends, boyfriends, aunts, uncles, teachers, coaches.

As is depicted in the sitcom “Modern Family,” personal and relationship break-throughs are made through access to truth and love–coming from various sources, including family members and friends of all different varieties. Good data about a child can come from many sources and if you find yourself in the role of one of those “sources”, it becomes important to present your input in a constructive and credible way—whether speaking to a parent or guardian about considering therapy for their child or in speaking to a child about therapy.

In this post I’ll address these two very similar topics: 1. Approaching a friend with concerns about his/her child, and 2. As a parent or parent figure, getting a child to therapy.

The movie “Hope Springs,” starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones may be good, great, or so-so, but the subject matter is directly relatable to my practice. I have witnessed people who have seen it and as a result become motivated toward action in their marriage.

The movie is about a middle-aged couple (with grown children) whose marriage has lost its life. There has not been a traumatic event—death, infidelity, abuse—that has led to the marriage break-down. The marriage has witnessed a gradual movement away from intimacy—connection of heart, mind, body. The road toward resolution for them involves a weekend retreat with a marriage counselor. I will not give away details and the details are not important to this blog.

My point is that the movie, thankfully, deals with a reality that is common for many of us: marriages are alive and they grow and change, get sick and recover health, die or are re-born. This is not glamorous. However, it is absolutely beautiful and sacred for the couple experiencing their own marriage. I appreciate the fact that this movie allows us to visit another couple’s troubled marriage without excessive performance drama, beauty, or false idolatry.

The answers the couple in question seeks are found in re-defining the way in which they connect with each other. This is sometimes referred to as Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, or EFT.

Specifically, emotionally focused couple therapy seeks to establish connection between partners by examining relational patterns and assessing which patterns are working, which are not, and then identifying new techniques and interventions that establish reconnection in more helpful ways. A good example of this comes from an excerpt of Dr. Sue Johnson’s book, Hold Me Tight:

To reconnect, lovers have to be able to de-escalate the conflict and actively create a basic emotional safety. They need to be able to work in concert to curtail their negative dialogues and to defuse their fundamental insecurities. They may not be as close as they crave to be, but they can now step on each other’s toes and then turn and do damage control. They can have their differences and not careen helplessly into Demon Dialogues. They can rub each other’s raw spots and not slide into anxious demands or numbing withdrawal. They can deal better with the disorienting ambiguity that their loved one, who is the solution to fear, can also suddenly become a source of fear. In short, they can hold onto their emotional balance a lot more often and a lot more easily. This creates a platform for repairing rifts in their relationship and creating a truly loving connection.

Recognize that you and your partner have OPTIONS with respect to conflict, escalation, de-escalation, disconnection and connection. Next time you are in a heated, spiraling verbal conflict with your partner, be aware of the power the subject matter has over your relationship—the control you and your partner are willingly giving to an inanimate object. The subject may be important to you both—your children, their school, your work, your summer vacation, house work, finances, politics—but does the subject deserve the pain, isolation, cold war, the DISSOLUTION of your marriage?

Becoming aware of the circumstances surrounding conflict and disconnection is the first step in establishing new patterns and opportunities for you and your partner to control your relationship. Patterns of communication—of connection—work during certain periods and not during others; they change over time and can move from healthy to unhealthy. They can also be modified.

I appreciate “Hope Springs” as a catalyst to a couple’s examination of possibility within their own troubled marriage. There is hope. The aim of a movie, in my humble opinion, should be to connect each of us more easily and truthfully with the experience of our OWN life. If you are middle-aged and your marriage is on the rocks, this movie may help you do so.

Recognition is a good FIRST step. Call me for the next one.