Working From Home: Part Two

This is the second post in a 5-part series about how to separate work life from home life when you work from home (WTF) during the covid-19 pandemic, written by Baltimore therapist, Anna Kozitzky, LGPC.

Secure Functioning During COVID-19

This post explores how the global pandemic may be impacting three types of couples in particular; engaged couples facing uncertain wedding plans, couples with health anxieties, and couples who are feeling “burnt out” as parents. This post will also describe ways to promote secure functioning amidst this seemingly chaotic and uncertain time.

Relationships in Quarantine

The current pandemic is putting our relationships through strain that we may not have ever experienced before. This post explores the recent challenges faced by couples who are quarantining together during COVID-19, while weaving in the wisdom of Esther Perel, and provides practical tips for strengthening relationships during the pandemic.

The New Norm

The current isolation has done more than minimize the human interactions that we are accustomed to, it has inadvertently created a new set of norms for an entire nation. While the appearances of gloves and masks covering the hands and faces of others may be unsettling, COVID-19 may have unknowingly unsurfaced a variety of feelings within. It is not uncommon to feel confined, lonely, abandoned, afraid or even hyper-vigilant while sick. Perhaps you have experienced all these feelings and others simultaneously. As we navigate our way through this pandemic, remember to be gentle with yourself, you are human after all. This post aims to explore the different elements of “the new normal” during COVID-19, and provide readers with suggestions for coping skills and connection.

Your Coupleship in Review

Why would you and your partner want to do a “Coupleship in Review”? This series of check-in questions is designed to help you invite structure, flow, intimacy, play and secure connection into the future of your relationship. Just being together and enjoying each other is great, but once again Space Between Counseling Services has an invitation for you that will help make your relationship stronger in the years to come.

“Secure Functioning” is being in a relationship that is fully collaborative, fully mutual, + based on justice, fairness, and sensitivity.

— Dr. Stan Tatkin

Your Coupleship: Year in Review 2018

Coupleship: 2018- Year In Review.

This series of check-in questions is designed to help you invite structure, flow, play and secure connection into 2019. After the rush of the Holiday season is almost over, but before you ring in the near year, we hope that you can create a holding space for one another. Just being together and enjoying each other is great, but once again Space Between Counseling Services has an invitation for you that will help make your relationship stronger in the year to come.

“Secure Functioning” is being in a relationship that is fully collaborative, fully mutual, + based on justice, fairness, and sensitivity.

— Dr. Stan Tatkin

Perhaps you completed the Coupleship Year in Review around this time last year. Hopefully it provided you with the opportunity to reflect on your relationship, togetherness and growth both as individuals and a couple during 2017. This year the Space Between Counseling Services team has re-invented the review. You may notice some similar questions, as well as some new ones during this year’s review.

Why Secure-Functioning Matters in Partnerships

What does it mean to be in a secure-functioning relationship? And why should it matter to me? Secure-functioning relationships allow us to be the best we are individually. It does not mean that you will lose your identity or freedom. In fact, you will have more, since trust is a guarantee you two make. Your relationship will become a place of support and love. As well as a place to call home + restore life-energy. Are you in a secure functioning relationship? IF not, good news is you two CAN BE!

What Your Upbringing Says About Who You Are in Bed

Esther Perel asks.

As a Relationship Therapist - I ask.

📌Why is it that many women don’t seem to know what they want?

📌Where does the sense of being disconnected from your own body stem from?

📌How can it be so hard to talk about sex with our partners?

As Perel explains, much of our adult sexuality, our current desires, the way we relate to others, how we perceive our self-worth—is the product of the way we were raised and the environment in which our sexuality developed.

Q&A with Esther Perel:

Q
You’ve said that if you know how someone was raised, you can tell how they will be as a lover. Can you explain?

A
Consider a paradigm we’ve always known in modern psychology: Tell me how you are loved, and I’ll have a good idea of what may be some of your issues, your concerns, your worries, your aspirations, and how you love.

But this paradigm never got translated into: Tell me how you were loved and I will tell you how you MAKE love. How your emotional history is inscribed in the physicality of sex. How your body speaks a certain emotional biography.

For example, the question I often ask people is: How did you learn to love, and with whom? Were you allowed to want? Were you allowed to have needs growing up—or were you told, “What do you need that for?” Were you allowed to thrive? Were you allowed to experience pleasure—or was pleasure just a break between work sessions, a reward after a lot of effort? Were you allowed to cry—and were you allowed to cry out loud, or did you have to hide it? Were you allowed to laugh—out loud? Did you feel protected as a child by those who needed to protect you—or did you flee for protection? Did the people who were supposed to take care of you do so—or did you have to take care of your caregivers, becoming the parentified child?

Interested in Reading More...

Baltimore Area Adult Women:

Does post this resonate with you? Are you interested in exploring your own adult sexuality and how it shows up for you in your relationship?

If so, reach out - you don’t need to navigate these feelings & ideas - ALONE.

Susan works with Type A’s ---> Creatives as they balance schedules, stress, and the modern challenges within coupleship.

Your Coupleship: Year in Review 2017

Coupleship: Year in Review 2017

Why would you and your partner want to do a “Year In Review”? This series of check in questions is designed to help you two invite structure, flow, play and connection into 2018.

After the wrapping paper is cleared away, but before you pull out the new year's noisemakers, I hope that you can make time for each other. Just being together and enjoying each other is great, but I have an invitation for you that will help make you stronger in the year to come...

In this space between the holidays as one year ends and another begins, I'd love to know that you’re strengthening your "coupleship bubble." Maybe you want to think of it as creating your own private snow globe where you sit together in the swirl of your past and present and plan out your future.