Here's something that changes how you fight, and how you love: every judgment you make about another person is data about you, not a verdict about them. Any judgment is a story about us. When you say somebody's bad for whatever reason, it's like something inside of you feels that. This gets reinforced later: any judgment that you pass is your opinion, and any judgment that you make outside is some sort of a reflection of what's happening inside — it's just us, it's our life h

I have done all five. So has every couple I've sat with. Relational Life Therapy names five patterns we fall into when we're hurt and only thinking about getting what we want in that moment — not what happens after. Needing to be right. Trying to control our partner. Getting even. Saying everything, however it lands. Going quiet and pulling away. None of these make us bad partners. They make us human. They're what we learned, long before we learned anything else. The problem

7 Primary Feelings: Joy, Pain, Anger, Fear, Shame, Guilt and Love Most of us grew up with a small emotional vocabulary: fine, fine, and fine. Maybe an occasional "angry" or "sad." But underneath those flat words lives a much richer landscape — one that Relational Life Therapy maps into seven primary feelings: Joy, Pain, Anger, Fear, Shame, Guilt, and Love. As a man, growing up I quickly learned I could only express Anger. I felt pain, I expressed anger. I felt shame, I expres

When Difficult Feelings Show Up, Don't Fight Them A few years ago I started practicing and using a simple practice with clients who feel flooded — by shame, anger, grief, whatever the moment brings. It's called RAIN, developed by psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach, and it's become one of the tools I return to most often in my own Relational Mindfulness practice, and to help my clients. The acronym RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness and com

Our Wise Adult is always accessible to us. Post from Relational Life Foundation We all know the moment: your heart starts racing, your jaw tightens, your voice gets sharper or disappears completely. And just like that, your Wise Adult is offline. In Relational Life Therapy (RLT) & Coaching, we understand that when conflict hits, it’s often not you speaking, it’s an old adaptive strategy. The part of you that learned how to survive when you were growing up. That part is not on

A Time-Out pause allows you to take care of yourself and cultivate your bond with others. Terry Real developed and emphatically describes Time-Out a one the greatest relationship skills, which allows each of us to recenter, remember love, and build fierce partnerships. 1. Use the time out tool as a circuit breaker. A time out is a rip stop: it is the cord pulled to stop a runaway train; it’s a break, the thing used to HALT an interaction that either has crossed over into, or