Amy Begel 0

A Long Marriage Is Many Marriages

Anyone who is married for any length of time knows that the relationship undergoes many transformations in the course of living together. Most of these transformations are unconscious, outside awareness, and often felt as subtle–or not so subtle–tensions between the couple. One of the most profound transformations occurs with the birth of the first child, that magic transition from a two-person to a three-person family. The unconscious contract of the relationship, that  subtle “agreement” which binds the couple , undergoes one of the most important stress-tests in the life of the couple.  Almost nothing tests the elasticity, the creativity, and the commitment of a couple like the act of becoming parents.  Here is a case which shows how painful this test can be.

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Amy Begel 2

A Woman Saves Her Marriage…Without Even Trying

We talk a lot about how couples “create” each other as a result of ongoing, intimate patterns in the course of a relationship.These patterns are mostly unconscious, meaning outside awareness. And it’s interesting how change happens in a marriage. Mostly it’s the result of some indirect shift in the  undercurrents of the relationship, either in the course of life, or sometimes with the help of therapy.  It can feel mysterious, and hard to grasp.  Sometimes, when one person changes, it can make all the difference.  Here is such a case:

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Couples 0

Divorce Is Part Of Every Marriage

All marriages have divorce built into them. Often, though, we end up re-marrying the same person. This is a powerful–and painful –process necessary for growth, both as a couple and as individuals. In this post, Dave talks about some of the dynamics in marriage that help us understand this universal phase in the life of a couple.

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Amy Begel 0

Help For A Shut-Down Man

Therapist Avi Klein wrote about the shame many men feel about their emotions, particularly feelings that expose a sense of vulnerability. We see men like that often in therapy with couples. Here’s a case of how one man allowed himself to be un-masked, and how it transformed the couple’s relationship.

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Arts/Healing 0

ADHD Medications: Good For Big Pharma, Not For Kids

We’re revisiting a past article by Dr. Allen Frances, a prominent psychiatric “insider” who now spends his time railing against the overprescribing of psychiatric medications. Here he talks about the New York Times article which connected the proliferation of “ADHD” in kids to the profiteering by the drug companies. This is a wake up call to parents and professionals alike. Frances says, “as it stands now, we are doing an uncontrolled experiment on our kids with no clue about the long term effects of the meds on their brains and behavior.”

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Amy Begel 0

“Control Issues”: A Young Woman With An Eating Disorder Challenges Her Family

In contemporary culture, as portrayed in commercials for pharmaceuticals, family members are portrayed as bystanders to suffering, having to “manage” the symptoms of their  bi-polar loved one, or “suffer” the effects of the depressed person’s symptoms or behavior. But families, couples, all of us, can unwittingly get stuck in patterns, sometimes destructive patterns, of which we are unaware. Those patterns can cause distress in ourselves and others, which can show up as a “symptom” in one person. This is rarely intentional, more a product of the tricky,  powerful and subtle  nature of relationship dynamics.

Eating disorders are no exceptions. Most of the clinical writing and popular assumptions about anorexia and other eating disorders note that these conditions are characterized by the need for individual “control”. There’s truth to this. But if you expand the lens to include the family,  you learn a lot about what this “control” can look like.

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