Sequoia Counseling Center
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As parents and caring adults, we all want the best for the kids in our lives. We want them to feel safe, do well, and become confident, capable adults. Yet, we face questions along the way. How much structure is too much? How much autonomy is enough? Kids and teens need both structure and freedom in order to thrive. Erik Erikson’s work in the field of human development helps us understand why this balance matters, especially during two key stages of childhood and adolescence:

Now that we have taken a look at what to look for in friendships that last. Again, the Gottmans have four items that lead to romantic relationships ending, and I believe that we can apply them to friendships too. According to the Gottmans, the four things that can make a romantic relationship last are the following: build a culture of appreciation, gentle start ups, responsibility, and physiological self-soothing. Let’s take a closer look at how each of these might play out

We talk about red flags in romantic relationships, but what about in friendships? As a marriage and family therapist, I teach couples the four things that kill a relationship per the Gottmans: contempt, defensiveness, criticism, and stonewalling. Each of these have been proven through evidence based research to lead to the demise of a relationship. It isn’t so far-fetched to assume that the same things apply to any other relationship, especially friendships. Let’s take a clo

I’ve been noticing a lot lately that so many of us have the idea that we’re supposed to be perfect before we deserve good things. We’re supposed to be more regulated, less anxious, more confident, more assertive, less negative, bounce back from hard things in a minute, and so on. It seems like these messages sneak in slowly and quietly through conversations with well-meaning friends and family members, movies, books, advertisements, and what I think might be the biggest culp

When we begin therapy, we often want to focus on what's happening right now — the anxiety, the relationship struggles, the patterns...

As a child, I never thought about the connections I had with others and how I showed up in relationships. I had never analyzed the...