Welcome to Vera’s Blog!

In my last post, I shared 6 signs that your stress or exhaustion is burnout and not just everyday fatigue.

When clients come to me showing these signs, my first step is to help them understand that they aren’t just tired, lazy, or unmotivated. Because as I mentioned in that last post, the signs of burnout can be very subtle. And as a result, many of my clients come to me because they feel “stressed,” “emotionally exhausted,” or “unfulfilled,” and they have no idea that what they’re really experiencing is burnout.

Recognizing that you’re experiencing burnout is very, very important. Because if you think that you’re just stressed, tired, or “in a funk,” you might try to make yourself feel better by doing things that help with everyday stress or general tiredness. And as you’ll learn below, these strategies won’t do the trick to help you recover from burnout. So if you aren’t sure whether the...

Sometimes people recognize the importance of self-love for the first time when they hit rock bottom.

If you’ve been part of my community for some time, you probably know that this is what happened to me.

Years and years ago, I was in the process of divorcing my ex-husband. But it wasn’t just the divorce that I was dealing with. My visa status was also up in the air, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep living in the US. I felt devastated, hopeless, and completely lost.

In my situation, there were tangible stressors—divorce and immigration issues—that I was dealing with. But the real reason why I felt so hopeless at the time was that I had lost myself in my marriage and hadn’t made the effort to prioritize my needs. In other words, I hadn’t taken the time to build and nurture a relationship with myself. And I learned this the really, really hard way by truly hitting rock bottom.

The truth, though, is that in many cases, the signs...

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I’ve done A LOT of couples therapy over the years. So you might expect me to say that if you want to reduce conflict in your relationship, feel more heard by your partner, or enjoy a deeper connection with them, you BOTH need to work on your relationship.

But do you want to know something?

I have many clients who really want to change something in their relationship. But they come to my office alone. Why? Because for one reason or another, their partner doesn’t want to work on the relationship.

When these clients start working with me, there’s something I see in all of them: doubt. They doubt whether the time, energy, and money that they’re investing will be worth it if their partner isn’t working on the relationship with them.

That’s why they’re usually pretty surprised (I would even go as far as to say “shocked” in some cases) when they start seeing BIG changes in their relationship...

In my last post, I shared some of my favorite tips for communicating better with your partner or loved one. (In case you haven’t read it yet, these are 3 tips that most people don’t think about, but they can quickly improve communication in your relationship. You can find out what they are right here.)

When I was first training to be a therapist years ago, I shared some of these tips with a friend named Maria. She had been with her husband, David, for over a decade. But around the time that I was in grad school, Maria had started to realize that she often felt unheard in their relationship.

David was generally very loving toward Maria. He would make coffee for her to take to work, plan date nights for the two of them, and even buy her flowers for no reason at all. And so in many ways, their relationship seemed great—even like something straight out of a rom com.

But recently, Maria had realized that she had been losing her voice in the relationship because...

Do you ever walk away from a conversation with your partner thinking…

• “I never end up saying what I want to say”?
• “They just don’t get why this matters to me”?
• “Small things turn into a bigger deal than they need to be”?
• “We always have the same argument over and over again”?

If you do and it happens more than once in a blue moon, you might recognize that you could benefit from improving how you communicate with your partner.

It makes sense, right? If the way that you’ve been trying to communicate with your partner or loved one hasn’t been working, it’s only reasonable to try to switch things up.

But here’s what you might be thinking: “Yup. I know that I need to change the way that I communicate with my partner. But WHAT do I need to change? And WHAT should I do instead?”

That’s how I felt after every disagreement that my ex-husband and I had.

I knew that the way that we were...

Does it seem like you and your partner are always arguing about something these days?

If you do, you might be feeling emotionally exhausted and frustrated. But you might also be feeling a bit confused.

After all, if you and your partner care about each other and are in a committed relationship, why do you butt heads so much?

If you think you’re alone in wondering this, I want you to know right now that you most definitely are NOT.

Because when I work with couples in my practice, one of the most common issues they raise is that they argue or disagree ALL the time (and they’re sick of it).

As an example, let me tell you about one of my clients. For the sake of this blog post, we’ll call her Rachel.

Rachel came to me because she and her husband Marcus seemed to be fighting about everything lately.

One time, for example, she had gotten home from work late in the evening after an exhausting day during her company’s busy season. She was hoping to walk in the door...

You’ve probably heard time and time again that all relationships—whether they’re between romantic partners, family members, friends, or colleagues—are about compromise.

But what you might not know is that compromising isn’t always a good thing.

Yes, compromise is definitely important. After all, who wants to be in any kind of relationship with someone who thinks that the world revolves around them and their needs?

But when compromise happens too much or in the wrong way, it can actually cause relationships to break down.

Why?

Because when you compromise too much or when you really don’t want to, you actually end up sacrificing what’s important to you for the sake of pleasing the other person or avoiding conflict in the relationship.

And it’s only a matter of time before you start to feel resentful, unfulfilled, drained, unappreciated, lonely, and even disconnected from the person you’re supposed to be in a relationship with.

Did...

When many of my clients first start working with me, there’s something they want out of life that they haven’t been able to achieve or experience.

Some clients are looking for a relationship that makes them feel safe, excited, and loved.

Other clients want to break free from a job or career that leaves them feeling drained every single day.

And there are also clients who just don’t feel happy or fulfilled when they wake up in the morning.

Even though every client is looking for something different, there’s something that unites them: they tend to think that they don’t have the life they want because they just aren’t trying hard enough.

And I don’t blame them.

Because a lot of blogs, self-help books, and social media influencers tell us that we can achieve anything that we want if we just work hard enough at it. And they tell us that if we’re not getting the results we want, it’s because we’re not trying hard enough....

Love comes in many forms. We all know that. But because of what we’ve been taught by pop culture, the retail industry, and even our own friends and family, we tend to believe that there’s an ultimate form of love: the love we share with a romantic partner. In other words, we’ve come to believe that our romantic partner is our one true love.

So if you’ve been struggling to find love with a romantic partner, you might be feeling pretty frustrated. You might be thinking, “Why can’t I ever experience that highest form of love? Why does everyone else seem to be in a great relationship except me?”

How do I know that these are the thoughts that have been running through your mind lately? Because I’ve been there.

You see, I used to think that I was the only woman on Earth who kept making stupid mistakes and falling for the “wrong” guy over and over again. I kept desperately asking myself things like…

“Why me?”

...

If you’re happily married or partnered up, you might be looking forward to Valentine’s Day as a chance to celebrate your relationship, eat some decadent chocolate, and enjoy a romantic evening with your love.

But if you’re single, widowed, divorced, or struggling to feel happy in your relationship, you might be dreading it. In fact, you might even be wishing that you could somehow find a time machine that would let you jump straight from February 13 to February 15.

If this is you, I want you to know that I TOTALLY get it.

Because when I got divorced many years ago, I was full of dread leading up to that first Valentine’s Day without my former husband. I was convinced that it was going to be a challenging day full of pain, loneliness, and endless tears.

So if this is how you’re expecting to feel this Valentine’s Day, I want you to know that I’ve been there.

I also want you to know that how you’re feeling is completely normal.

After all,...