Status Updates From I Didn’t Sign Up for This: ...

she is learning to challenge her belief that her partner's admittedly low levels of emotional intelligence and attunement amount to him rejecting her or wanting to leave.

There was a time I'd never have shown up as "human" to this degree in my practice, but this is something I am more willing to do as my career evolves.

gaslighting and narcissist..can easily stand in for name calling and denigrating the other person.

she continues to focus on Daniel's actions rather than her role in cocreating a stronger relationship for both of them. This outward focus is often where ppl start therapy: "If he weren't so defensive" or "If he helped more.."

As one of her clients includes her life, I think wistfully back about that book by Christie Tate called Group about group therapy and about how the therapist just let everybody implode their lives and had a very laissez-faire attitude about all of it as it was part of the therapeutic process

While we don't ever go back to the same feelings of [early relationship romance], we can continue to build excitement and deepen our connection by doing what we did back then: sharing our authentic and vulnerable selves. Strangely, it's a lot easier to do this with someone we're just getting to know than with someone who has proved to be more complicated, more human, than the dream-come-true we signed up for.

Being a couples therapist requires me to be attuned to the dance that is happening between them and not get caught in the content of their back-and-forth. Sometimes I have to play traffic cop, redirecting partners before they get sucked into their negative cycle.