Rebecca Lanier, LMFT

06/19/2025

Clarity saves relationships.

06/17/2025

📣Terry Real is hosting a free live webinar tomorrow, Wednesday 6/18/25 @ 12:00-1:30 PM EST

“Dare To Rock the Boat: Discover the 3-Step Method To Get More of What You Want in Your Relationship”

Join the FREE live training to discover:

❤️The Hidden Costs of Avoiding Conflict: How saying “yes” when you mean “no” isn’t good for you, your partner, or your relationship.

❤️The Common Mistake We Make When Speaking Up: Why our efforts to stand up for ourselves are often met with resistance and what it means to speak up with love.

❤️How To Shift From Passive To Proactive in Relationships : Letting go of the idea that your partner should “just know” what you want – and what to do instead.

❤️How To Celebrate Progress Not Perfection: The ways you might unknowingly discourage your partner from making the changes you want.

❤️The 3 Simple Steps To Inviting More of What You Want: The practical skills you need to start speaking up with love today to get more of what you want and build a better relationship.

A FREE Training From New York Times Bestselling Author Terry Real Dare To Rock The Boat: The 3 Step Method To Stand Up for Yourself and Get More of What You Want in Your Relationships LIVE Wednesday, June 18 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM ET (Don’t worry if you can’t attend live, please still register […...

06/12/2025

So true 🙌

06/07/2025

06/03/2025

Todd Baratz

06/02/2025

04/18/2025

I said this to my undergrads in lecture on Tuesday and it seemed to land, so I’m sharing it here with you. When we’re talking about boundaries, we sometimes focus on the other person- what we will or will not tolerate in someone else’s behavior or demeanor. Those are rules or limits or expectations.

A boundary is about me checking in with me to ensure that I am caring for MYSELF in my relationship with YOU.

And why do I need a process of steady check in with myself?
1. Because I get to choose me and care for me and tend to me.
2. Because our relationship is going to hit a very low ceiling of intimacy, connection, depth, and richness if I am a ticking time bomb of resentment and dysregulation.

A healthy boundary is BOTH self-protective (caring for me) AND loving (caring for you and us).

My preference is for you to FEEL your way into your boundaries- rather than having your therapist or a social media post tell you exactly where to put them. Feel your way into your boundary by checking in with your nervous system.
- When your nervous system is regulated, you feel calm, generous, patient and present.
- When your nervous system is dysregulated, you feel anxious, crabby, distracted, and bitter.

Your boundary is the line between regulated and dysregulated.

There are things we can (and should) do to create more capacity in our nervous systems (see: therapy, mindfulness, movement, breath work, journaling, etc).

These practices are good and healing for us period. But they also help us really learn what regulation even feels like so that we are better able to notice when we’ve moved out of calm into pissy. In order to feel our way into a workable and healthy boundary we have to be able to feel and attend to our internal cues. We have to get familiar with that contrast.

Here’s to boundaries that help us heal and connect. 💓

01/23/2025

Relationships are mirrors. Romantic relationships for sure, but also friendships and relationships with family members.

When someone who matters to you is feeling triggered in their relationship with you, proceed with caution because it’s complicated. Try to avoid these two responses:
1. Making it about you: “You’re triggered by me? Eek! I’m sorry. I’ll shrink back / quiet down / dim myself so as to make you more comfy cozy.”
2. Making it about them: “You’re triggered by me? Sounds like your problem not mine! Good luck with that!”

When someone who matters to you is triggered by you, you gotta work together to find the third path. It is the path of intimacy.

On this path, the person we care about turns toward us and says, “My dear one, I’m feeling so triggered by you. I’m not sure what it’s about. I’m tempted to get critical of you... or maybe critical of me. But I don’t want to do that. Can we just talk a bit about how I’m feeling?”

Holy yes!!!! That right there is the seat of intimacy!!!

Your responses to the people who matter to you hold important data for you— about your wounds, your struggles, your yearnings. See what shifts when you start to believe that.

And the people who are willing to turn toward you to unpack their feelings about you versus act out their feeling about you?

Ooh, goodness, hold those people close! Those are the people you can get raw with, speak truth with, grow with, heal with, laugh with. Cherish people who are brave enough to share their inner 🌎 with you.

That’s intimacy.

01/13/2025

Terri Cole, LCSW

12/06/2024

The Good Quote

12/04/2024

In romantic relationships, it can so easy for us to sort of “flatten” each other out.⁣
- Creating whole imagined conversations with our partners inside our heads.⁣
- Taking each other for granted.⁣
- Making assumptions about their intent or motivation.⁣
- Tuning them out.⁣
Sometimes it’s hardest to see the people who are closest to us.⁣
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Couple therapy is a space designed to shake a couple out of inertia and back into intentionality.⁣
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Couple therapy is a space to create new experiences with the same person. To see yourselves and each other with fresh eyes.⁣
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And couple therapy works. As someone who has been practicing as a couple therapist for 28 years (!!), I know I’m biased, but the effectiveness of couple therapy is a fact not an opinion. ⁣
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The field is officially “mature,” meaning our work is backed by decades of research and iterations of clinical theories that help (well-trained) couple therapists work effectively with couples at all stages of relationship development. In fact the average person in couple therapy is better off at the end of treatment than 70-80% of individuals not receiving treatment. That’s the same effectiveness as individual therapy!⁣
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When is it time to go to couple therapy? Most any time. I view couple therapy as a resource to pick up and put down throughout the course of your relationship. I LOVE it when couples I saw many years ago come back for a “tune up.” ⁣
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And I sometimes work with couples over the course of years. Why? Because long-term loving is hard work. It’s activating af. And stressors make hard things harder. Some of those stressor are normal developmental milestones like having teens in the house or aging parents or midlife stuff. Some of those stressors are extraordinary like job losses and deaths in the family and infidelity.⁣
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I know there are constraints (an unwilling partner, finances, time, childcare, available providers), but if and when you can move through those hurdles, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to invest in your relationship in this way. You deserve nothing less than an intimate partnership that feels emotionally safe and rewarding.⁣

11/27/2024