Tim Quinn, MFT

01/01/2026

I believe in this stuff!

12/29/2025

12/28/2025

This is good advice. We know that successful relationships come from actions that reflect each partner really matters to each other, and make each other a priority. If you have a largely healthy relationship, there are ways to navigate conflicts with in-laws, grown children, etc. If a conflict with extended family comes up, it might be a good moment to get some relationship counseling. 

12/25/2025

12/22/2025

"One fact I have learned about life through the empiricism of living: When we are hurt in a relationship, when we are spinning in the blooming buzzing confusion of sensemaking, the explanation we elect as correct usually has more to do with our own fears and vulnerabilities than it does with the reality of the situation; almost always, that explanation is wrong; almost always, the true explanation has more to do with the fears and vulnerabilities roiling in the other person invisibly to us."

“The intention of deep listening and loving speech is to restore communication, because once communication is restored, everything is possible.”

12/16/2025

I feel this!

A new study shows caffeine boosts positive emotions, especially in the morning. However, its ability to reduce negative feelings is less consistent.

12/12/2025

"A recent 2025 study published in BMC Psychology looked at how people successfully cope with the harsh internal voice that points out their flaws or mistakes. Researchers wanted to understand what strategies actually helped people manage their self-critical thoughts in a healthy and adaptive way. They interviewed individuals who had scored high on measures of coping ability and analyzed their experiences in depth."

Here's how to turn your inner voice from a relentless critic into a supportive coach.

12/09/2025

"...the psychiatrist Stephen Porges uncovered two distinct vagal pathways in the nervous system — the much older dorsal vagus, which evolved around 500 million years ago in a fish now extinct to regulate fear response and activate shutdown, and the ventral vagus, a uniquely mammalian development about 200 million old, controlling our capacity for connection and communication. This research became the foundation of polyvagal theory — the science of how the interplay of these two systems shapes our sense of safety and danger, shapes our attachment styles and relationship patterns, shapes our very ability to tolerate the risks of living necessary for being in love with life.

In the decades since, no one has championed polyvagal theory more ardently than the clinical psychologist Deb Dana. In her book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation (public library), written for therapists, she explores how trauma automates our adaptive responses in a survival story that puts the fear-based dorsal vagus in command to induce collapse and dissociation, and how we can rewire our neural pathways toward the emotional safety of the ventral vagal state, where our capacity for curiosity, connection, and change flourishes."

“The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state.”

11/30/2025

"A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That's why it's a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you're giving, you're not giving to the other person: you're giving to the relationship. And if you realize you are in the relationship just as the other person is, then it becomes life building, a life fostering and enriching experience, not an impoverishment because you're giving to somebody else. . .

This is the challenge of a marriage. What a beautiful thing is a life together as growing personalities, each helping the other to flower, rather than just moving into the standard archetype. It's a wonderful moment when people can make the decision to be something quite astonishing and unexpected, rather than cookie-mold products."
- Joseph Campbell

From An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms p. 127