Thriving Your Love

In the previous edition, we discussed the position of the person who controls and who sometimes can be abusive and violent. In this edition, we focus on the person who feels controlled or abused. We explain the intention of the one who controls: to prevent the loss of the loved one. Because the person has difficulty trusting they deserve love, they are afraid of losing their partner and cannot tru...

In this episode, we discuss a tendency among some partners to control their loved ones. We try to understand the underlying motivation behind their need to control and offer suggestions for overcoming it. We explain that controlling behavior stems from difficulty believing that one is lovable, which leads the person to doubt their partner. There is a lack of trust in the other person and a tendenc...

Stress not only hurts the stressed person but also those around them. If you are stressed, you can be sure it affects your loved ones. Now you have two problems: your stress and its impact on the important people in your life. Something that can greatly reduce stress is vulnerability. Sharing what you feel brings you closer to your loved ones and helps them empathize with you. As a result, your st...

One factor that often attracts people romantically is their differences. When these differences are not too extreme, individuals may feel drawn to partners who complement them in ways that are opposite. For example, an introverted person may feel attracted to an extrovert, and someone who speaks little may be drawn to a more talkative partner. However, cultural differences can sometimes create cha...

If you have a loved one who has an addiction, you might have realized a long time ago that you feel disconnected from that person. You might seek their attention and protest the distance. However, they resist your plea for connection, and they make their addiction their priority. This causes you to feel secondary, unimportant, and abandoned. You noticed that your loved one prefers the addiction to...

In our latest podcast, Addiction: The Remedy for Loneliness , we explore the growing epidemic of loneliness and how people often turn to addictions as substitutes for genuine human connection. This pattern often begins in childhood, when children are unable to form secure bonds with their caregivers for various reasons. The pain of loneliness can feel so unbearable that they seek ways to numb it,...

In the latest episode of Thriving Your Love , Trisha and Claudio revisited a powerful question: What is the true cost of being right? Beneath our arguments, our yelling, and our frustration often lies something much more vulnerable— a desire to feel loved, valued, and safe.

In this podcast, Tricia and I explore how anger can sometimes be a protest—a cry from someone who doesn't feel loved, valued, or respected by the person closest to them. At its core, anger can be a cry for attention: a longing to be treated as someone special and to hold a meaningful place in the life of a loved one. Anger can also arise as an attempt to protect those we care about deeply. W...

Welcome to the first episode in our series exploring the many facets of anger. Today, we want to emphasize that anger itself is not bad . It's a natural, healthy emotion designed to enhance our chances of survival. In fact, without anger, we probably wouldn't have made it this far as a species — it helps us protect ourselves and assert boundaries when we're threatened. Anger's core purpose i...

The concept of the "inner child" typically refers to the part of ourselves that felt unloved and unimportant during childhood. This inner child embodies trauma, pain, and a desire for love and appreciation. As children, we yearned to feel loved and connected to our caregivers. We sought their approval and often tried hard to please them to earn their love. When we didn't feel important or loved by...

We discuss the significance of compassion for our well-being and the value of maintaining good relationships with others. Being unkind to ourselves contributes to unhappiness and reduces our productivity. Blaming ourselves or forcing ourselves to meet expectations drains the energy we need for the things we genuinely want to do. Additionally, we examine how childhood experiences influence our self...

In this podcast, we explore how childhood influences our sense of worth. Not feeling loved and connected to our caregivers during childhood makes us think we must perform to be accepted. This causes many people to work hard to achieve their goal of being loved and accepted. Unfortunately, this never happens, and they continue pursuing this goal their entire lives.

If you had a traumatic childhood, you dream about having a different experience in your adulthood. You would like to find love and feel safe in the hands of your significant other. However, your trauma may often stand in the way of finding happiness. You may have difficulty trusting your partner, and you may have developed coping skills that might hurt your partner. This podcast discusses the tend...

We all dream about having a great relationship with a loved one. We think the ideal relationship is one where there isn't any disagreement, or at least disagreements are rare. In this podcast, we show how even the best relationships have disagreements. The hallmark of a good relationship isn't the absence of disagreements but the ability to repair. When we disagree and feel disconnected from our p...

In this episode, we discuss people's tendency to think that their worth depends on external circumstances. We explain that our worth does not depend on our condition, money, beauty, or accolades.

The concept of authority is frequently confused with harshness and power. The “authoritative” person places themselves in a position of superiority and shows others who is the boss. This causes people to feel humiliated and disrespected. The result is that people either resist defiantly or comply for fear of consequences. We receive these messages about authority from our caretakers in...

In this edition of the Thriving Your Love Podcast, Shalini Dayal, MFT, and Natasha Kharbanda, LCSW, speak about their work and how they have shared their knowledge of EFT and John Gottman with therapists in India and other countries.

In this special edition of Thriving Your Love, we interview Shalini Dayal, LMFT, and Natasha Kharbanda, LCSW. They discuss the importance of tailoring couples therapy to the needs of each culture, in their case, the South Asian community. They raise awareness of the challenges of interracial marriage and the influence of in-laws. They also discuss what made them decide to become therapists and the...

We talked about the negative cycle that happens between partners. One partner seeks connection through blame and control, while the other avoids it for fear of being hurt. In this episode, we explain how one partner can bring the other close by being responsive.

We talked about how reassurance helps people feel more secure. When people are afraid of losing their attachment figure, reassurance of one's love goes a long way toward helping them feel safe.

Do you believe you belong with your partner or sometimes feel like an outsider? Many partners don't feel desired by their partners and see themselves as inadequate or not good enough. This may affect their self-esteem because their perception of themselves is tightly connected to how they think their partners see them.

Jealousy is caused by fear of losing a significant attachment figure. It may be based on reality or in our imagination. When it's based on reality, it may help us guarantee that we don't lose a loved one. However, if it's in our imagination, we might cause relationship problems. Sometimes, the fear might push the other person away from us instead of bringing them closer.

In this video, we discuss how attachment theory helped us understand love and the need for someone we can count on.

In this edition we talk about about how we show love through our body language. Our tone of voice, our touching, our eyes, and our gestures sometimes speak louder than the words we say. Turning to our loved one when they are talking to us and paying attention to them tells them that they are important to us.

In this last episode of Understanding a Narcissist Partner, we focus on the need to feel important and the lack of awareness of the impact of a partner. Narcissists need to feel important and valuable. One way they do it is by driving the attention to themselves. Being the center makes them feel valued and admired by people around them.