Category: Uncategorized
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Why Have Our Fights Gotten SO Bad?
“The fight you keep having isn’t new, it just has more fuel.” The cycles of conflict you have as a couple haven’t changed exactly, but they have become more intense. The old patterns were always there. But they weren’t always like this. There’s a difference between a familiar argument and a familiar argument amplified by…
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Navigating Loss During the Holidays
GRIEF For all those (like me) navigating the holidays while experiencing loss, I want to acknowledge that loss takes many forms. Some of us have lost people, others have lost relationships, their health, homes, identities, businesses or the futures they thought they were walking towards. Grief doesn’t make space for the holidays; it holds us…
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Clearing the Holiday FOG of Fear, Obligation and Guilt
The holidays are here… and so is the Holiday FOG — that sneaky mix of Fear, Obligation, and Guilt that can steal your joy before you even step into a room. The good news is that you absolutely can clear this FOG and it’s simple. Here are ways to reclaim your holiday— even when family…
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When Doing Everything Becomes a Survival Strategy
Why the Strongest Person in the Room is Often the Most Exhausted “Overfunctioning is not your personality — it’s a patterned survival response. A fractal.” You’re Not Just Being Helpful — You’re Patterned to Hold It All Somewhere along the way, you became the one who holds everything together. You remember the birthdays. You schedule…
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Holding On And Letting Go
Life transitions are rarely neat or predictable. Life transitions are messy. They don’t arrive in an orderly fashion, asking us to finish one step before moving to the next. More often than not, they invite us into a paradox: figuring out how to let go and hold on at the same time. Letting go asks us to release what…
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Boundaries
I love using nature as a metaphor to bring clarity to everyday challenges—especially when it comes to boundaries. Think of boundaries in terms of tectonic movement: divergent, convergent, and transform.
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Holiday FOG-Fear, Obligation and Guilt
Are you currently experiencing Holiday Fog, you know…fear, obligation and guilt? It doesn’t matter whether it’s an employer or a badly behaving family member, you deserve better. Using fear, obligation and guilt to control others is emotional blackmail or at the very best highly conflictual. You can do something about it! Stop, observe and strategize.…
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Desperation Cycle
Having worked with physicians over the last 20 years, I have come to recognize a familiar pattern. It is a pattern of trauma which begins in medical school, sometimes earlier. Unlike other high stress professions that acknowledge the risks, physician stress is mostly ignored. When it’s not, the physician is pathologized, made to feel as…
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Re-Traumatization vs Stress
Everyone is feeling stressed right now. It is a normal response to the unexpected and demanding circumstances we are experiencing. But is the stress you are feeling just garden variety normal day to day stress or is it something more? Stress is felt in the body as tension and is experienced by the mind as…