8 ways your pet saved you from yourself!

8 ways your pet saved you from yourself!

Having a pet entails a lot of responsibility as we all know. And though we may complain about it at times all pet owners have to admit that having our pet often also saves us from ourselves and our worst instincts. I had a cat in my early 20’s and got my dog at aged 28. In both cases they provided me with a level of responsibility that kept my 20’s self in check.

  1. I knew that if I stayed out too late there would be a surprise left for me. -Though my dog could not jump onto my bed my cat could and once did leave a brown surprise on my pillow to let me know that I had missed bed/feeding time by a few hours. My dog would leave the same message right in front of the door which I often found when it was introduced to my bare foot upon arrival.

Read full article at Medium.com https://medium.com/@jennifergural/8-ways-your-pet-saved-you-from-yourself-c48669d66f72

Can Honesty Ever Be Bad for a Relationship?

Can honesty ever be bad for a relationship?

Yes, there are some risks to being honest in a relationship. Your partner may not like what they hear. Their reaction may be intense enough that it costs you the relationship. We understand that at times being honest seems too risky. Especially if it is something you have been lying about for a while.

Do you have secrets? Were there small lies that you told early on that now you’re unsure how to correct? You may have behaviors you are engaged in that you have been keeping hidden. Perhaps you have already been denying your behaviors, how do you now come clean?

Continue reading “Can Honesty Ever Be Bad for a Relationship?”

How Humor Can Save Your Relationship

How Humor Heals Relationships

My partner and I had been together for 4 years and to be honest things were not going well.  We had been fighting, I had felt unappreciated, he had felt misunderstood and the relationship was in need of quick and sturdy repair.  I couldn’t tell you the last time we’d had fun together, enjoyed a joke, or even cracked a smile.  We couldn’t remember all the reasons we came together in the first place, the joys we took in each other’s personality, or the happiness we and once brought each other.  It was falling apart, we were falling apart and neither one of us knew how to save “us” or if we even wanted to.

I can remember him asking me what I needed.  What I needed was to be thought of, shown that I was important, that he still knew me, and most of all, I needed to laugh again.  I needed our relationship to have the humor and levity, the fun we once had together.

Humor is important in relationships.

“Life cannot be serious all the time, you have to make room for lightheartedness in relationships if you want to have balanced love.

Continue reading “How Humor Can Save Your Relationship”

Honesty In Relationships

How honesty shapes relationships

Healthy relationships have a lot of honest self-disclosure. The topic of honesty comes up enough in our clinical settings that it is worth exploring deeper. This post offers a sort of primer on things that relationship experts would encourage you to consider around honesty and self-disclosure. This is the kind of relationship advice a professional relationship counselor would give to you.

How should someone be honest in a relationship?

The short answer is that relationships are definitely more fulfilling when you and your partner are able to be almost completely honest. There are huge, priceless benefits of being more honest in relationships. One could say that honesty is at the foundation of any healthy relationship. A goal in your relationships could be to honestly self-disclose your true self to your partner.

Continue reading “Honesty In Relationships”

Is There a Time to Not Be Honest in a Relationship?

 

Is there a time to not be honest in a relationship?

There are times when honesty is not helpful. One type of honesty that is not helpful is the so called brutal honesty. This kind of harsh honesty is something that does not belong in a relationship. Brutal is not a word synonymous with healthy relationships.

An example of Brutal Honesty would be telling someone you “never were very attracted to them”. Yes, it may be honest. No, its not helpful. It’s just cruel. Being brutally honest is just that, brutal.

Continue reading “Is There a Time to Not Be Honest in a Relationship?”

Vulnerability

Vulnerability and exposure in relationships

Many of you know what it’s like to live in a renovation project. A year ago I bought my house below market price knowing it would need a lot of work.  Four months into the renovation I described my life to a friend as coming home daily to a Christmas nativity calendar, I just never know what I’ll find when I open the front door. On this particular day I opened the front door to discover something that left me very contemplative, honestly it took my breath away.

I found that I had no internal doors in my home.  Not a one, not a cabinet, closet, pantry, drawer, or room door.

I was left with a feeling of being very exposed, as if there all my secrets were for the world to see.  I had a friend coming over to watch a movie later that evening and my first impulse was to call him and cancel.  After all, I couldn’t let him see all of this, all of me.

Continue reading “Vulnerability”

The Pro’s and Cons of Staying Together

To Stay or Not To Stay?

In a relationship that’s struggling at some point or another we all wonder if the pros of staying really outweigh the daily stress, fights, and emotional weight of a troubled relationship.   We may even decide to pull out a piece of paper and write out a pro and con list.  I can think back to the 90’s sitcom “Friends” and the list that got the character Ross in so much trouble when it was found by Rachel.  But this is actually a really good example of what I want to discuss today.

If you can remember the episode, Ross was trying to decide between staying in his current happy relationship or leaving for the girl he has had a crush on since he was a teen.  On his current girlfriend’s pro column there were items like good communication, we have fun together, similar career and education level.  The con’s for Rachel were things like we don’t have much in common, she is a waitress (implying that there was a vast educational and level of career drive difference), and different opinions and values.  The obvious implication would be that he should stay in his current happy relationship and let go of the idea of being with Rachel.  This would have been obvious except for one item on Rachel’s pro list, that item was “It’s Rachel.”

So why do we do this?  Why against all evidence to the contrary we allow our heart to overrule all rational explanation?  Is it really allowing our hearts to guide us, or is it a trick of the mind that takes over and leads us down a familiar unhealthy path that will end up in repeating old pain and feelings of rejection.

Continue reading “The Pro’s and Cons of Staying Together”

Stress

How stress impacts your wellness and your relationships

Stress has a huge impact on your relationship, and your relationship can have a huge impact on your stress. Stress is a social force that must be reckoned with. You can read about Jennifer’s and my discussions with other providers who help people manage their stress.

Read our full article here at the Mountain Xpress website.

Creating Change; Three Steps

Three Steps to Creating Positive and Permanent Change

The one question I hear more than any other from my clients is, “is it possible to change”?  I hear this question in every area of concern from communication habits to addictive behaviors to ways of relating to each other in relationships.  Again and again I hear, “Well maybe this is just how I am, how can I change now?” Or, “I’ve always done things this way; this is the only way I know.”

Of course the answer is yes, anyone can change no matter how old they are or how long they’ve been responding in a certain way.  Creating change takes awareness of other ways of handling a situation, many people learned a way to respond to situation from their family or community and have no idea there are other responses available to them.

Step one in creating change:

Understand that there are other ways of responding or being

Continue reading “Creating Change; Three Steps”