Observations and Thoughts of a NH Psychologist

Play backgammon together!  Walk the dog together!  Go for a walk together after dinner! Take one car instead of two when you can...  Do daily activities like these together, so that you'll have regularly scheduled times to talk.  It's so important that the conversations in life be continuous ... And to have no doubts that they will be ongoing conversations.  If a couple knows they can "continue the conversation tomorrow," then there's less likely to be pressures and distortions of communication.  Don't let life interfere with this.  If you see these disappearing, agree that it's time to sound the alarm.  Don't let the tasks of life become more important than your relationship with one another. The typical couple I meet is dual career, young children, have a home and a mortgage. They're accomplishing all the tasks, managing their life, providing well for their children ... But they are growing apart.  They divided and conquered all the ta...

Once again it was a pleasure to be on Relationships 360, the weekly Blogtalk Radio Show hosted by Tiffany Williams-Jallow. This time the topic was trust.  The hour goes by so fast that we could only begin to talk about:  defining trust, how childhood attachments and family life can shape later relationship security, partner choice and repeated patterns, what you and your partner expect of one another in dating and in marriage, how social media can create boundary problems while also giving opportunities to learn, infidelity and ways to work on restoring trust after it has been violated, improving communications to have better openness and transparency, and how to guard against falling-back to old patterns.  This conversation could have continued in so many different directions.   Feel free to listen here: BlogTalk Radio -- Tiffany Williams-Jallow with Carl Hindy, Ph.D. -- On Trust Issues

I realize that the term "Mid-life crisis" has become a cliche that's probably used far more on late night TV and Comedy Central than it ever was in psychology consulting rooms! However, I often find myself using it to refer to the midlife points at which we feel thrust into re-evaluating our priorities and goals.  These are the points at which I often meet people in my counseling practice. Some folks actually come in saying, "I think I'm having a mid-life crisis" (And it's a good thing if the cliche has people be more open to talking).  More typically it's a current  circumstance that has tipped the balance and thrust the individual into this stage of taking stock.  For example, perhaps it's the death of a parent or care-taking an elderly parent, a career disappointment or loss, a health problem, struggles with children or extended family, marital difficulties culminating from years of growing apart, breakdowns in communications at home ...

I couldn't resist writing a quick reply to my local psychologist listserver where there is worry about the future of private practice psychology given the changes in the healthcare delivery system.  I certainly could elaborate, but here's the 10-minute treatise as I await my next client:                                  [Photo after a recent snow storm.  I can see the general outlines, but clearly enough?] Colleagues: I don't think there is reason for so much pessimism about  psychologist  private practice.  Actually,  I think psychology can shine brighter than ever in the years to come  because of:  (1) The ever increasing need and psychological orientation of the population and openness to what we offer.  All living generations now are open to our services, and at least the older generations remember well, and often desire, the "psychotherapy"...

As a psychologist I think a lot about my own inner emotional life, and I try to use images and metaphors to help my clients do the same.  Some people have said, Carl, your mind is like a steel trap"!  Actually, I think of it more like a phonograph!  Remember the vinyl 33 rpm record albums when we were kids?  Remember how annoyingly the needle would sometimes get stuck and play the the same lyrics over and over?  Sometimes a few minutes might go by before your realized it!  Then you'd get up and tap the needle to get it back in the groove. It often seems that our minds are like that phonograph. We get caught on a track thinking about something, worrying about something, over and over ... We dwell on it, and it continues until something else comes along to tap the needle.  Often we are then dwelling on the next topic!  Our inner lives too often seem like an endless progression of these.  We worry about one thing until the next worry com...

From the LadiesFlight.com blog: Opposite-Sex Friendships for Married Folks?  You Need to be Honest with Your Partner and Honest with Yourself! [Photo by C. Hindy: Two is company, but three can be a crowd.]

January 6, 2012:    Co-producers John Larson and William Brangham made a brief documentary in Nashua about the impact of the economic recession.  Entitled, Help Wanted: New Hampshire, it aired nationally on PBS, on the eve of the NH Presidential Primary.  It is an installment of the weekly PBS program, Need to Know: Watch Fri., Jan. 6, 2011 on PBS. See more from Need to Know. I was glad to get my thirty seconds as "the marriage counselor" in this engaging video shot on the Main Street where I head to work each day.  I've looked out that window onto Main Street, Nashua, NH for twelve years, and worked locally for twenty-five:  that's how many recessions? Frankly, I would argue that "the recession" was the one which occurred in the 1989-1990 time frame, and that's when so much changed, never to fully "recover" in the sense that many of us would wish.  When I saw counseling clients during that recession circa 1...

The title of this podcast was, "How to Get Him to Propose, and Her to Say Yes."    It turned out to be a more free-flowing chat about commitment, "commitment phobia," and marriage.   So many of the ideas are ones that I enjoy discussing and wish I could have elaborated.  They are very relevant to premarital counseling and marriage counseling more generally, and come up regularly in the course of my work as a relationship-focused  psychologist. You can listen to this interview by clicking below: Listen to internet radio with Relationships360 on Blog Talk Radio ______________________________

This WMUR-TV interview and story dates back to 2009 but of course it's a never ending story!  The problems for relationships -- with boundaries, trust, fidelity, sharing, decision making, and communications -- certainly aren't new, but Internet technology magnifies the problems ... And some things about Facebook in particular seem to add to this. For example, when couples have profiles on Facebook, they have his and her profiles, not a shared profile. There's no convenient and fully functioning way to have a Couples Profile.  Yes, they can link to one another and make their relationship status clear.  Still, they are found by others and friended as individuals.  It can easily become too much about "me" not "us." One is found and friended by people more often from their individual past ... and partners' pasts may not intersect that much prior to their relationship with one another.  Not only are there people from your distant past, but th...

Couples Counseling Nashua, NH Listed at All About Counseling

Should you tell your teenager about your own past sweethearts?  How much do you tell and how do you talk about it?  A journalist recently e-mailed me those questions and it got me thinking.  She quotes me in her story , but I feel the urge to elaborate a bit. Recent psychological research on "happiness" makes clear that relationships are pivotal to happiness.    Studies of people's regrets in life show that relationship regrets top the list  [Not financial regrets, which actually are low on the list].   Personally, we all know that we have experienced the heights of happiness and the depths of despair over relationships .  Now we are parents and want our children to be happy.   We've learned a lot, wish we knew then what we know now, and want to help our teenagers.  Don't you sometimes wish you could teach them what you've learned about relationships?  We probably all wish we could somehow "download" to our child...

Have you ever noticed how certain personality differences between partners in a relationship can grow larger if the partners are not aware of them and careful to address this diverging tendency?  In working with couples,  I have seen how personality differences can reverberate between two people over time, making their differences seem larger and larger.  Eventually they become major recurring themes in couples' struggling or growing apart. For example, so many times I've seen couples where one person is "The Worrier" while the other is "The Laissez-Faire."  The Worrier does not feel better to hear from the Laissez-Faire partner, "Don't worry about it," "You worry too much,"  or "Just forget about it."  The Worrier may conclude that the partner "just doesn't get it," doesn't understand, believe or respect his or her concerns.  The Worrier feels increasingly alone with the worriers, bottled-up, not und...

Have you ever noticed that, in a happy relationship, the partners mirror one another in ways that feel good?  That are mutually validating?  That give a quick and hearty sense of understanding and support? I like the metaphor of a relationship being like two mirrors .  Each reflects back at the other an image that is consistent with the partner's positive self-image .  It's pleasing to know that your partner sees you the way you like to see yourself.  He or she appreciates who you are, and values you for the traits that you see as special and defining of yourself.  It doesn't take a lot of explaining or enhancing (as it might in the world outside of your love life).  At home you don't have to Photo Shop the image!  When a relationship starts to turn negative these images can get fuzzy and non-distinct.  The sense of understanding and appreciation gets blurred.  When relationships continue to spiral negatively, we each try to fix...