Elisabeth LaMotte
Elizabeth Stroud’s 2017 follow-up to “My Name is Lucy Barton” stands alone as an engaging, page-turning tale about how two people can have vastly different experiences of the same relationship. A group of character studies follows the same characters that played roles in “My Name is Lucy Barton”. This time around, their stories are excavated…
Read MoreEmotional infidelity is an area of relationships where it is important to trust your instincts (unless you are excessively possessive). The clearest sign of emotional infidelity is a sense of discomfort with a particular person in your partner’s life. Maybe you notice flirtatiousness in the email that was left open on the computer or overly…
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Elizabeth Stroud’s 2016 best-selling novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, examines the literary challenge of capturing an internal emotional experience and translating it to tell a meaningful story. The novel begins from Lucy’s hospital bed in Manhattan where she is battling a substantial but undiagnosed illness. Lucy’s husband is struggling to balance work, caring for…
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In her January, 2015, New York Times article Writing Your Way To Happiness, Tara-Parker Pope cites a plethora of research demonstrating that the act of writing can improve mood disorders, reduce depression, and even improve outcomes for cancer patients. Journaling is among the therapeutic writing strategies discussed, and journaling is a long-standing tool encouraged by…
Read MoreWhat Do You Anticipate as the Strengths and the Challenges of your Marriage? This is a wonderful two-tiered conversation topic that can help couples prepare for the future. It is meaningful to enter marriage by first putting words to your relationship’s strengths. If you share values, trust one another implicitly, have great sex, work well…
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Deepak Chopra famously said: “When you blame and criticize others, you are avoiding some truth about yourself.” The tendency to focus on the flaws of others in order to deny scary or painful dimensions of the self comes up often in therapy. Sigmund Freud described this process as projective identification. Projective identification — often called…
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Family Systems theory is a school of psychology through which individual functioning is best understood in the context of their most intimate relationships. This “systemic” perspective emphasizes how each individual is shaped by the culture of their “family of origin”. (Family of Origin refers to the family in which we were raised.) The theory focuses…
Read More“Honey We Need to Talk!” Raising complicated discussion topics at bedtime is rarely productive and not the least bit sensual. Juggling work and parenting is chaotic and exhausting, so the urge to toss out weighty conversation topics once kids are asleep, responsibilities are met, and your heads are finally hitting the pillow makes sense. But…
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As a therapist in Washington, DC, I work with many career focused individuals and couples. DC dwellers tend to marry later and so they often decide to start families will into their late thirties and early forties. It is, therefore, not surprising that infertility and adoption are common therapy themes in our practice. The process…
Read MoreTherapy clients looking for romantic love used to designate therapy as a place to ponder the question of on-line dating. Years ago, the primary question was whether or not it felt comfortable to place a profile in the cyber universe and begin interacting with strangers on-line. That dated question has shifted away from WHETHER to…
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