Women & Low Sexual Desire – Sex Therapy
Myth: Women are less sexual than men. Myth: Women lose all interest in sex after marriage or as they get older. Myth: If you don't get turned on easily or often, you don't enjoy or care about sex as much as someone who does. Women who have a low...
Why Emotions are So Important
Emotions aren't just touchy-feely fluff. We need to take the time to express our emotions and to validate our partner's emotions because this is what connects us as human beings. When we let ourselves better understand each other's emotions, we'll feel...
Accepting Our Partner’s Corrections
When we take a chance in guessing how our partner is feeling, we might get it wrong--that's okay! If our partner corrects us, accept this graciously and take their correction to better understand how they are truly feeling. ...
Showing Our Partner We Understand Them
Our partner will feel heard and understood when we take time to show them what exactly it is we are understanding. It can be as simple as mirroring back a summary of what they have shared or--even more meaningful--we can acknowledge their most important feelings...
Putting Ourself in Their Shoes
You know your partner best, so you have the best ability to listen to them and really imagine how they are feeling. Let your own knowledge about the type of person that they are, what is most important to them, what they have been going through and how they...
Listening With Strong Interest & Putting Our Stuff on Hold
When our partner is talking to us about something important, we have our own reactions going on inside (thoughts, opinions, feelings and advice). If we want our partner to feel supported when they are opening up, we can put our own stuff on hold in order to...
Comfort Helps, Contempt Hurts: How our Body Language Sends These Messages
Research shows that we can soothe our partner with handholding comfort and that we communicate contempt through a certain facial expression. These two body language cues are so important to be aware of when we want to work on connection in the relationship....
Body Language Matters!
Today we're talking about body language and how it can help or hurt your relationship. Do you know what signals you are sending when you and your partner are talking? How are we helping or hurting the conversation with the signals we are sending? We are so in tune...
EMPATHY – The closest thing to a magic wand for relationships.
I might not have a magic wand to fix all relationships--but I do have a simple skill that we can use in any area of our life to feel closer to others. This set of videos will break down how we can show EMPATHY in communication. It's simple (but not easy) and it is a...
When Everything’s Good, but Sex is Awkward
You and your partner have a pretty strong relationship. You can talk about most things, you handle conflict without blowing up at each other, and you support each other’s hopes and dreams. There’s trust in the relationship and you feel comfortable opening up about...
Why Your Arguments are Going Nowhere
Every now and then a couple comes to me saying things like: -“We have a really strong relationship.” -“We usually communicate really well.” -“We just have this one problem that we can’t work through—can you help us?!” Committed couples make a lot of decisions...
Why “The Pina Colada Song” Makes Me Cry
You know the song Escape by Rupert Holmes? If you like pina coladas…and getting caught in the rain… I had always thought of it as a fun, cheesy summer time song that would pop up on the oldies station. I hadn’t ever really paid attention to the lyrics. ...
One Month to More Connection in Your Relationship
31 discussion topics to get you on the road to better intimacy. One way we build intimacy and connection is to be able to share important/deeper parts of ourselves with our partner and for them to be able to truly hear us when we do. This exercise can be done daily...
Office Tour on Fresh Practice Design
This week, my midtown Sacramento office was featured on Fresh Practice Design. Fresh Practice Design lets you peak into therapists' offices across the country. I am a regular reader--I love seeing the diverse decor choices and hearing from therapists about the...
Indecisiveness: Get Unstuck by Taking Action
I was listening to a TED Talk a few months ago about decision-making. With the heaps of information and options available to us on a day-to-day basis, we can get paralyzed by indecisiveness as we look to make the “perfect” or “right” decision. Aziz Ansari shares often...
When Racing Thoughts Keep You Awake: 5 Tips for a Better Night’s Sleep
Are you having trouble sleeping? Are racing thoughts keeping you up? Do you just want to tell your brain to shut up and give you a break already? You might be worried about something coming up on the horizon, thinking through different scenarios and hoping things turn...
10 Reasons to Start Couples Counseling
Leading couples researcher and therapist, John Gottman, PhD has found that the average couple waits 6 years before seeking help for marital problems. That is a long time to be unhappy in a relationship! If you are considering starting therapy to improve your...
Tips for Making Friends in a New City (While Adulting)
Adulting is Hard. Making-friends-in-a-new-city-while-adulting can be harder. A friend and I were chatting over coffee about the growth in Sacramento as twenty- and thirty-somethings have begun to look for more affordable, but still hip cities to put down roots. Having...
A Window in to an Abusive Relationship – Big Little Lies on HBO
Are you caught up on HBO’s miniseries starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern? Big Little Lies, based on the book by Liane Moriarty, came to a conclusion on Sunday. The series absolutely enthralled me—the setting (Monterey) was gorgeous, the...
Reading The 5 Love Languages Isn’t Going to Save Your Relationship
Hot take: I'm not a huge fan of this famous relationship self-help book. Whaaaaat? Yep. I said it. I do think it's helpful--and necessary in most cases--to communicate to your partner when and how to show you love, but I don't think these actions alone are going to...
10 Signs You’re Ready for Therapy
Many of the people who contact me haven't been in therapy before. Maybe they have some friends who have opened up about their counseling experiences or maybe their only frame of reference is glimpses into therapy sessions on tv or in the movies -- which let me tell...
