Just because grief is part of the human experience, doesn’t mean we have to cope with it alone, or reign in how we express it. In this post, we’ll explore different kinds of loss and grief, and how to know when it’s time to seek therapy for grief.
In this post, we’ll talk you through healing your self image, the therapy interventions that can help, and five tips for getting started.
Many LGBTQIA+ Americans living today realized their orientation and came out of the closet when they were teenagers, there are many adults who experience this at an older age and have the challenge of coming out to a romantic partner. In this post, we offer some guidance in this post to help you prepare for the conversation.
Not all therapists start out knowing they want to be therapists. Some, like ECC Affiliate Therapist Peter Beer, start out in an entirely different field and realize that human relationships are what they want to dedicate their careers to. In his Q&A for our blog today, Peter shares about what led him to therapy and the approaches he finds beneficial in working with clients. And with June being Men’s Mental Health Month, he shares about the most common issue he sees among young men seeking therapy for the first time—loneliness—and how he coaches them through it.
Why do humans fall in love with the idea of someone, rather than the actual person? What function does this serve in the course of a relationship? Should we avoid doing it? How do we handle it when we start to see our partners for who they really are, and they’re different from who we expected? It turns out there are actually some very good answers for all of this.
Is my partner gaslighting me? Chances are if you’re in a relationship that you’ve wondered this before, especially in the midst of a conflict or disagreement. Gaslighting is a term that has entered the cultural lexicon in the last decade, yet we often hear confusion from clients about whether their experiences actually meet the definition of gaslighting, or something less serious. In today’s post, we unpack this loaded term to help you discern gaslighting from other communication issues in relationships.
Valentine’s Day as it is celebrated in modern culture is a chance to celebrate romantic love, yet it can also be a painful reminder if you’re currently single, have recently lost or ended a relationship with a romantic partner, or are processing relationship trauma. Even in a relatively healthy partnership, Valentine’s Day can be fraught with social pressures to demonstrate romantic commitment in certain ways like expensive gifts and romantic dates. It’s all too easy to feel disappointment, grief, or stress around Valentine’s Day, which is why practicing self-love and compassion are important. Here are a few therapy tips for honoring your authentic needs and values around Valentine’s Day.
As a wave of red and pink floods our storefronts, and Valentine's Day posts from your peers begin to take over your social media feed, these can be painful reminders of what we perceive as personal deficits in our lives. Even for those in relationships, Valentine’s Day can be a breeding ground for expectations, resentment, pressure, anger, and hurt. Here are some reminders as potentially complicated feelings come up around February 14th.
Relationships are connective and complex. They can sometimes hold dialectical meaning. When something like this is filled with so much nuance, we then try to find answers to make sense of it. We might turn to relationship experts, self help books, or intensive workshops. I am here to break the news that not even the experts have it all figured out. Why? Because we’ve all got a story and so do our partners. One that is unique to you and only you. The relationship is just a new chapter in our own story. Now, imagine starting a book halfway through and not having the details of the previous chapters. That’s a big part of relationships. Getting to know your partner’s previous chapters. That requires work, time, and effort.
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