What Healthy Couples DON’T Do with Dr. Amy Morin

12.04.2023 - By Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Forrest Hanson Play

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Just as we can exercise our arms or legs to build physical strength, we can exercise our brains like we do any other muscle. Therapist Amy Morin joins Forrest to help us learn how to regulate our thoughts, manage our emotions, and become more psychologically flexible. These key skills are particularly important for building a healthy relationship. Forrest and Amy explore how couples can work together to identify their issues, deal with effort imbalances, and avoid common mistakes (like having, get this, not enough conflict).

About our Guest: Amy Morin is a licensed clinical social worker, bestselling author, and the host of the Mentally Stronger podcast.Her most recent book is 13 Things Mentally Strong Couples Don't Do, out on December 26th.

You can watch this episode on YouTube.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

1:35: Amy’s personal background, and how she got to the idea of mental strengths

7:30: Self-compassion vs. self-pity

11:05: Not giving away your power

14:50: Diagnosing root problems in relationships

18:25: When one frustration brings up all your other frustrations

22:25: The inevitability of conflict, and the vulnerability in expressing remorse

27:35: Setting the ground rules for a therapeutic conversation

31:05: When it feels like your partner isn’t invested in making changes

34:50: Learning to deconstruct reactive thoughts and misguided perceptions

38:30: Taking your thoughts with a grain of salt, and asking ‘what else might be true?’

41:20: Scorekeeping vs. negotiating, and finding ways to meet our own needs

45:40: Giving our partner what we actually want for ourselves

49:00: Balancing desires for closeness and distance

51:15: Not being a martyr or ‘controlling through giving’

55:30: Boundaries between partners, and how our backgrounds influence our preferences

1:00:35: Developing psychological flexibility

1:03:40: Recap

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