Educational Blogs from Our Mental Health Therapists

Learn about common challenges, including depression, anxiety, relationships,
trauma, and more, written by Maryland therapists!

Parents’ Communication Toolkit: How to Use Questions to Build Engagement & Improve Communication

How often are you met with a blank stare after asking your child how their day was? Are you tired of getting shrugged off when you ask questions, or knowing you’ve lost their attention when you’re trying to check-in? A desire for connection is at the heart of parent/child relationships, but dysfunctional communication can make us feel further apart than ever. To help close that gap and make you feel more empowered as parents, we’re going to share different strategies to help you build your communication toolkit.

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

What Can You Do When You’re Having Difficulty Talking in Talk Therapy Sessions?

You’ve taken the first step and signed up for talk therapy, and now you’re finding that you’re having a hard time sharing. If this is your experience, just know that you are not the only one. As therapists, we see this quite frequently and know that this lack of sharing can be present for a number of reasons. In this article, I’ll talk about some of the common reasons people have difficulty talking in therapy and some things that you can do about it.

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

Top Reasons to Have Hard Conversations With Your Therapist

If you’ve signed up for therapy, there’s likely a reason for it. It’s possible that you haven’t been feeling well, that you need support or coping strategies, or that you’re going through a difficult season in life. Despite having made that initial decision to sign up for therapy, people can still struggle to open up and bring up the most sensitive topics with their therapists.

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

Benefits of Having Hard Conversations With Your Therapist (Especially When It's About Them)

If you’ve ever been in therapy, then you know just how important it is to have a good working relationship with your therapist. A good working relationship often means that you feel comfortable with the therapist, have a good connection with them, and trust that you can share personal information without being judged. A good working relationship also means that there is good communication on both ends.

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

Recognizing Both When and How to Set Boundaries with Those Around You

Ever find yourself in a situation where a person asks something of you, and against your better judgment, you agree to it? For example, a friend asks you to go out to a late-night dinner, but you know you have an important meeting in the morning. You find it difficult to refuse, so you agree to meet with this friend anyway. This could be because you find it difficult to set healthy boundaries with those around you.

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

What Are Personal Boundaries, and How Do You Set Them for Yourself?

Boundaries are the rules or guidelines that we identify to keep ourselves safe and healthy. They help us create order and allow us to be responsible for our own actions, even if they are not always enjoyable. They allow us to identify those limits that are acceptable for ourselves as a way of engaging in self-love and respect.

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Blindspots, Broccoli, and Hot Topics

In a previous blog I talk about blindspots being comparable to having broccoli in your teeth. Everyone but you can see the broccoli in your teeth. The broccoli can be thought of as our off-putting behaviors, the things we do that rub people the wrong way, without our realizing it. Like the broccoli, everyone else but us realizes that the behavior is unattractive. In cases with actual broccoli or off-putting behaviors, there’s a decision to be made. Do I point out “the broccoli” or say nothing at all?

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

Blindspots Are Like Broccoli in Your Teeth

Others around us are able to recognize our unattractive behaviors when we cannot. These behaviors are our blindspots. They are the behaviors that rub people the wrong way and cause friction in our relationships. Eye rolling, defensiveness, being negative or overly critical are just a few examples. In those cases, the people around us are confronted with a decision. Will they bring the unattractive behavior to our attention, so we can become aware of it and work on it, or will they simply decide to walk away and create distance in the relationship?

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

Resentment

Years ago I read an article about resentment and how it is created. It talked about our people-pleasing tendencies and how we have difficulty saying no to others’ requests because we want them to like us, want them to be happy with us, and because we simply can’t bear the disappointed response that is sure to follow when we say, no. If you can relate, you may want to read more. Saying yes to make other people happy might be creating the very situation you were trying to avoid.

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Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner Communication Skills, Boundary Setting Melissa Wesner

Want a Healthy Relationship? Weed Your Garden.

Gardening and relationships probably aren’t words that typically go together, but if you’ve fallen into certain relationship traps, you just might need to hear this. I talk to so many people who desperately want to have a somebody, but when we start talking about the people in their lives, it becomes abundantly clear that these individuals are not their ideal partners.  One of the things that we ultimately end up talking about is needing to weed their garden. So let’s get started to see if you too have fallen into this same trap and need to do some weeding. 

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