Five Frank Tips for Enjoying Your Family This Holiday Season
What can help you through spending time with family this holiday season? Dr. Margaret shares five frank suggestions to figure out how to do just that. Happy Holidays!
SelfWork 159: When It’s Over – Healing From Rejection and Replacement
Coping with rejection in a relationship, whether it be a friendship or partnership or a marriage, can be very difficult. But to add to the hurt, you can also learn that your ex has moved on quickly — or perhaps had moved on while still in a relationship with you. And that can lead to a...
When Love Isn’t the Problem, Apathy Is. The Pain of Living Parallel Lives. (SelfWork #158)
I see so many people who are living out their partnerships or marriages passing like ships in the night. And it’s very lonely. You may or may not recognize that apathy has snuck into your relationship, as you go about living parallel lives. Most of these couples are conflict-avoidant and the...
Gratitude and Grief: For My Brother Adam
This week I’m getting ready to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. And I love Thanksgiving. I didn’t have much to do with creating or cooking many of my childhood feasts, except trying to perfectly fold the napkins, a chore assigned to me by my fairly exacting mother. Or bring my heavily...
Three Vital Reasons To Say “I’m Sorry”: A Simple Way to Improve Your Marriage
“Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” Those words were emblazoned on a poster that hung in my room in my high school years. Ali McGraw and Ryan O-Neal, stars of the hit movie “Love Story,” were blissfully gazing into a future of no conditions or...
When The “The Worst Thing” That Can Happen… Happens (When You Tell Your Truth)
I was on a first date with Jeff years ago. He was nice. I knew people that he knew and vice versa.v He’d earned his Ph.D. in psychology, having graduated from the same program that I was currently slugging my way through. The usual get-to-know-you questions were tossed around. “Where did you grow...
Should A Therapist Have Walked the Same Walk As You? A Therapist’s Perspective
A while back I got a call from a potential client. She asked a question I’d never heard. “I need to know who you voted for in the election.” I’ve been a therapist for over 25 years. I’ve been asked if I was divorced, married, how old I was, whether or not I was a...
When Mom Is Emotionally Unstable. Seven Ways To Heal.
Mom. For many this word brings with it childhood memories of feeling safe while being tenderly tucked into bed, of band-aids and hugs when you scraped your knee, or of wise advice given when you fell in love for the first time. You watched your mom and learned from her; she was committed to...
When A Parent Needs Too Much: What Is Enmeshment and How Does It Hurt A Child
Being a parent is a complicated job. Healthy parenting includes doing your best to create a loving environment, supporting your kids so that their talents and interests thrive, and guiding them as they increasingly build their own life. All parents are going to make mistakes that impact...
Guilt and The Borderline Mother (Or Wife or Daughter or Friend): Nine Ways to Work Through It
Your phone rings. Her name appears on your screen. You dread clicking over. And then comes the guilt. Your history with her rushes into your mind as you wait for one more ring — all the times that you’ve rushed to her side, comforted her, and told her you’d be there for her,...
Dr. Margaret’s Book Now Available!
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