Relationships can often feel like a thrilling yet unpredictable rollercoaster ride, full of highs, lows, and moments of confusion. Sue Johnson offers a guide to building healthier relationships. Her work, rooted in attachment theory, emphasizes the importance of the emotional bond between partners. Johnson provides practical tools to help couples create a stable and loving connection. With these insights, relationships can become resilient, enduring challenges like stress, anxiety, and trauma.

Do you ever find yourself setting goals and then not achieving them? Maybe you start projects, but never finish them? Or perhaps you struggle to get started in the first place? Developing self-leadership is a journey that empowers you to take control of your thoughts, emotions, and actions, leading to greater personal and professional success. In this blog post, we look at what self-leadership is and how you can improve on this important skill.

As couples begin to navigate difficult conversations in the therapy office, they gradually realize it is much harder to do the same at home. Although clients and I have joked about this in the past… I cannot (nor do I want to) go to your home to remind you and your partner to “slow down” when trying to communicate.

In place of this obviously uncomfortable situation, I offer couples one of my favourite relationship tools: the Feelings Wheel.

Communicating emotions in relationships requires self-awareness, empathy, vulnerability, and a continual commitment from both partners. These skills are foundational for building trust, understanding, and intimacy in your relationships. By recognizing, expressing, and empathizing with each other's emotions, couples can deepen their bond and create a foundation that sustains their relationship through the challenges of life.

For those of you who are like me and don’t like conflict (I mean—really don’t like conflict), I want to share something with you that helped me become able to handle conflict situations better. It’s not “five easy steps” or some secret knowledge that came to me in a dream. It’s something that I gained from counselling, and something that I like to help my clients with too.