3 Benefits of Dating & Marriage Counseling for Modern Relationships

Modern life’s hustle of busy careers creates a ton of stress on relationships, sometimes resulting in feelings of disconnection or being misunderstood with your significant other. Couples therapy aims to bridge the gap of that disconnect. It isn’t waving a white flag accepting defeat, it is about choosing a path that will strengthen and help you learn how to invest into life with your partner. 

Here are three ways counseling can help a couple lay the groundwork for a solid friendship, boosting the relationship as a whole. 

Helping Kids and Teens Navigate Big Emotions: Empowering Self-Expression and Self-Discovery

Growing up comes with a rollercoaster of emotions—sometimes overwhelming, sometimes confusing. Whether it’s anxiety about school, sadness from friendships changing, or frustration with family dynamics, all of these emotions are valid and important. As a community, we can work together to help kids and teens understand what their emotions are telling them, rather than feeling controlled by them.

Understanding Big Emotions

Most people, adults and kids alike, are conditioned to believe that there are "good" and "bad" emotions. One important reframe is understanding that there are no "good" or "bad" emotions—only positive and negative emotions. Emotions like happiness, excitement, and hope evoke positive feelings, while emotions like sadness, anger, and envy evoke negative feelings. This distinction is crucial because it teaches us that all emotions are important to feel and helps us to engage with those feelings to find the root cause, rather than avoid them and allow them to grow. Whether they make us feel better or worse, our emotions provide valuable information that we can learn from to better understand ourselves and our needs.

Family conversations can be a fun way to connect and bond as a family. Use this set of thought-provoking family conversation questions starters to encourage connection and spark interesting conversation with your kids. 

When Helping Hurts- For Family Members of those with OCD

We hear all the time “I’m so OCD” when someone is being particular or super tidy and while they are often saying this in humor, OCD is not just being super tidy or neat.  To show you a quick example of the differences between OCD and being “picky”, we’ve included a chart below.

Big baffling behaviors book​ review 

All behavior makes sense! If your kiddo continues to do things you don’t understand, then this is the book for you!

This book provides quick and simple ways to understand your children’s reactions through understanding the brain, attachment, and temperaments. Robyn offers ways to connect with your children while helping them​ learn to regulate​ their emotions. This book is helpful for you​ as a parent​ to learn your own tools to help you stay calm​ even when your child is not!

This is your postpartum brain

You’ve probably heard that becoming a mother changes you. You know it changes your priorities, your family, your schedule, your free time, but did you know it physically changes your brain? Along with hormones pulsing through your body, your brain changes during pregnancy and postpartum in order to better accommodate keeping a new life safe and protected. When we understand what this means and how fully it affects a mom, we can have more compassion for ourselves during this vulnerable time.

The book that I have found helpful as a parent and in my work with parents, is The Power of Showing Up. Authors Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson say "It’s not about saying or doing the perfect thing to get your child to behave. Parenting is about showing up consistently and offering your child the Four S’s—helping them feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure. This is what builds a strong foundation for their emotional and relational development."
In their book, they share how these 4 simple words can tame the emotional pain of the moment for our children and also create a healthy and stable relationship that can last a lifetime.

As we enter Black History Month, it's crucial to understand how our inherited ways of coping, while born from strength and survival, might need gentle reimagining for our present-day mental wellness. In a previous post, I discussed the barriers many people of color face when seeking therapy, from finding culturally competent care to overcoming stigma in our communities. Today, I want to explore a deeper aspect of mental health in the Black community – one that I frequently encounter in my counseling practice: the complex legacy of intergenerational patterns.