My new blog 6389

Parents tell me two versions of the same story. In one, they are patient and present, even when their child is falling apart over a granola bar cut the wrong way. In the other, a small misbehavior becomes a mess, voices rise, and everyone walks away hurt. Both stories live inside the same loving parent. Internal Family Systems therapy gives us language and tools for why this happens, and how to lead with something steadier than our moods or our history. IFS starts from a

When couples tell me they love each other but intimacy feels distant, they often arrive with a quiet mix of hope and grief. They have shared mortgages, children, and a thousand dinners, yet the spark that once pulled them toward each other now feels unreliable. The truth is not that they chose the wrong partner or lost their capacity for desire. More often, they have been living without the conditions that allow desire to breathe. Sex therapy, done well, is not about tricks

Grief travels through a household like weather. Some days the air feels heavy, and the smallest task takes too much. Other days break open, and a laugh at the dinner table surprises everyone. Families do not grieve in unison. Grandparents and teenagers, spouses and siblings, all cycle through sorrow, anger, numbness, and meaning-making on different clocks. The mismatch in timing can look like conflict, avoidance, or a lack of care, when it is often the opposite. Family ther

Pornography shows up in therapy rooms far more often than people think. Sometimes it is a quiet background habit that neither partner mentions. Other times it is the headline: a phone discovered, browser history revealed, or a partner who feels abandoned to a screen. In sex therapy, porn is not a moral category. It is a behavior with meanings, consequences, and context. Honest discussion and clear boundaries help couples decide whether porn is a neutral pastime, a wedge tha

Money conflict rarely starts with numbers. It starts with meaning. One partner opens a credit card bill and feels a flush of shame, the other sees the same figure and feels trapped. The facts have not changed, but the stories behind them collide. When couples arrive in my office and say, We keep fighting about money, what they usually mean is, Money became the loudest place our differences shout from. I have sat with partners who earn a combined 500,000 dollars and feel

Chronic illness changes the daily weather inside a home. Symptoms flare. Medications run low. Insurance forms stack up. A good day can collapse into an urgent phone call from a lab or an unexpected fall in the kitchen. Most families adapt, but few are prepared for how thoroughly illness reorganizes roles, routines, sex and intimacy, money, and even the names people call themselves. The patient becomes the “one who can’t.” The spouse becomes the “helper.” The teenager become

EMDR therapy has been around for more than three decades, and its reputation is earned the hard way, through steady clinical practice and a growing research base. Most people hear about it in the context of weekly sessions. An EMDR intensive is a different animal. It compresses the assessment, resourcing, and reprocessing into longer, concentrated blocks of time. Picture a half day or full day of work, often over two to four consecutive days, with deliberate pacing and lots

When parents age, when a brother has a serious mental illness, or when a sister sustains a life-changing injury, the caregiving net often lands on the siblings. Some families pull together with grace. Others hit every branch on the descent. Even in close families, decades of birth order dynamics, unspoken resentments, and practical constraints create friction. Add money questions, distance, and medical complexity, and you have a recipe for conflict at the very moment collab