“Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.” RD Laing, MD
Yesterday I had a VIP Day with a brave and openhearted woman struggling to understand whether or not she should release her 39-year marriage and to make peace with her decision.
Having been a therapist, she picked up many of the coaching tools I shared with her and concepts quickly. But she also taught me something yesterday as well: There is an important distinction between loving someone and using someone:
When we use our partners to avoid pain,
...continue reading...“Things are as they are, we suffer because we imagined different.” Anonymous
Our expectations of other people and our attachments to how we think the circumstances of our lives should be get us in an awful lot of trouble.
We expect that our husbands will notice when we’re overwhelmed and that he’ll step in and do something about it so that we feel some relief…
We expect that our spouses will be appreciative for all of our hard work…
We expect that the people around us will be happy and positive and grateful.
And we attach to those ...continue reading...
“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” Mother Theresa
Women who have lied find me…
Women who have cheated find me…
Women who have engaged with married men find me…
Women who have done things they’re not proud of find me…
And even men who are imperfect themselves occasionally find me.
They find me because the words I use let them know they’re safe with me.
They won’t be judged.
Or ridiculed….
Or made to feel worse than they already do…
I lost my ability to judge others because I know what it’s like ...continue reading...
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Oscar Wilde
Virtually everyone believes their thoughts as Truth (with a capital T). No one walks around thinking, “I think I’ll believe that lie.” And yet, all of our beliefs are simply perspectives – not right or wrong, good or bad – just one person’s perspective.
But some of the beliefs we carry as if they are inevitable truths that will for sure come to fruition or that they are irrefutable facts. They’re often not. Outside of needing oxygen and water to live, there are very few beliefs we carry ...continue reading...
“It can’t be a great marriage without being a great partnership.” Helen Mirren
In coaching, recognizing yourself in others is something called, ‘You spot it, you got it.’ The idea is that you wouldn’t truly be able to see and understand a client’s experience as deeply as you do unless you have an element of that in yourself as well.
And boy do I understand this one…
The Type A personality is defined as someone who is highly organized, ambitious, impatient, and may be competitive and/or aggressive in their approach to getting things done.
Sometimes, as women we ...continue reading...
“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
My client’s husband values freedom more than anything; freedom to express himself, freedom to live his life on his terms, even the freedom to be able to leave at any moment. Feeling the weight of shackles of any kind is like his own ...continue reading...
“When you love someone, truly love them, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt…” Sherrilyn Kenyon
“I don’t miss him because he never really shared that much of himself with me.”
With only a few words, my client expressed so much.
She has been separated from her husband for more than a year and still struggling with whether or not to leave the marriage for good or somehow re-engage with ...continue reading...
“You don’t protect your heart by acting like you don’t have one.” Unknown Author
Casey has been married for 15 years and over those years there had been plenty of hurtful words, disappointments and unmet expectations between them. So much so that she built a metaphorical wall around her heart to protect herself from being hurt again and again and again by the man that she truly did love.
She stopped making herself vulnerable to him, keeping him at an emotionally safe distance.
She stopped telling him about how she was feeling, about her dreams and desires…existing on ...continue reading...
“If you don’t receive love from the ones that are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.” Robert Goolrick
“I never intended for this to happen.”
“I never saw this coming.”
“I didn’t go looking for an affair.”
“We were just talking as friends.”
“It just happened.”
Sure there are some people that actively go looking for an affair – the next distraction, the next victim, spending hours on sites like Ashley-Madison. But those aren’t typically the people that find their way to me.
The people in my tribe find themselves in an affair ...continue reading...
“Courage and confidence are what decision making is all about.” Mike Krzyzewski
A client, who I’ll call Paula, had gotten stuck.
Six weeks ago, she told her husband that she felt it was time to separate. They had been struggling for years and it was only getting worse.
They were arguing more.
They were sleeping in separate bedrooms.
And Paula was worrying about what they were teaching their daughters about love and marriage.
She felt like their only answer was to separate.
Not surprisingly, that’s not what her husband wanted so they spent the next three hours trying ...continue reading...
