Spring-cleaning and I have a love hate relationship. Although I like to believe that I am a pretty clean and organized person, as the months go on, dust, clothes, and even stress start to accumulate, and I just cant help it. Since I was young, I have always believed in a good spring-cleaning, even though […]
5 Ways to Reach Your Resolution by Jennifer Fang-Pan
Happy 2017 everyone! I felt privileged to witness the many personal and interpersonal goals you achieved in 2016 and I’m sure many of you made some resolutions to reach for even more enriching experiences in this new year. Whether you want to: work on being a better partner, spouse, parent, version of yourself; eat, […]
Getting The Most Bang For Your Therapy Buck
by April R. McDowell, Ph.D., LGMFT Deciding to start therapy, whether it’s individual, couple, or family therapy, is often a big decision! Many factors are taken into consideration before taking this step, not the least of which is cost. Even though many people realize its value and the significant investment that it represents for themselves […]
Pain as a Gift?
It’s about midnight, and I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about pain. Today a person I know poured out her pain to me, and it was raw and real and I could feel it, see it. In that moment I felt like she invited me into it, and I accepted, and it hurt. I feel […]
Healing Relationship Wounds
I see a great many couples in my private practice. Lately, there seems to be a theme: couples who have been together or married for many years, who have “grown apart”. This feeling is usually expressed by one partner, while the other is caught somewhat off-guard, not realizing things have gotten as bad as they […]
I’m Frustrated (or, Why MFTs Rock Yet No One Seems To Know It)
Right now I’m at the AAMFT Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. The conference itself hasn’t started yet, but as President-Elect of the Mid-Atlantic Division of AAMFT (http://www.madmft.org), I just finished attending Leadership Day, which is a day set aside for – you guessed it – leaders in the AAMFT divisions. The purpose of Leadership […]
How To Get Your Partner To Open Up To You
Sometimes it seems as if communicating effectively with one’s partner is an impossible task – overshadowed only by their ability (or lack thereof) to communicate with us. What gets in the way? Why is it so hard to talk to the one you love and be really, deeply understood? That’s what we all want. In […]
Time
Along with our health, time really is our most precious commodity. Whatever we spend our time on is a good indicator of our priorities. And if you’re like me, there’s never enough of it. I wear so many hats: wife, mother, sister, friend, therapist, supervisor, colleague…and each role comes with its own expectation of time […]
Warning Signs of An Affair
Coming to therapy to resolve issues surrounding a partner’s infidelity is both unfortunate and fortunate. Unfortunate for obvious reasons – you’d rather be anywhere else dealing with almost anything else! But fortunate because you are there. In the office of a compassionate therapist trained to deal with the emotional and psychological fallout of an affair […]