For three months in 2010, Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramovic sat in a chair in a gallery at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and directed her full, silent attention toward one individual seated across from her. The artist sat seven hours a day, six days a week, without eating or drinking, for a […]
Blog
Do You ‘Show Up’ In Your Relationships?
One of the greatest joys we have as human beings is to make a meaningful connection with another person—a friend, spouse, or our children. By ‘making a meaningful connection’ I mean that we are ‘in the present’ with the other person and really ‘show up’ emotionally and mentally. This type of intentional significant connection is […]
Do You Struggle With Insecurity?
Brené Brown is a professor at the University of Houston and nationally renowned for her work on connection, vulnerability and shame. She states that emotionally committed relationships require four steps: 1. Connection 2. Vulnerability 3. Risk 4. Sense of Love and Belonging In order to gain connection (one of our greatest human needs) you must […]
Can We Choose to Reduce Anxiety?
Recently, I was traveling down a major Dallas freeway, heading to an 8 a.m. meeting several miles away. Like most days in Dallas, there were probably 10,000 other people heading in the same direction – but on this cold and rainy morning in January it seemed like traffic was even heavier than usual. As I […]
Balancing Heart and Mind
When I was 10 years old, my mom took my 8-year-old sister and I to run some errands. I was in the front seat of our Ford F150 extended cab truck beside my mom while my sister sat in the small back seat. We stopped at a house on the outskirts of town, and my […]
In Love vs. Love
Are you willing to confront your unattractive behavior?
When couples come to counseling and we begin working together on their issues, I often start by asking each person two important questions: 1. Do you have a desire to work on the relationship? 2. Are you willing to confront your own unattractive behavior? Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? I believe that relationships cause us […]
Growing Up
Back in Spring of 2012, after 15 years of research and practice, I developed an approach to relationships called the Auxano Approach®. Auxano is a Greek word that means “to cause to grow, increase, or grow up.” I believe that relationships, and marriage in particular, cause us to “grow up” emotionally. In fact, I say […]
