Relationships 2.0 With Dr. Michelle Skeen

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Linda Carroll author of Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love. Whether you are in a new relationship or you’ve been partnered for years, you will benefit from Linda’s relationship expertise. About the book: In Love Cycles, veteran couples therapist Linda Carroll presents a groundbreaking model of the five natural stages of romantic relationships — the Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision, and Wholehearted Love — and a guide for navigating through them toward lasting love. Love Cycles helps readers understand where they are in the cycle of their relationship and provides a clear strategy for how to stay happy and committed, even in difficult times. About the author: Linda Carroll, MS, has worked as a couple’s therapist for more than 30 years. In addition to being a licensed psychotherapist, she is certified in Transpersonal Psychology and Imago Therapy, the highly successful form of couple’s therapy developed by Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt. She is also a master teacher in the Pairs Psychoeducation Process, a nationally-recognized relationship education program for couples. Linda has studied many modalities of psychological and spiritual work, including Voice Dialogue with Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone, Holotropic Breathwork with Dr. Stan Grof, the Four-Fold With Angeles Arrien, the Diamond Heart Work of A.H. Almaas, and training with The Couples Institute of Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson. She is also certified in the Hot Monogamy program, which helps couples create or re-create a passionate connection between them. Linda works with a limited number of couples regularly in a new style of “concierge therapy,” in which she travels to their home or office for 2-6 days per year for private, all-day sessions, offering ongoing Skype and phone sessions in between. She teaches workshops and delivers keynote addresses throughout the United States and is a frequent speaker at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico. Find her on the web at lindaacarroll.com or lovecycles.org.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Carol Lambert MSW author of Women with Controlling Partners: Taking Back Your Life from a Manipulative or Abusive Partner About the book: A controlling or abusive partner can break even the strongest person—unless you know what to look for. Written by an expert in intimate partner abuse and based on her highly successful recovery program for women with controlling partners, this book will give you the strength, courage, and strategies you need to acknowledge the problem and stand up for yourself once and for all—whether you stay or leave the relationship. If you have a controlling partner, you aren’t alone. Millions of women suffer psychological abuse at the hands of a spouse or intimate partner during some point in their lives, not fully seeing or knowing what is happening to them. Research shows that psychological abuse affects women’s overall well-being more than physical abuse, is a bigger contributor to inducing fear, and can be a precursor to violence. To make matters worse, having a controlling partner often results in hidden injuries like anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, trauma, and low self-efficacy—feeling like you can’t make a difference in your life. So, where can you turn for help? Based on over a decade of clinical and domestic abuse research, Women with Controlling Partners will help you identify the coercive constraints that can be predictive of intimate partner abuse, recognize the harmful effects of psychological abuse on your mental and physical health, and gain the personal strength and power to break free. Using the author’s three-stage recovery model, you’ll be empowered to move out of denial, deconstruct what holds you psychologically captive, and take back your life. Abuse can be devastating, and having a controlling partner can make you feel crazy—and as if you’re the one responsible. But you’re not crazy, and you’re not to blame! With this important, one-of-a-kind recovery process, you’ll finally find the clarity of mind, courage, and strength to protect yourself from the hurtful control that damages your mental and physical health, and move toward a safer and happier life. About the author: Carol A. Lambert, MSW, is a psychotherapist and domestic violence expert with three decades of clinical experience helping individuals and groups, and a career-long commitment to women’s psychological health. Since 1993, she developed a unique approach and cofounded the Recovery Groups for Women with Controlling Partners that bring together insights from mental health, trauma recovery, and domestic violence. At McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, she provides domestic violence training and consultation. Over the years, her expertise took her from educating volunteers in a domestic violence program affiliated with local police to providing training and consultation to the National Football League. In all her endeavors, she brings critical attention to psychological abuse and the major losses to women’s mental and physical health. She’s currently in private clinical practice in Belmont and Concord, MA.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Cindy Stulberg author of Feeling Better: Beat Depression and Improve Your Relationships with Interpersonal Psychotherapy About the book: When it comes to treatment for depression, we have been getting it all wrong. Instead of focusing on just the biochemistry, we need to focus on the importance of relationships. Feeling Better offers a step-by-step guide using a research-proven approach called interpersonal psychotherapy, or IPT, which can help you deal with the issues that may be contributing to your unhappiness. Therapists Cindy Stulberg and Ron Frey have used IPT with clients for more than twenty years and achieved dramatic, lasting results after only eight to twelve weeks. They have now created this accessible, first-of-its kind guide. Feeling Better teaches skills and tools that will allow you to set and achieve goals, articulate feelings, and make constructive decisions. You’ll learn to identify and engage with allies and supporters, deal with difficult people, and, if need be, walk away from harmful relationships. Cindy and Ron have taught clients — diagnosed with depression or not — to use these skills in virtually every life situation, from preventing divorce to “consciously uncoupling,” raising healthy children, coping with loss, and dealing with addiction. Writing with wisdom, warmth, and humor, they are savvy coaches and inspiring cheerleaders who can offer a lifeline to the depressed and life enrichment to anyone. About the author: Cindy Goodman Stulberg, DCS, CPsych, is a psychologist, teacher, wife, mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother. With Dr. Ronald Frey, Cindy cofounded the Institute for Interpersonal Psychotherapy, which trains, supervises, and certifies mental health clinicians in interpersonal psychotherapy. She lives in Ontario.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Daniel S. Lobel, PhD author of When Your Daughter Has BPD: Essential Skills to Help Families Manage Borderline Personality Disorder About the book: In this groundbreaking book, psychologist Daniel Lobel offers essential skills based in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you understand your daughter’s disorder, define appropriate boundaries, put an end to daily emergencies, and rebuild the family’s structure from the ground up. If you have a daughter with borderline personality disorder (BPD), you may feel frustration, shame, and your family may be at the breaking point dealing with angry outbursts, threats, and constant emergencies. You may even feel guilty for not enjoying spending time with your child—but how can you when her behavior is abusive toward you and the rest of your family? You need solid skills you can use now to help your daughter and hold your family together. In this important guide, you’ll learn real solutions and strategies based in proven-effective DBT and CBT to help you weather the storm of BPD and restore a sense of normalcy and balance in your life. You’ll find an overview of BPD so you can better understand the driving forces behind your daughter’s difficult behavior. You’ll discover how you can help your daughter get the help she needs while also setting boundaries that foster respect and self-care for you and others in your family. And, most importantly, you’ll learn “emergency parenting techniques” to help you put a stop to abusive patterns and restore peace. If your daughter has BPD and your family is struggling to make it through each day, this book offers essential skills to help you cope and recover a sense of stability. About the author: Daniel S. Lobel, PhD, is assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and has given classes at both State University of New York (SUNY) at Purchase and the State University of New York College of Optometry. He has written chapters in many textbooks and contributes frequently as a guest blogger on the Psychology Today website. Lobel is a psychologist with a private practice. He resides in Katonah, NY.

About the book: Combining humor, honesty, and plainspoken advice, Momma Zen distills the doubts and frustrations of parenting into vignettes of Zen wisdom. Drawing on her experience as a first-time mother, and on her years of Zen meditation and study, Miller explores how the daily challenges of parenthood can become the most profound spiritual journey of our lives. This compelling and wise memoir follows the timeline of early motherhood from pregnancy through toddlerhood. Momma Zen takes readers on a transformative journey, charting a mother’s growth beyond naive expectations and disorientation to finding fulfillment in ordinary tasks, developing greater self-awareness and acceptance—to the gradual discovery of “maternal bliss,” a state of abiding happiness and ease that is available to us all. In her gentle and reassuring voice, Karen Miller convinces us that ancient and authentic spiritual lessons can be as familiar as a lullaby, as ordinary as pureed peas, and as frequent as a sleepless night. She offers encouragement for the hard days, consolation for the long haul, and the lightheartedness every new mom needs to face the crooked path of motherhood straight on. About the author: Karen Maezen Miller is a wife and mother as well as a Zen Buddhist priest at the Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles. She and her family live in Sierra Madre, California, with a century-old Japanese garden in their backyard. She writes about spirituality in everyday life. She is the author of Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood, and her writing is included in numerous anthologies.