love

Our Town

By Elisabeth LaMotte / January 2, 2025

“Do any human beings every realize life while they live it?” I saw Thornton Wilder’s 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning play Our Town at some point during my childhood and remembered it vaguely. Mostly I remembered that the plot followed two young people in a small town falling in love and that the boy loved baseball.…

Read More

Tom Lake

By Elisabeth LaMotte / December 28, 2024

Therapists, especially relationally-oriented therapists, often attempt to help clients in therapy to improve their relationship choices. The pattern of fear of commitment is a widely acknowledged phenomenon in popular culture. Most of us understand fear of commitment as a conscious hesitation to take a healthy relationship to a higher level of commitment. But sometimes conflicts…

Read More

Tell Me Everything

By Elisabeth LaMotte / November 30, 2024
blank

If only we therapists could concoct a reliable strategy to help our clients prevent affairs. If only we could convincingly illuminate the heartbreak and damage and devastation in advance to help motivate adults who find themselves deep in the throes of an intense crush to carve out a different path. The trouble typically is that…

Read More

Nina Nesbit and “When You Lose Someone”

By Spencer Northey / March 22, 2022
blank

The authenticity and simplicity of these lyrics and the video caught me today. Like with many songs on this blog, the words and emotion feel like I’m communicating directly with a client. They echo what I’ve heard clients express to me over the years, and especially these past years. I feel a lump welling in…

Read More

Hadestown and Orpheus’s Tragic Reactivity

By Spencer Northey / September 9, 2021
blank

The Orpheus and Eurydice tale broke my heart when I first learned it in high school, and I have been in the bargaining phase of acceptance of it ever since. It was one of the many contributors to my decision to become a relationship therapist. I’m probably not kidding. In short, the story is about…

Read More

The Beatles, “Hold me Tight,” and Emotion-Focused Therapy

By Spencer Northey / August 26, 2021
blank

    This post is about both Hold Me Tight by the Beatles, one of their least favorite, but still famous songs AND the groundbreaking couple therapy book Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson. (Note: I chose to post the cover from the movie Across the Universe because the sound and video quality is better than…

Read More

R.E.M. and the Gottmans’ Four Horsemen

By Spencer Northey / June 15, 2021
blank

It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) Recorded 1987 By Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michal Stipe Performed by REM World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right, right You vitriolic, patriotic, slam,…

Read More

Marvin Gaye, Antiracism, and Therapeutic Differentiation

By Spencer Northey / May 27, 2021
blank

What’s Going On By Al Cleveland, Renaldo Benson, and Marvin Gaye You know we’ve got to find a way To bring some lovin’ here today  (full lyrics at the end of this post) In 1971 Marvin Gaye released the hauntingly beautiful song “What’s Going On” in response to the police brutality, inequality, and suffering he…

Read More

Bebe Rexha and Heartbreak

By Spencer Northey / May 18, 2021
blank

  I’m a mess, I’m a loser I’m a hater, I’m a user I’m a mess for your love, it ain’t new I’m obsessed, I’m embarrassed I don’t trust no one around us I’m a mess for your love, it ain’t new  (see full lyrics at the end of this post) Dear Mess, If your…

Read More

Coat of Many Colors

By Spencer Northey / May 7, 2021
blank

Coat of Many Colors Written and Sung by Dolly Parton My coat of many colors That my momma made for me Made only from rags But I wore it so proudly (see full lyrics at the end of this post) This song tells a beautiful story of a mom’s differentiation, and how it supported her…

Read More

Subscribe

Search

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Archives