Tara Farazian, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

02/21/2026

Love is not enough.

Before committing long-term, ask:

Is the attraction mutual — or is one person pursuing while the other distances?
Is the timing aligned — or is one ready while the other is unsure?
Are our core values aligned — or are we hoping love will override incompatibility?



secureattachment

02/10/2026

Increasingly, therapy involves addressing not only individual symptoms, but the psychological impact of prolonged exposure to unaccountable power and systemic instability.In therapy, this often presents as:
• hypervigilance
• emotional exhaustion
• hopelessness
• self-blame
• withdrawal or anger
Evidence-Based Therapy Approaches for
Systemic Distress & Moral Injury

• Contextualizing distress as an adaptive response, not pathology
• Differentiating personal responsibility from systemic accountability
• Addressing moral injury and value violations
• Regulating chronic threat and stress activation
• Supporting values-based action and boundaries

01/29/2026

📘 Book Spotlight: All the Way to the River

This memoir offers a clinically relevant and deeply personal exploration of the impact of addiction within intimate relationships, including love addiction, s*x addiction, and substance use disorders. Through first-person narrative, the book provides insight into how addiction—regardless of form—can shape attachment patterns, distort relational boundaries, and create cycles of hope, denial, and emotional exhaustion for both partners.

From a therapeutic lens, All the Way to the River highlights the psychological toll of loving someone with addiction, including caregiver burnout, trauma bonding, hypervigilance, and self-abandonment. It also illustrates how caretaking and rescuing behaviors may emerge as coping strategies, often at the expense of one’s own emotional well-being.

This book serves as a valuable window into the lived experience of addiction from both sides of the relationship and can be a meaningful resource for clients navigating relational trauma, as well as clinicians working with addiction, attachment wounds, and boundary repair.
MentalHealthBooks

01/29/2026

📘 Book Spotlight: All the Way to the River

This memoir offers a clinically relevant and deeply personal exploration of the impact of addiction within intimate relationships, including love addiction, s*x addiction, and substance use disorders. Through first-person narrative, the book provides insight into how addiction—regardless of form—can shape attachment patterns, distort relational boundaries, and create cycles of hope, denial, and emotional exhaustion for both partners.

From a therapeutic lens, All the Way to the River highlights the psychological toll of loving someone with addiction, including caregiver burnout, trauma bonding, hypervigilance, and self-abandonment. It also illustrates how caretaking and rescuing behaviors may emerge as coping strategies, often at the expense of one’s own emotional well-being.

This book serves as a valuable window into the lived experience of addiction from both sides of the relationship and can be a meaningful resource for clients navigating relational trauma, as well as clinicians working with addiction, attachment wounds, and boundary repair. CaregiverBurnout MentalHealthBooks

01/29/2026

📖 Book Spotlight

All the Way to the River – by Elizabeth Gilbert. This memoir offers a clinically relevant and deeply personal exploration of the impact of addiction within intimate relationships, including love addiction, s*x addiction, and substance use disorders. Through first-person narrative, the book provides insight into how addiction—regardless of form—can shape attachment patterns, distort relational boundaries, and create cycles of hope, denial, and emotional exhaustion for both partners.

From a therapeutic lens, All the Way to the River highlights the psychological toll of loving someone with addiction, including caregiver burnout, trauma bonding, hypervigilance, and self-abandonment. It also illustrates how caretaking and rescuing behaviors may emerge as coping strategies, often at the expense of one’s own emotional well-being.

This book serves as a valuable window into the lived experience of addiction from both sides of the relationship and can be a meaningful resource for clients navigating relational trauma, as well as clinicians working with addiction, attachment wounds, and boundary repair.

BookSpotlight # addiction

01/27/2026

01/22/2026

Trauma is not a one-size-fits-all experience.

In clinical work, trauma is often understood in three primary forms:
Big T trauma, little t trauma, and complex trauma.

• Big T trauma refers to discrete, identifiable events that overwhelm the nervous system (e.g., assault, severe accidents, natural disasters, sudden loss).
• Little t trauma reflects relational or developmental disruptions—often involving unmet emotional or physical needs—that shape attachment, self-worth, and regulation over time.
• Complex trauma develops when trauma is chronic, relational, and involves repeated threats to safety, particularly during childhood, impacting identity, boundaries, and nervous system functioning long-term.

From a trauma-informed lens, trauma is defined not solely by the event, but by how the nervous system experiences, processes, and adapts to perceived threat.

Understanding the type of trauma helps guide effective, compassionate care.

01/02/2026

In 2026, relational health is less about fixing each other and more about understanding what happens between us.

We’re naming emotions earlier—before they turn into reactivity or shutdown.
We’re slowing conversations down enough to notice patterns, not just disagreements.
We’re setting boundaries to protect connection, not to create distance.

We’re recognizing survival responses as learned, adaptive, and context-dependent.
We’re paying attention to what activates them—and choosing responses with intention.

We’re also recognizing that consistently practiced thoughts, emotions, and behaviors shape the emotional tone of our relationships.
We’re reinforcing positive, regulating patterns—not through denial of difficulty, but through repetition, awareness, and choice.

We’re prioritizing emotional safety as the foundation for repair.
We’re valuing consistency, predictability, and attunement over urgency or intensity.
We’re allowing space for difference without treating it as threat.

This is mental health work.
This is relational health.
This is sustainable change.

12/19/2025

The holidays can be difficult not because you’re ungrateful, but because they’re intense.

There is often more noise, more responsibility, more comparison, and less rest. When people feel emotionally off during this time, they often blame themselves — but what they’re experiencing is a normal response to cumulative stress.

You are not required to feel joyful or productive to be “doing the holidays right.”
You are allowed to redefine what this season looks like for you in ways that protect your well-being.

Gentle choices, realistic expectations, and intentional pauses can make a meaningful difference.

12/04/2025

11/12/2025

There’s a kind of distance in marriage that isn’t about leaving — it’s about slowly drifting apart.
I often see couples who are still “together,” but emotionally, they feel miles away.

Marriage isn’t one long, straight path — it happens in phases. Each of us keeps growing, changing, and becoming new versions of ourselves. The real work is learning how to find each other again in every new chapter.

As the Gottman Method reminds us, emotional connection doesn’t sustain itself — it’s something we nurture through curiosity, small moments of turning toward, and choosing each other again and again. ❤️

11/12/2025

There’s a kind of distance in marriage that isn’t about leaving — it’s about slowly drifting apart.
I often see couples who are still “together,” but emotionally, they feel miles away.

Marriage isn’t one long, straight path — it happens in phases. Each of us keeps growing, changing, and becoming new versions of ourselves. The real work is learning how to find each other again in every new chapter.

As the Gottman Method reminds us, emotional connection doesn’t sustain itself — it’s something we nurture through curiosity, small moments of turning toward, and choosing each other again and again. ❤️