Fierce intimacy is the essential capacity to confront issues, to take each other on.

One of the main chemicals in the brew is dopamine, the reward chemical and the same chemical cocaine releases to cause addiction. Another is norephedrine, an arousing chemical central to fight-or-flight vigilance, leading to an enlivening feeling akin to a runner’s high. Levels of testosterone and estrogen also increase, two hormones that create th

There’s an old saying in family therapy that most couples have the same fight over forty years. Why? Because the same parts of each of them are fighting the same caricatures of their partners. I call these caricatures each partner’s core negative image of the other.

Functional actions in a relationship are moves that empower your partner to come through for you. Dysfunctional actions are those that render your partner paralyzed.

We have a saying in Relational Life Therapy: “Tone trumps content.” Tone reveals which part of your brain you’re in, us consciousness or you and me consciousness.

Mike was living out what some therapists call a love-lust split. Home was stable, good, responsible, and dead. Outside, the street was adventurous, bad, selfish, and alive.

So, now we have moved from thinking about one form of trauma to four. Trauma might be: Intrusive and disempowering, e.g., being sworn at or beaten Intrusive and falsely empowering, e.g., incest, emotional caretaking (regulating a parent) Abandoning and disempowering, e.g., “you’re unworthy,” scapegoating Abandoning and falsely empowering, e.g., “yo

Many children face a different response from each parent. In those instances, the child chooses. Should I be a hammer like Dad or a long-suffering anvil like Mom? Most children will model themselves on the parent with whom they identify—the one they feel closest to (not necessarily the same-sex parent)—and react to the other parent in many of the s

“Joining through the truth” is the Relational Life therapist’s art of loving confrontation: we hold up the mirror of difficult truths and do not shrink from our role as mentor and coach.