Are You Codependent or Connected to Each Other?
Is it normal for one person’s happiness to be dependent on another person? Isn’t that co-dependent? In my last two blog posts I addressed codependency. I explained that a key to understanding co-dependency is that while one person does something destructive, the other...
How To Get Your Needs Met When Someone’s Not Listening
In my last post, I defined co-dependency. The key ingredient in it is that the supposed “victim” gets something out of the spouse’s bad behavior. Today I want to look at it from a different angle. Above all, a marriage is meant to be a friendship. It cannot be a...
Are You Codependent?
It’s always bad to put labels on people—especially yourself—just by looking at the outer behavior. For example, a person with a tremor could have a brain dysfunction, a motor problem, delirium from a life of drinking, or plain old fear. How can you know which it is by...
Verbal Abuse or Being Polite: It’s the Extra Words
I was delighted: more feedback! I love opening emails from people or seeing blog comments; I like that sense of conversation. When people post, I know I’m not talking to myself. Imagine my surprise in reading a comment that I shouldn’t have said in a recent...
3 Things People Can Do To Help Spouses Overcome Insecurity
Elizabeth stood back and looked at the job she had just completed. She had created a display for her work team and it was clear and well organized. But Elizabeth walked off in disgust, thinking it was awful. And no one could convince her otherwise. She came home...
3 Reasons Marriage Counseling Fails
I believe in Marriage Counseling. Well, of course: That’s why I do it! But the cynics among you might think, “Yeah, well, she gets paid after all.” Now that’s a good point. I do get paid, as you do for your work. But honestly, if you did your work, whether it was...
The Silver Lining In Your (Bad) Marriage
Let’s call this topic “spiritual.” It’s part of the marriage and family counseling process and there is no way to get away from it. Sometimes silver linings are so big they cover the whole cloud. In order for your marriage to work, it helps to see that Life has...
Why Does a War of Words in Business Make the Front Page?
On Friday, September 30, 2011, the Wall Street Journal’s interesting “Marketplace” section featured a 1/3 page spread entitled “War of Words” airing the dirty laundry between Oracle (the giant IT company) head Larry Ellison, Hewlett-Pakard, and a company H-P bought,...
Verbal Abuse at Work: How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot
No one can afford to turn away potential customers, yet thousands of people are doing just that every day. They are also begging to be fired. Just ask Carol Bartz. You may be familiar with her name. She was hired as CEO of Yahoo.com in 2009, and by September, 2011,...
How Your Right and Left Brain Work Together to Make Sense of The World
“No,” Jake said adamantly, “Don’t you remember? I was standing right there, not here, and I was with Sam, not Sylvia.” “That’s not the way it was at all,” Stacey said with growing annoyance. “Why do you get everything mixed up? I have a much better memory of things...