Embrace the Mud

In this last episode of the series Real Relationship Wisdom, I share one final golden nuggets of wisdom from Terry Real which is the idea that Love Demands Democracy. So what stands in the way of two people successfully co-governing their relationship? It has to do with something Terry calls your relational stance. In this episode I describe what the 4 stances are, help you to identify which one i...

Today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast I am continuing to share golden nuggets of wisdom from Terry Real and the topic for today is the 5 Losing Strategies. What are the 5 losing strategies, where do these behaviors come from, how do they impact our adult relationships, and what can you do to stop defaulting to them? These are the questions I will be answering in this episode.

Today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast we are looking at a concept I learned from Dr. Terry Real called Relational Integrity. What is relational integrity? How do practice it? How does it help create safety and closeness in your relationship? Listen in and find out.

Today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast we are highlighting another concept I learned from Dr. Terry Real called Loving Power. What is loving power? What does it look like? Why should you practice it? These are the questions we answer in today's episode.

In this episode of the Embrace the Mud Podcast we are kicking off a short series where I share my favorite relational concepts and ideas that I learned from Dr. Terry Real. Terry Real is a marriage counselor and couple's therapist with amazing wisdom to share with us all, whether we are in a romantic relationship or not, about what it means to live a relational life. Today we talk about what it lo...

Today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast we are talking about the skill of Co-Regulation. Co-Regulation is the ability to help you partner come out of a triggered state when they are activated and caught in emotional dysregulation. Why is co-regulation a valuable relational skill and what does co-regulation look like? These are the questions we will answer in this episode.  No More Unmet Needs Wo...

Today we are continuing our series Essential Relationship Skill with the skill of attunement. Attunement is the ability to sense what your partner is feeling, to enter into their inner world and experience life and the moment through their eyes. Why is attunement an essential relationship skill and how do you enhance your own capacity for it? These are the questions we are answering today on the E...

Today we are talking about the skill of bargaining. No two people in a couple are exactly alike and each will sometimes want different things, so how do you contend with that? How can you strive for mutual satisfaction when you have different needs or preferences? That's the topic of today's episode of the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

Today we are continuing in our series Essential Relationship Skills and are talking about the skill of complaining. Everyone experiences annoyance and dissatisfaction in relationships and it’s important to be able to communicate those skillfully. Unskillful complaints often sound like blame or criticism, two relational weeds we covered in our last series. So what does it look like to complain skil...

Today we are talking about a relationship skill called Validation. Validation is the ability to help someone feel understood and cared for by you. What does it look like to validate? Why does validation matter in relationships? That’s what we’re discussing today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

Today we are talking about the skill of listening. Listening is the ability to focus on and maintain attention to what another person is communicating with the goal of accurately understanding them. What does it look like to be a skilled listener? Why is this important in relationships? That is what we’re unpacking today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

We are in a series called Essential Relationship Skills and we’re talking about the things we need to be able to do in our relationships in order to maximize the potential for connection and intimacy. We are setting the series up by focusing on foundational skills first— yesterday we addressed self-awareness and today we are talking about Emotion Regulation. Emotion Regulation is the part of emoti...

To kick off our new series, Essential Relationship Skills, we are talking about Self-Awareness— a foundational and essential skill for forming deep and authentic bonds with others. What is self-awareness? How do you cultivate it? What are some pitfalls of self-awareness? How does it improve relationships? Those are the questions we are answering in today's episode.  Sources: What Self-Awarene...

Today’s final weed is Judgment. When we judge our partners, we are forming negative opinions about them or about how they live or how they are that are based on our own standards and beliefs about how we think they should be or live. Why do we judge our partners? What’s the impact? What can we do instead so that we can connect and experience deep intimacy with the person we love? That's what we ar...

Today’s weed is stonewalling— Stonewalling is essentially a refusal to engage or respond. Someone who is stonewalling has shut down and become silent and withdrawn. What causes someone to stonewall? How does it impact relationships? What can be done instead? That’s what we are talking about today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

Today’s weed is shame—shaming in relationships is a particularly egregious form of criticism or contemptuous behavior that communicates unworthiness to the other person. It invalidates them  as a human being. It essentially says: you don’t matter. What does shame actually look like in relationships? Why does it happen? And what can be done instead? That’s what we’re covering today on the podc...

Today’s weed is blame: the habit of fault finding. When something happens, why do you automatically want to assign blame, how does this impact relationships, and what’s a better way to respond when something negative occurs? That’s what we are covering today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

Today’s weed is defensiveness. The Gottman Institute has defined defensiveness as " righteous indignation or innocent victimhood in an attempt to ward off a perceived attack" . Why do we get defensive, why does defensiveness harm relationships, and what can we do instead of being defensive? These are the questions we’re answering in this episode. 

Today’s weed is Ambivalence— having mixed feelings about the relationship; feeling uncertain about wanting to be in it. Ambivalence is a relationship killer, and therefore a weed that needs to be pulled. What causes chronic ambivalence, why is it such a problem,  and what can be done about it? Let's discuss!

On this episode of the Embrace the Mud Podcast we are talking about criticism. Criticism is one of the four horseman, a group of 4 negative behaviors determined by John and Julie Gottman to be particularly destructive to couples and the behaviors that they repeatedly saw happening in relationships that would eventually fail. What is criticism? Why does it hurt your relationship? How can you commun...

Have you ever been on the receiving end of controlling behavior? Have you ever been controlling in a relationship? Well control is the weed we are going to be addressing today. Maybe this is a weed that you’re dealing with in some way right now! Let's talk about what control is all about and what to do about it when it shows up in your relationships. 

Have you ever had a huge fight with your significant other on a major holiday? Have you looked forward to a day and spent a lot of time preparing and being excited only to have the day arrive and you had a miserable time? Maybe you have even injured yourself leading up to it or had gotten really sick and were unable to participate. In this week's episode we are talking about self-sabotage and how...

What does it take to achieve a mutual sense of safety in a relationship? How do you build a relationship that energizes you, that feels like a calm sanctuary in a troubled and chaotic world, and that helps you flourish and thrive as individuals and as a couple? Today we are talking about what it takes to begin creating this kind of a relationship— a secure-functioning relationship.

There are several quite costly mistakes we can make in relationships, and in today's episode I am talking about one of them. How do you and your partner recover after you've had a fight or argument? Are you distant for awhile afterward and then slowly return to normal? Do you make up by offering blanket apologies but still feel disconnected afterward? Do you pretend like the conflict never happene...

Have you ever had one foot in and one foot out of a relationship, uncertain if you should stay or go? I know I have. Maybe you're there right now. Many of my clients come to me to work out whether there relationship is good enough or not. But what does good enough mean? How do you determine if a relationship is worth continuing to stay in and work on? What do you do if you realize it isn't good en...