One of the things I assess when I see couples is their emotional health. Like our physical health, we must tend to our emotional health to stay strong. These are things you might not have been taught in childhood or experienced in dating but they are skills that you can learn at any age. I’ve narrowed down the top 5 traits I look for to assess emotional health (they are great traits to look for those on the dating scene too!).

Top 5 Traits of an Emotionally Healthy Romantic Partner

They care about your joy and pain
They can put aside their point of view to see yours
They are your biggest cheerleader
They are an excellent dinner partner
In all of the above, they are ARE – Accessible, Responsive, Engaged.

Emotionally Focused Therapy was founded by Dr. Sue Johnson as a form of couples therapy (now called Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy or EFCT) which is extremely well researched and is considered the gold standard of couples therapy. Johnson and team have also branched out to explore how to apply EFT to individual therapy (EFIT) and family therapy (EFFT) which require additional training and specialization. EFIT is relatively new and you may not know much about it! This blog can help with that. EFIT uses attachment science to dig to the root of the patterns that are causing clients to stay stuck. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, or PTSD, research shows that EFIT can help. EFIT can look a little different than other types of therapy.

In Part 1, I talked about my own personal journey with anxiety and anxiety treatment and how the brain works. I want to give an example of this – a situation many of us are familiar with. You’re at work, plugging along when Ding! Your email chimes – your boss says “Can we talk?” The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the part of your brain that can logically see why that email could mean many things – maybe she wants to talk about the awesome project you just finished or about the implementation of the company policy of the four day work week but if you’re like me, your limbic system is the only voice you can hear and it’s a sinking in your gut that’s saying “YOU’RE GOING TO GET FIRED.” ….

I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have anxiety, my earliest memories are rife with fear even though I had a physically very safe, suburban middle class family life. When I was a kid in the 90s, nobody was talking about anxiety disorders, least of all my conservative Christian parents. In grad school I remember reading through the Anxiety Disorders chapter in the DSM-5 and coming across the criteria for Separation Anxiety Disorder and feeling so seen.

It seems like political tensions are at an all time high and everyone has an opinion or political belief that is “the right one” where there is no room to budge, but at the same time, they desperately want you to change your mind. The Stages of Change framework can help you to know when it’s worth your time and energy to engage in a discussion about these important beliefs and when it is not worth your time and energy.

Self-criticism is a shared human experience. The critic, that mean inner voice that points out our flaws, replays our mistakes, and questions our worth, can make life hard sometimes. The negative side of our self-criticism is easy to see because it tears us down, causes stress, and makes us anxious.