Make Your Relationship Stronger and Tackle Tough Topics
Grief and Loss in Teens
Our community suffered an unspeakable loss this month. Two students graduated from Walter Johnson High School, embarked on a celebratory trip with friends, and lost their lives in a car crash. It’s a painful reminder of the fears we hold as parents. How do we help our teens weather this loss? Read this post to find out.
Celebrating PRIDE in Your Family and Beyond
PRIDE month is an opportunity to celebrate friends, family, and neighbors who identify as LGBTQIAP+ That may include your child, or yourself! If it doesn’t (or maybe even if it does), you may be wondering what PRIDE means, and why we celebrate. Here’s a short guide from Robin Brannan LCMFT.
In Person Therapy During COVID-19: Update on our Policies
Yes, we do still require masks for in person therapy. Within our office, we do so to protect our child clients who are too young to be vaccinated. Masks are also required in our building. The building contains a healthcare facility, and is following the rules for medical settings. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Read our full policies here.
Strengthen Your Relationship with These Simple Steps
“The most basic form of loving someone is paying attention.” -Nicole Filipe LCMFT. In this post, Nicole talks about the importance of validation, and shares her do’s and don’ts for couples and families.
How Well Do You (Still) Know Your Partner?
Working on your friendship with your partner is imperative to the success of your relationship. John Gottman, Ph.D one of the country’s foremost relationship experts, suggests enhancing your intimate knowledge of your partner as a place to start.
Gottman’s “love map” is his term for where you keep all the relevant info about your partner’s life in your brain. Enhancing this love map by rediscovering your partner helps strengthen your relationship. Further, it also helps you weather the storm of what life throws your way. Read more here.
Have you been considering couples therapy?
Now is the time! Phyllis Agyapong LGMFT joined our practice this week and has a few openings left for couples or families. Phyllis is trained in Gottman method couples therapy and is seeing couples online and in the office, including on Saturdays. Get started here.
The Talk: Talking with Your Children about Racism
Phyllis Agyapong, our newest Couple and Family Therapist, shares her tips for discussing this potentially painful topic with kids and teens. Click here to read all about it.
What to Remember when Talking to Your Kids about the Juneteenth Holiday
Our community (our country) is a family. And when someone in that family is harmed, it harms us all. Consider this concept in your own family. If you have witnessed the abuse (or even just the pain) of a family member, it hurts you too. As Family Therapists, it’s important to us to improve the mental health of the whole human family. So what does that have to do with Juneteenth?
Making Juneteenth a national holiday creates one prompt a year to think about the formal, sanctioned abuse of people of color in our country. It is a reminder not only of the history of slavery, but of the great lengths people in power went to to continue causing harm after it had been declared over. What does this teach us? Abuse allowed to continue will continue.
This is the lesson of Juneteenth. It is a moment to ask ourselves “where in our current community is the abuse continuing?” Where is basic access to education, information, and health blocked? (The pandemic has shown us pretty clearly). And how can we stop allowing it to continue?
Your kids will have ideas you may never have thought of. Consider letting them choose an action to take. They might start by stopping the harm being done to someone in your family, your neighborhood, or your school. And then consider bigger, broader action. Follow their lead, add your own wisdom, and make it happen.
Every month we send a newsletter to hundreds of families on our email list. See this month’s issue here. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Reach out here.
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