Building Trust in Relationships: The Why and How
You can’t have a relationship without trust. It doesn’t matter what kind of relationship– romantic, platonic, familial– trust is always going to be the bedrock of intimacy, vulnerability, and close connections. While you might be able to have a cordial, surface-level...
What Does Trauma Therapy Look Like?
Maria Dimachkie, therapist at Love Heal Grow, goes into detail about what to expect from trauma therapy and answers commonly asked questions.Hi, I'm Maria Dimachkie, therapist for individuals and couples at Love Heal Grow Counseling. I help individuals and couples...
Understanding and Managing Anxiety-Related Intrusive Thoughts
The term “intrusive thought” has recently become popular on the internet, offering scores of people validation and insight into these previously unnamed internal experiences. Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome, involuntary thoughts, images, or ideas that can cause...
Parenthood and Its Impact on Your Relationship
Navigating This Journey Together After marriage, couples are often asked, “When are you having a baby?!”. Once the decision is made to start a family, extensive resources support parents through pregnancy, delivery, and child-rearing milestones. However, amidst these...
Travel With Your Partner Without Fighting
Summer is here, and for many of us, that means it’s vacation time! Whether you’re planning to explore a new city, hike in the mountains, bask in the sun at the beach, or enjoy a fun staycation in your hometown, taking a break can be one of the best times of the year....
Sex After Menopause: Navigating Changes
Our post-menopause lives can bring lots of changes, some welcome, some unwelcome. Often some of the least welcome changes are those that affect our sexuality. The changes in our bodies and our hormone levels inevitably affect our sexual experience in some way....
Parallel Parenting vs Co-Parenting: What’s the Difference?
Parenting after a divorce is challenging, and there’s no one right way to do it. First and foremost, you have to put your child’s needs first and then consider your family’s unique situation. Among the various approaches, parallel parenting and co-parenting stand out...
Understanding the Relationship Between Shame and Complex Trauma
As a therapist who is particularly interested in working with survivors of complex trauma and difficult childhood experiences, I am constantly struck by how often survivors come in carrying deeply embedded, debilitating shame. Often, survivors may have carried this...
How the Heat Can Be Affecting Your Mental Health
Do you feel miserable in the sweltering heat of summer? It’s not just you. Millions of people’s mental health is affected by the heat, and not for the better. As temperatures rise due to climate change, the impact of extreme heat on our physical health is widely...
What is EMDR?
Maria Dimachkie, therapist at Love Heal Grow, explains what EMDR therapy is, what it looks like in practice, and how to determine if it will be a good fit for you.Hi, I'm Maria Dimachkie, therapist for individuals and couples at Love Heal Grow Counseling. I help...
How to Cope With an Adult ADHD Diagnosis
Many of us tend to think of ADHD as something that kids are diagnosed with and then grow out of. But that’s far from reality. ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, might have one of the most frustrating names and incorrect assumptions of any mental health...
Navigating Differences in Sexual Desire
Now more than ever, we are inundated with messages about what it means to have a “good” sex life. In the context of romantic relationships, we get sold the idea that a good sexual connection means sex is frequent, intensely passionate, spontaneous, and usually results...
Should I Disclose My Invisible Disability To My Boss?
In a fair, just world, being disabled in the workplace would always mean accommodations and equitable treatment. But ask anybody in the disabled community– this is not always the case. Disabled people are not always treated fairly at work, and if you have an invisible...
Childhood Trauma and Anxiety in Adulthood. It Makes Sense
It’s very common for people who experienced trauma in childhood to struggle with anxiety as adults. This probably makes sense but can also be a source of frustration, confusion and self-incrimination. “It’s over.” “It’s in the past.” “That was so long ago” “Why...
The Role of the Nervous System in Rebuilding Trust After Betrayal
Betrayal can shatter the foundation of trust in any relationship, leaving emotional scars that are often difficult to heal. Rebuilding trust after such an experience is not just a matter of willpower, betrayal can impact our nervous system’s capacity to feel fully...
Anxiety is Not Really the Problem
Surprisingly, if you are struggling with anxiety, or even an anxiety disorder, such as OCD, generalized anxiety, panic, etc., as hard as this is to believe, it’s not really the anxiety that’s the problem. It’s the intolerance of anxiety that’s causing the problems....
The Harmful Impact of Conversion Therapy
If you’re a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, it’s likely that you’ve thought about therapy at least once or twice. Surveys show that queer American adults and youth both show elevated levels of depression and anxiety– which makes a lot of sense, given how hostile the...
Tips on Pick-Ups and Drop-Offs for Coparents
When you and an ex-partner are co-parenting, one principle must stand out above all others: You need to do what’s best for your children. This means compliance with custody rulings, which are made with the kids’ needs in mind. This also means you need to do everything...
How to Navigate Different Parenting Styles in Your Relationship
One of the biggest challenges about being a parent is determining how you want to raise your children. Obviously you want them to grow up to be happy, healthy, well-rounded individuals– but the way we do that has changed a lot in recent years. This is especially true...
Anxiety? OCD? Here’s Why You Are NOT Going Crazy
By far the most common concern that my clients who struggle with significant anxiety, obsessions and compulsions bring to the first session is the question. “Am I going crazy?” (“Am I having a nervous breakdown?” is a close second). My answer is always a clear,...
Are You Experiencing Worker Burnout?
Do you dread going to work? Does thinking about a career you used to enjoy bring you apathy at best and make you want to break down in tears at worst? Does nothing about work motivate you any more, and you feel like you’re just barely scraping by? If so, you might be...
