Category: Blog Posts

Do you remember before you married you each promised that you’d split the running of the household and childcare 50-50 since you both had careers? Is that still working for you or have more of the household tasks migrated back onto your plate? Or rather are these tasks just going undone?

To keep the household and childcare covered, one person, usually the mother, has to keep things organized, scheduling the to-do lists, doctor appointments, school permission slips, extracurricular activities, and so forth. This greatly affects how much time and energy mom has left for working secularly. That’s not to say the dad doesn’t want to spend more time with the children, because he does. Yet he feels driven to work to take care of his family.

In a recent New York Times article, various studies were examined to determine today’s reality of housework equality. One 2008 study by Dr. Lareau and sociologist Elliot B. Weininger found, “Mothers’ paid work hours go up when children’s activities go down, whereas fathers’ paid hours are not affected by how much their children do.” This indicates that juggling home and work puts a tremendous drain of time and energy for moms.

The article goes on to explore the perception of both sexes: “Half of the men surveyed in a Families and Work Institute study from 2008 said they were either the responsible parent or shared the role equally with their spouse, while two-thirds of the women said they were the one in charge. This suggests that either men overestimate their contribution or women define the work differently.”

I’ve often commented that communication is key to successfully merging family life and work life. Yet, with frayed nerves, stress, and overworked emotions, conflict arises and good communication skills often go out the window.

Is it time to reconnect with your spouse, but you don’t know how? Many have found that it helps to enlist the expertise of a professional who can help you reorganize priorities and teach you tools of communication to cut through the conflict. It’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help. It’s truly a sign of maturity and strength to be so committed to your marriage that you’ll do whatever is needed to make it work. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment and we can talk about how to help your family be happy and strong.

Read more on my website: Dual Career Couples and Conflict and Communication.

When a person experiences a traumatic event, such as a terrorist attack, a car wreck or sexual abuse, the body from head to toe shifts into the fight or flight mode. Hormones and chemicals race through your body as everything shifts into high gear and hyper-vigilance. Your entire body becomes involved to save your life.

Interestingly, brain scans are now showing what trauma does to the body so that we can tailor treatments that help the person holistically. A key finding is that the speech center shuts down during the traumatic event, which helps explain why many people can’t describe what happened.

Also the part of the brain responsible for experiencing the present moment—the medial prefrontal cortex—shuts down during stress. People who’ve experienced trauma therefore have difficulty processing that information.

Many are finding that a combination of yoga and therapy is helping trauma sufferers to heal.

According to Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a clinical psychiatrist, founder of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts and a leader in the field of posttraumatic stress:

“Fundamentally, the effect of trauma is in relationship to one’s body. One’s body gives the signal that it’s not safe, and your body keeps fighting an existing enemy… The clinical research and treatment program showed that doing yoga was a more effective treatment for traumatized people…than any medication that had ever been studied. Opening up that relationship with your body, opening up your body to breathe, and to feel your body is very important.

It’s great to be able to put your feelings into words, and feeling that somebody understands your suffering is enormously comforting. But it doesn’t make your body know that you are safe. The real method is resetting your physiology.”

However Dr Bessel van der Kolk recommends yoga in conjunction with working with a person who has special trauma therapy training. “None of my patients have been able to tolerate a yoga program if they weren’t in therapy at the same time. Too much painful stuff comes up.” If you’re ready to try this treatment and you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

For more information on my website: Therapy FAQ and Depression and Stress.

Are you in a relationship where you intellectually know that your partner loves you, but in day-to-day living there’s just not the emotional connection, affectionate physical touch or even conversation? Perhaps your spouse even gets angry when you express emotions? This is the life neuro-typicals live with their Asperger mates.

Is it possible to love if you don’t have empathy? Is it possible to feel loved by your partner who may have an empathy disorder? Is it truly a loving experience if your ASD partner feels love in his or her heart but doesn’t share it with you?

I think of love as a verb rather than a noun. As an action, love is not really love unless it is shared, accepted and returned. This is the loving flow we have all experienced when we are in the presence of someone with empathy. Even if there are many other types of love, such as love of God and Country, or love of a book or favorite past time, the type of love that hangs up Asperger/NT relationships is the loving exchange between two people who empathize with each other.

Many Aspies are offended by the notion that they aren’t capable of love. Of course they’re capable of love, but it feels differently to those of us with empathy. One Aspie told me that she believes she has empathy because she feels love for family and friends and feels very comfortable in their presence. However, she seems totally unaware of how these loved ones feel in her presence. In other words, the love is in her heart but not shared. And as long as her loved ones make her feel comfortable, it ends there. She is puzzled that people pull away from her from time to time, and chalks it up to the belief that people just don’t like to be around a depressed Aspie.

We can’t discuss this topic too much because empathy is the center pin to everything Aspie. Please join us during the next Asperger Syndrome: Partners & Family of Adults with ASD Teleconference. It will be help on Friday, June 26th at 2:30pm. Your relationship may be troubled, but there is hope.

Learn more on my website: Asperger Syndrome and Relationships.

Alcoholism and other drug abuse is an epidemic in our country. It’s so wide spread that our schools have developed substance abuse prevention programs to educate our youth. The courts are less tolerant of alcohol related traffic infractions. And who hasn’t heard of the rehab centers the movie stars and politicians check themselves in and out of?

Substance abuse lowers production, increases accidents, lowers quality work, and contributes to the loss of skilled employees. To combat this, employers have established employee assistance programs and redesigned insurance benefits to create treatment options for employees. These programs treat the addict AND the family, because the strength of the family determines the addict’s success in treatment.

Employers want to rehabilitate and return a healthy employee to the job. Yet among family firms, drug addiction and alcohol abuse are frequently overlooked. Many people who work in family firms, yet are not family members, talk about the “secret” at work. The secret that everyone knows – that there’s a family member who is abusing drugs or alcohol. Yet no one does anything about it. The family member is protected not only by the family, but by a general conspiracy among employees.

While the function of the family is to nurture and protect its members and usually takes precedence over the welfare of the business or other non-family related employees, this isn’t helping the alcoholic or the drug addict.

To overlook, condone, deny, rationalize or minimize the problem for the sake of keeping the family system in tact is a misguided sympathy. Allowing addictions to go untreated is no way to take care of either the business or the family. By ignoring the problem the addict accepts this as tacit approval of their behavior. This causes the potential threat to the integrity of the family and business to grow. Alcoholism and other addictions leads to the breakdown of the family, just what a family firm wants to avoid.

How can the addict get help, while being reassured that he or she has the backing of the family and business? There are a variety of resources available. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment to discover the right treatment for you or your loved one. With the support of the two most important systems in one’s life, the addict has increased potential to succeed in treatment. They have a loving family and they have a job to come back to.

Read more on my website: Alcoholism Recovery and How Friends Can Help.

According to the January 2015 Gallup report, “400,000 new businesses are being born annually nationwide, while 470,000 per year are dying. And of the estimated 26 million businesses in America, 20 million of these reported businesses are inactive companies that have no sales, profits, customers or workers. There are only 6 million businesses in the United States with one or more employees. Of those, 3.8 million have four or fewer employees – mom and pop shops owned by people who aren’t building a business as much as they are building a life.”

What do successful entrepreneurial couples know about keeping a marriage and a business on track that you should know, too? Whether in business or marriage, problem solving requires gathering information. It just makes common sense to find out what successful entrepreneurial couples know and do that works for them. Out of these strategies, you may find a nugget that applies to you and your spouse.

Do you apply the 100% – 100% Rule?

As a family business coach, over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet many entrepreneurial couples and there’s a pattern among those who have long-term happy marriages interwoven with a prosperous business life. First and foremost they follow the 100% – 100% Rule. That is, each partner considers her or himself 100% responsible for the quality of her or his individual life as well as their joint ventures (i.e., parenting, household duties, managing and promoting a business).

While most couples follow a 50% – 50% Rule, meeting each other half way, by following the 100% – 100% Rule entrepreneurial couples meet each other all of the way. They each put his or her whole self, talents, intuitions, and muscle into the relationships of marriage and business partnership, making each equally responsible for the outcome. Even though for efficiency’s sake they may divide up duties along the lines of who is most capable or available, they still consider themselves as responsible as their partner for the success of the goal.

What often get’s in the way of implementing the 100% – 100% Rule? Worrying about ego or pride, which is a waste of precious energy that can better be used in pursuit of your dreams or being creative. It’s better to re-direct your achievement need toward the things you do best at the business or at home. That way not only do you succeed, but your spouse, family, business and community benefits too. What better way to express the 100% – 100% Rule!

If you need an outside arbitrator to settle an ongoing family/business problem and you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment. Did you know you can get remote education too? Check out Remote Education for Entrepreneurial Couples.

“Urgggh! I can’t stand it when he does that…But he’s such a good guy…now I feel guilty for even thinking that way.” Love+Hate=Guilt. Doesn’t this describe the complex emotional problem that comes with some close relationships, whether it’s a parent-child relationship, marriage, or even best friends?

This kind of guilt, not being able to reconcile love and displeasure, is the natural byproducts of normal human development that hasn’t been allowed to progress to completion. Anger and love are healthy human emotions that emerge often in our daily lives. Learning methods to process these feelings constructively so that we can mature is the work of childhood. Guilt, on the other hand, is not a normal, nor healthy, human emotion (unless of course you have legitimately committed a serious offense).

To feel guilty for being angry at someone is a misunderstanding of the relationship. Nobody is perfect and so it’s likely that someone you love will do something that makes you mad, even if they don’t mean to. You are under no obligation to stifle your anger or to feel guilty just because it’s a parent, husband, or life-long friend who has misbehaved.

Many people balk at the idea of blaming the other party. They feel guilty for being angry at the person they love and admire. They haven’t learned how to reconcile those feelings of love and hate. They either feel guilty about their anger or more often they deny it altogether. Blame isn’t really necessary, but holding others (even your parents) accountable for their mistakes is important. Just as you give others credit for their successes, it’s important to note the failures, the misunderstandings, and the faulty choices.

By holding others accountable you accomplish two important goals.

1. You’re actually treating the other person with respect. You are offering them the opportunity to correct their error. In other words, you are treating them as if they are capable. By stuffing your anger, you feel helpless and like a victim with nowhere to go with these feelings except to build up resentment (i.e. Love/Hate).

2. By holding others accountable, you’re able to view your own flaws more objectively. Not only can you learn from your mistakes but from theirs as well.

Many have found that talking with an objective professional helps to sort out feelings such as these. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.