Psychotherapist, Author, Estrangement Consultant
Did you ever hear these words when you were a kid? Have you said them yourself?
If you were told, “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about,” here’s what you learned:
1. The world is a dangerous place.
If Mommy or Daddy or Grandma or the babysitter threatens to make you cry, what might a stranger do?
Trust is necessary for healthy relationships. Read More
When your feelings are hurt in a relationship, sometimes it seems like your only choices are 1) exact revenge, 2) stop talking to the person, or 3) try to forgive and forget.
But there’s another choice, one that’s often the better way to go with relationships that are important to you, and that is to communicate about what happened and how you feel about it.
For many of us, that’s a tall order. We have to be able to sort through our hurt feelings first AND we have to have the self-esteem to assert that our feelings matter in relationships. Read More
Are you hurting from a breakup? Experiencing relationship trouble? Sad or angry about something that happened long ago, or full of regret because you feel you hurt someone?
You might be able to heal a little bit faster using a technique developed by my friend Jody, who agreed to let me use her name in this post.
After Jody read “Conversations with God,” she got creative and started writing down conversations with people — or rather, with the souls of people — she needed to resolve things with. Read More
Being cut off from someone you love is not only painful but apparently common, judging from the amount of feedback I receive about the estrangement advice on my website.
In that article, I advise the person who’s been cut off and wants to reconcile to act on all those good cliches: turn the other cheek, be the bigger person, and do whatever it takes to apologize and make amends.*
Well.
That advice riles many readers. Read More