Therapy Articles: Relationships, Anxiety & Depression

How Men Actually Build Real Friendships in Middle Age

Two middle-aged men having a meaningful conversation over coffee, demonstrating authentic male friendship and emotional connection

Listen, if you’re a middle-aged guy reading this feeling like you don’t have close friends anymore, you’re not alone. But I’m going to tell you something you might not want to hear: You don’t have … [Read more]

What’s New with Arizona’s Behavioral Health Board: Essential Changes for Mental Health Professionals

The Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners recently implemented significant regulatory changes that became effective November 2, 2025. These new rules represent months of regulatory development and include important updates that mental health professionals need to understand and implement in their practices.

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10 Warning Signs Your Loved One Is Trapped in Narcissistic Family Manipulation

Family gathering where one person speaks emphatically at the head of the table while others show tense or withdrawn expressions

Narcissistic family manipulation is difficult to recognize from inside the system, because the patterns that define it were normalized before you were old enough to question them. What felt like your family’s personality was often a set of control mechanisms organized around one person’s needs. This article identifies the ten most consistent signs that a family system operates this way, and explains why these dynamics are so hard to name when you have grown up inside them.

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Fondness and Admiration: The Foundation That Keeps Love Alive (Research-Backed Gottman Method)

What the research reveals about the 94% of couples who make it.

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Seven Principles vs. Sound Relationship House: Understanding Gottman’s Unified Framework

Couple sitting together at a kitchen table reviewing materials with engaged curious expressions

If you’ve read John Gottman’s books or researched couples therapy, you’ve likely encountered both the Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and the Sound Relationship House theory, and wondered whether they’re the same thing, different approaches, or one superseding the other. David Lechnyr, LCSW, a Certified Gottman Therapist in Oregon and Arizona, explains how these two frameworks relate to each other, which one applies to clinical practice versus self-help reading, and why understanding the distinction matters for couples doing the work.

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