Blog
The Question I Didn’t Answer
A supervisee has been asking me a question for months. “How has your work with primary emotions changed?” Each time he asked, I answered partially. I spoke about cultural conditioning. About distance. About survival states. I implied that nothing, fundamentally, had...
Seeing Self and Other Through a Wider Lens
A supervisee recently asked me how my work with the View of Self and Other differs from what I learned in Emotionally Focused Therapy. EFT is still nestled, very close to my heart. I still trust the clarity and compassion of its map. But it’s true that, in some...
Why I’m Choosing Anger This Year
As 2026 begins, one of my strongest resolutions is this: to have—and own—more of my anger.I’m writing this both as a therapist and as someone who learned early to move away from anger rather than toward it. Those two voices aren’t separate for me. What I’ve learned...
Anger, Welcomed: Connection Begins Where We Stop Pretending
Over the years, I’ve noticed a pattern in therapy: the more comfortable people are with their anger—likewise contempt and cynicism—the less distress they experience in their closest relationships. Not because they’re “angrier,” but because they’re...
Change Requires New Conditions, Not New Effort
People in close relationships often come to me after years—sometimes decades—of being stuck in painful cycles. Individuals come for similar reasons, hoping to find relief from internal patterns so deeply ingrained that nothing they do touches them. They’ve read books,...
Not Enough and Too Much
By Lori Marchak and Craig Stein We all know those inner refrains: I’m not good enough. I’m too much.They’re not random wounds. They make sense in context. For many men, the conditioned strategies of working hard, staying ahead, accommodating, and withdrawing once...
What if “Not Good Enough” is Right?
We all carry negative beliefs and accompanying strategies we picked up along the way—working to please, keeping the peace, staying calm and rational, or taking care of everyone around us. Most of the time, we refer to the negative beliefs behind these “coping...
Beyond the Roles
The turning points in my life have most often shown up unexpectedly. A door closes. A new path appears. Something shifts—sometimes before I have words for what’s happening. Those moments have asked me to change before I fully understood it.Sue Johnson and Emotionally...
More Than Trauma: How Social Conditioning Shapes Who We Become
“I didn’t yet understand that I was moving through a world that saw and treated me differently—and that those differences, though mostly invisible, had been shaping us all along.”I’ve spent a lot of time learning how childhood trauma and neglect shape the nervous...
Mistrust is a gift, both to oneself and to others.
In the previous post, I shared a story of a motorist whose car broke down in a snowstorm in rural Montana. After a long walk along a lonely road, he finally arrived at a ranch. Walking up to the door, he pounded and shouted, “Never mind, I don’t want your help!” He...
When Validation Backfires
“Nevermind, I don’t want your damn help, anyway!”– a man in a snowstorm, pounding on a stranger’s doorI remember a story my father told me in childhood, perhaps because he rarely engaged with me that way. A man’s car broke down in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere...
Unseen Layers of Burdens
“The burdens we carry today result from generations of living in city-states, where people either must submit to oppression, become oppressive themselves, or become complicit with oppression to survive.”In my learning journey, I’ve been surprised to discover...
On Embracing Mistrust
Individuals’ parts typically harbor great mistrust for each other. Protective parts are generally polarized with other protective parts. The self-like manager, usually called “Me,” busily manages and controls various parts, experienced as different voices, impulses,...
What burdened parts want you to know
Protective and exiled parts, as described by the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, manage people’s burdens. They keep burdens out of conscious awareness, take back control when they overwhelm the system, and search for a path toward resolution. Unfortunately,...
To be human is to be burdened
We all carry the weight of enormous burdens. As a caregiver, I help clients see and understand their burdens and help provide a safe container to release them. By their very existence, I know any client parts that show up to engage with me are burdened. Burdens are...
Longing for deeper belonging
Wise therapy models, like Emotionally Focused Therapy and Internal Family Systems, teach us to listen more deeply while clients share their stories and the problems in their current lives. We pay close attention to the nonverbal, right-brain-to-right-brain...
Quick guide to merging EFT and IFS
"Rather than debate their similarities and differences, consider what can happen when we bring Self Energy and secure attachment to ourselves and our clients." Emotionally Focused Therapy and Internal Family Systems work brilliantly together, even though they...
A Moment of Awakening
There is no remedy for love but to love more. – Henry David Thoreau On my journey to develop skills and expertise as a therapist for individuals and couples, I read books, attended professional trainings, studied videos of master therapists, had countless hours...
Inviting client parts to dance
“Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.” – Isaac Watts As a therapist, have you ever considered why client parts appear in the room? I used to think parts had everything to do with the clients protecting themselves—a legacy from their...
Blaming Parts are Cultural, not Personal
Blaming parts can feel desperate to be seen and understood while, at the same time, they can ultimately expect to be ignored, judged, and misunderstood. Recall the blaming parts in the scene with Fred, Sheldon, and Marla: Fred sat comfortably in the therapist's...
Welcoming blaming parts
When people come to therapy, we help them feel safe cognitively before guiding them to experience more embodied levels of safety. Bringing much-needed support to blaming parts is a way to establish calmness and trust. In the presence of overwhelming suffering, each...
Delighting In A Lot Of Words
In our continuous journey to enhance therapeutic practices, I am excited to delve into a more profound method of client engagement that I have termed "Better Together." This approach integrates the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model with the Emotionally Focused...
Better Together: Integrating EFT, IFS, and PSIP
These days, I work in a new and emergent way that I’ve developed over the past eight years. Over this time, I’ve moved into a more secure relationship with EFT while expanding to divergent experiential models. I’ve named this approach Better Together, which supports...
Upcoming Opportunities to Learn EFT
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and her colleagues, is largely responsible for transforming the field of couple therapy over the past 30 years. Without EFT training, couple therapy is often ineffective. With EFT, couple therapy has...
What Is Secure Attachment?
Secure attachment is the natural way people relate to each other in safe and secure social conditions, but cannot be taken for granted.
What Is Avoidant Attachment?
People who practice rugged independence have an avoidant style of relating to others. While common, relating this way is not ideal.
What Is Anxious Attachment?
Anxious attachment is one of three styles of coping with relationship insecurity. Anxious attachment often develops in childhood.
Are You Securely Attached in Your Relationship?
Take this brief quiz to find out of you are securely attached in your relationship, or if you have anxious or avoidant attachment.
Perfectionism: Mental Disorder or Relationship Strategy?
When is perfectionism a positive trait, and when is it unhealthy? Is perfectionism an individual disorder or relationship strategy?
All Marriages are Challenging
Fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce. The odds of long-term success are less in later marriages and unmarried couples. Recent advances in understanding help more couples succeed.
“My vision is to empower a world in which we can all be seen, loved, and free to love wholeheartedly.”
— Lori Marchak, LCPC, LMFT