“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” -Ursula K. LeGuin In thirty-five years of counseling couples and families, I have continually been reminded about how little most of us are taught about specific tasks […]
Why We Love: What’s Our Brain Got to Do With It?
“It was always about love. Always, always about love. Lost love, love denied, the obsessive hunger for love. Parental or romantic. Whether it was twisted or pure, fulfilled or unrequited, love was always at the source”. […]
News on Couples and Empathy: Reader Beware
“When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without taking responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. When I have been listened to, when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and go on.” -Carl Rogers A new […]
Building a Strong Marriage
One of our most popular books for anyone who wants to read up on the secrets of happy relationships is called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by psychologist John Gottman and Nan Silver, published in 2000. Gottman revolutionized the study of marriage by using rigorous scientific procedures to observe the habits of married couples […]
Kids from Happy Families Adjust Better to School
A three year longitudinal study confirmed what family therapists have observed clinically for decades–namely that patterns of family interaction have profound effects on children–both for better and for worse. Melissa Sturge-Apple, a researcher from the University of Rochester, studied 234 families with 6 year-old children, and followed the adjustment of the kids in their first […]
Improving Family Communication in 5 Steps
“Any problem, big or small, within a family always seems to start with bad communication.” […]
