Bids for Connection
A part of relationship building (and maintaining) and requires two actions - attention seeking and responding to that need. Often, when we think of attention seeking it is described in a negative light - right alongside calling people “needy”. However, healthy relationships are actually based on seeking attention from other people.
Human beings do this all day long, at different frequencies, with strangers and intimate connections alike. It is how relationships are first built (smiling at someone new in the school cafeteria) and how they are maintained (telling your partner about your day when you get home from work so they know about you).
In Gottman Method couples therapy, we call the process of seeking attention in order to build connection a “bid for connection”.
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How to Use Insurance with Out Of Network Therapists
If you’re looking to start therapy you might have noticed that many of the therapists you want to work with are not in your insurance companies “network”. This can feel limiting if you want to use your insurance benefits to cover therapy costs. In this article, we will talk about what it means to be “out of network” and how to find out if your insurance will still cover the costs of therapy.
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Choosing A Better Life Therapy for Couples Counseling
Struggles and conflicts are inevitable in a relationship. Whether you've been together for a few months or several years, at some point, you'll face a rough patch that can make you question the future of your partnership. Seeking couples therapy is a wise decision to overcome these issues, and A Better Life Therapy is the ideal place to get the help you need.
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Improving Relationships with Gottman Method Couples Therapy
Couples therapy, also known as marriage counseling, is a form of therapy that helps couples who are facing challenges in their relationship to work through those difficulties and improve their relationship. There are many reasons why people may choose to go to couples therapy. Some common reasons include communication issues, infidelity, financial problems, parenting disagreements, and sexual concerns. Couples therapy provides a safe and supportive space for couples to address these issues and work towards solutions. It can help couples to improve their communication, rebuild trust, increase intimacy, and strengthen their overall relationship. By going to couples therapy, couples can learn skills to overcome their challenges and build a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life together.
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EMDR: An Effective Therapy for Trauma
When we experience a distressing event that has a negative impact on us, or our sense of wellbeing/safety, that traumatic experience can become ‘stuck’ in a memory network. When it becomes stuck, we can experience that memory in a very real way- it feels as if it is happening to us in the present. It can impact our physical body, our emotions, and our beliefs about ourselves. The experience continues to cause us pain, or make us feel badly about ourselves, or believe that we are not good enough, strong enough, or worthy, when it is triggered.
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Marriage Counseling
The time to consider marriage counseling is not when one (or both) people have already thrown in the towel. For instance, in some relationships, when one or both partners have already decided to end the marriage, they may use counseling as a “safe space” to drop the news on their spouse. This is obviously not the best timing to attempt counseling.Sometimes issues are too ingrained and longstanding for counseling to be truly effective. If a couple has been building up resentment toward one another for five or more years before seeking help, it may be too late.
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Now Offering Therapy in The Lehigh Valley
A Better Life Therapy now offers in person therapy services in Easton, Pennsylvania to service the Lehigh Valley. We offer individual and couples therapy and can support people in navigating relationship issues, trauma, depression, anxiety, grief, and perinatal mental health (postpartum depression/anxiety, etc).
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What is Perinatal Mental Health?
During pregnancy and after having a baby, there are many reasons that someone might not feel like themselves. It’s common to experience depression, anxiety, and a sense of “not being yourself” during the process of becoming a new parent. Perinatal mental healthcare helps you take care of yourself during this time.
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You Can Buy Yourself Flowers
The painful memories, the constant rumination, that lump in your throat.
If you are familiar with these feelings, you’ve come to the right place. That’s right, we’re talking about heartbreak.
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Forget New Year's Resolutions. Try This Goal-Setting Method Instead.
Far-reaching goals can be unattainable and can make people feel bad about themselves if and when they fail — and more than half of these yearlong resolutions will fail, according to Emma Mahony, a therapist at Better Life Therapy in Philadelphia and a mental health content creator on TikTok.
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SAD Times and Navigating Season Changes
Let this be a reminder that it’s okay to say “no” when you want to, and to say “yes” to the things that make sense for you during this time. Another persons’s reaction to your boundaries is not on you to “fix” or to take on.
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How to Set Boundaries as a Couple During the Holidays
Having boundaries during the holidays can be hard for a lot of couples. Both partners have friends, family, jobs, etc. pulling them in a hundred different directions during the end of the year.
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What is PACT?
PACT helps couples create a securely attached relationship, so partners know how to take care of and support one other. In your sessions with your PACT therapist, he or she will help you manage and self-regulate your emotions so you stay within a tolerable space where you can feel your feelings and actually listen and understand one another.
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Don’t Believe Everything You Think!
Cognitive distortions are when we hold illogical thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and about our experiences.
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The Problem with Mommy Wine Culture and it’s Memes:
Being a parent is hard. Being a nurse, a teacher, an Amazon delivery person, a blimp conductor (pilot?), or any human being during The Covid Times is hard, but what’s also hard is being confronted with a narrative that the solution to your exhaustion and frustration is, well, pinot noir.
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Can’t Stop Scrolling? Maybe It’s Time for a Social Media Break
Thanks to the invention of infinite scrolling, social media platforms present a never-ending loop of heavily diverse content: one second you’re watching a funny cat video and the next you’re viewing disturbing news coverage. And while most of us know we ought to take a break from the mindless scrolling, it still makes logging off more difficult than ever.
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How to do a Basic Self-Care Check and Why it's Important
I believe in this work and how insight can create extraordinary movement. That being said, before we can get to that work, it’s important to start with a basic self-care reflection. Here are a few questions I always ask clients during the first session or two. Give this activity a try at home and see what insights it brings.
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The Problem with "Procrastination"
It is a fairly common client concern that shows up in therapy - the question "why is it taking me so long to decide”. Often this concern is presented with a sigh of frustration, sadness, a touch of shame. If we take too long to decide, we are somehow automatically procrastinating? That just doesn’t seem fair, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
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