boundaries, self-esteem, Narcissistic Abuse, family counseling, Childhood trauma
Courtney Glashow
Family Scapegoat Signs and What to Do When ...

Maybe you're the one who gets blamed no matter what actually happened, at home, at work, or even with friends. Something goes wrong, and somehow it lands on you. If that sounds familiar, there's a word for what's happening: scapegoat. A scapegoat is a person who's unfairly blamed for problems they didn't cause. Scapegoating shows up most in families, where it's often called being the family scapegoat.

Family Scapegoat Signs and What to Do When Someone Is Using You as a Scapegoat
toxic relationships, Narcissistic Abuse, breakup therapy, Trust Issues, trauma counseling
Courtney Glashow
How to Recover From Love Bombing

Love bombing can leave you doubting everything you felt. Here's how to recover from love bombing, why it hits so hard, and the steps that help you heal and trust yourself again.

How to Recover From Love Bombing
Couples counseling, toxic relationships, Trust Issues, Hoboken NJ therapist, Narcissistic Abuse
Courtney Glashow
8 Tips for Dealing With A Narcissist

You're walking on eggshells in your own home. Conversations that should be simple turn into something you have to brace yourself for, and the moment you push back on anything, the script flips and somehow you're the bad one. You've started Googling words like "narcissist" and "manipulation" at 11pm because you don't know what to call what's happening, but you know something is wrong. You searched for how to deal with a narcissist, and you landed here. This post walks through what actually counts as narcissistic behavior versus everyday self-centeredness, what to watch for in your own relationship, and 8 specific strategies our therapists at Anchor Therapy use with clients who can't, or aren't ready to, leave the relationship.

The first step to determine your dynamic with someone who you think is a narcissist is to know the difference between someone with narcissistic tendencies and someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

8 Tips for Dealing With A Narcissist
Couples counseling, marriage counseling, relationship counseling, Intimacy therapy, lgbtqia support
Courtney Glashow
Couples Therapy Show: Where Are They Now? Dr. ...

Dr. Orna Guralnik, is a New York City-based Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, who rose to fame due to her hit Showtime television show, Couples Therapy. Couples Therapy is a documentary series that follows couples as they try to navigate their troubles and concerns. This unscripted series features real couples from the greater New York City area.

As viewers work through the show’s three seasons, they are taught to view the therapeutic process through a lens of compassion and empathy instead of hastiness. Episode by episode, viewers are immersed into the real world of couples counseling, viewing the progress and occasional backsliding of couples.

Couples Therapy Show: Where Are They Now? Dr. Orna Guralnik's Couples on Showtime
relationship counseling, marriage counseling, nj therapist, nyc therapist, premarital counseling
Courtney Glashow
How To Tell If You’re In A Toxic Relationship

When you are in a healthy relationship, it naturally functions well. Of course, like any couple, you may have disagreements from time-to-time or there may be some hard times, but you band together no matter what. You are able to make major life decisions together, discuss problems once they occur, and genuinely enjoy spending time with one another.

On the other hand, you have toxic relationships. In a toxic relationship, the ‘norm’ is feeling drained and unhappy after spending time with your partner. This should be a major red flag that some things need to change.

You may still love your partner, but the relationship does not seem enjoyable. Maybe minor issues turn into full-blown arguments or you always seem to provoke one another. It may even get so severe that you dread spending time with your partner instead of getting excited to see them, like you were in the past.

Continue reading this blog to see if your relationship is toxic, and some guidance on how to navigate a toxic relationship.

How To Tell If You’re In A Toxic Relationship

Adult Counseling Page

, ,

Friendship Jealousy: Why a Close Friend Can't Just Be Happy for You

, ,
Friendship Jealousy: Why a Close Friend Can't Just Be Happy for You

You tell your friend about the promotion, and there's a half-second pause before "oh, that's great" comes out. Then somehow, within two minutes, she's telling you about the raise she's up for, the one that's actually a bigger deal than yours. You leave lunch feeling like you did something wrong by having good news in the first place, and you can't quite explain why the whole conversation felt off.

A competitive friend is someone who treats your life as something to measure against their own, so your wins land as a threat instead of something to celebrate with you. It's rarely loud or obvious, showing up instead as a pause before the congratulations, a story that tops yours, or a compliment with a small hook in it. If you've ever felt smaller after telling a friend something good, you're not imagining it, and you're not being dramatic about it. This post covers what a competitive friend actually looks like, why it stings more from someone close to you than a stranger, and what you can do about it.

, , ,

Enmeshed Family: What It's Like to Date Someone Who Grew Up in One

, , ,
Enmeshed Family: What It's Like to Date Someone Who Grew Up in One

Your partner's mom calls every single day, sometimes twice. Every plan you make together gets run past her first, even small ones, even ones that have nothing to do with her. You've started to notice you're not quite sure where your partner's opinion ends and their mother's begins. You love this person, but you also can't shake the feeling that you're dating two people instead of one.

An enmeshed family is one where the boundaries between family members are blurred or missing entirely, so individual identity, decisions, and emotions get absorbed into the family as a whole instead of staying separate. When you date someone from a family like this, you're not just dating them. You're dating a whole system that doesn't always leave room for you. This post covers what enmeshment actually is, how to spot it early, and what it takes to build a relationship that can hold both your partner and their family without losing you in the process.

, , ,

Covert Narcissist: The Quiet Signs Most People Miss

, , ,
Covert Narcissist: The Quiet Signs Most People Miss

You keep replaying the conversation in your head. On paper, nothing that was said sounds that bad, no yelling, no insults, no dramatic scene. So why do you feel small? Why do you feel like you somehow ended up apologizing for something you didn't even do?

Covert narcissism is a pattern of self-focus, fragile self-esteem, and quiet control that hides behind humility, victimhood, or shyness instead of obvious, outward arrogance. You won't see the grandiosity people usually associate with narcissism. Instead, you'll see someone who seems sensitive, self-deprecating, even a little insecure, while somehow still managing to make every conversation circle back to them. 

If you've walked away from someone feeling confused, guilty, or smaller than you were an hour ago, and you can't quite explain why, keep reading. This post covers what covert narcissism actually is, how it's different from the loud, obvious version most people picture, and what it looks like when you're the one living with it.

, , , ,

What Emotional Contagion Looks Like in a Family

, , , ,
What Emotional Contagion Looks Like in a Family

You walk into your parents' house feeling completely fine. Twenty minutes later, before anyone has said anything specific, your shoulders are up around your ears and you're bracing for something. Nothing really happened. You just walked into the room your mom was already tense in, and now you're tense too.

Emotional contagion is the process of automatically catching another person's emotional state through their tone, expression, and body language, often without either person realizing it's happening. In families, it usually flows in one direction: one person's mood sets the emotional temperature for everyone else in the house. If you've ever felt your own calm evaporate the second a certain family member walked in, you're not imagining it, and you're not overreacting. This post covers what emotional contagion actually is, why it shows up so strongly in families, and how to stop absorbing a mood that was never yours to carry.

, , ,

10 Cognitive Distortions That Are Common Thinking Traps

, , ,
10 Cognitive Distortions That Are Common Thinking Traps

Have you ever made one small mistake and immediately thought, “I’m terrible at this”? Or maybe you’ve had a friend cancel plans and found yourself wondering if they’re upset with you, even though they never said anything was wrong. These kinds of thoughts can feel automatic and convincing, but they don’t always tell the full story.

Cognitive distortions are patterns of thinking that can cause us to interpret situations in inaccurate or unhelpful ways. They’re common, and most of us fall into them from time to time, especially when we’re stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or dealing with difficult emotions. In this blog, we’ll look at 10 common cognitive distortions, what they can look like in everyday life, and how learning to recognize these thinking traps can help you respond to your thoughts with more perspective.

, , , ,

What Is It Like Being the Golden Child? Golden Child Syndrome Signs

, , , ,
What Is It Like Being the Golden Child? Golden Child Syndrome Signs

If you're the golden child in your family, chances are you already know the feeling, even if you've never had a name for it. Golden child syndrome is the family pattern where one child gets held up as the favorite, always praised, always expected to succeed, and treated as the example everyone else in the family should follow.

Parents, teachers, and even extended family members may shower you with admiration, reinforcing a sense of confidence and achievement. Knowing that your accomplishments are met with pride and celebration can be very validating and keep you in a loop of wanting to seek constant approval from other people. You may find that your mistakes are overlooked or easily forgiven.

, , , ,

Family Scapegoat Signs and What to Do When Someone Is Using You as a Scapegoat

, , , ,
Family Scapegoat Signs and What to Do When Someone Is Using You as a Scapegoat

Maybe you're the one who gets blamed no matter what actually happened, at home, at work, or even with friends. Something goes wrong, and somehow it lands on you. If that sounds familiar, there's a word for what's happening: scapegoat. A scapegoat is a person who's unfairly blamed for problems they didn't cause. Scapegoating shows up most in families, where it's often called being the family scapegoat.

, ,

Anxiety vs Intuition and How to Tell Which One You're Feeling

, ,
Anxiety vs Intuition and How to Tell Which One You're Feeling

You're about to send the text, take the job, or walk into the date, and your stomach drops without warning. Is that your gut telling you something's wrong, or is that just anxiety doing what anxiety does? You've probably asked yourself some version of this question more than once, usually at the exact moment you needed a clear answer the most.

Anxiety vs intuition is a real, meaningful distinction, not just a semantic one. Anxiety is a stress response built to warn you about threats, whether or not a real threat exists, while intuition is a fast, often accurate read on a situation built from pattern recognition and bodily signals you're not consciously tracking. If you searched for this because you've made decisions from fear before and regretted it, or ignored a real gut sense and wished you hadn't, you're asking the right question. This post walks through what's actually happening in your body during each one, what the research says about telling them apart, and how to make a call in the moment instead of overanalyzing it for hours on end.

, , , ,

How Scrupulosity OCD Turns Your Conscience Into a Compulsion

, , , ,
How Scrupulosity OCD Turns Your Conscience Into a Compulsion

Someone double-checks a text message for the fifth time, not because they're unsure what it says, but because they're terrified it might have sounded rude. Someone else prays the same sentence over and over, convinced that if they don't get the wording exactly right, it doesn't count. They're not being extra careful or having an off week. What they're both describing is something a lot of people quietly live with for years before anyone puts a name to it.

Scrupulosity OCD is a subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder built around religious or moral obsessions, the fear that you've sinned, offended a higher power, or secretly become a bad person. It's often mistaken for being unusually devout or unusually ethical, which is part of why it goes undiagnosed for so long. In this post, we'll look at what scrupulosity OCD actually involves, how thought-action fusion fuels it, why trying harder to be good can make it worse, and what treatment actually looks like.

, , ,

What Is Post-Traumatic Growth? And What It Isn't

, , ,
What Is Post-Traumatic Growth? And What It Isn't

Someone survives a serious illness. Later, they say they don't regret it, not because the illness was good, but because of who they became afterward. A person leaves an abusive relationship, and years later, describes a level of self-trust they never had before. Neither of them is pretending that the hard part didn't happen.

Both are describing something real that a lot of therapists see after trauma. It has a name: post-traumatic growth which is positive psychological change that can develop after someone struggles with a highly stressful or traumatic event. It's a real, researched concept, first described by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in the mid-1990s. In this post, we'll look at what post-traumatic growth actually is, the stages people tend to move through, how it differs from resilience, and why it's not the same as pretending trauma was a good thing.

, , , ,

Severance and Work-Life Balance: The Real Psychology of Innies and Outies

, , , ,
Severance and Work-Life Balance: The Real Psychology of Innies and Outies

You watch someone on Severance walk through the elevator doors at Lumon Industries and instantly forget every worry from their outside life. For one second, you feel something close to envy. The Apple TV+ show imagines a surgical procedure that splits a person's memories in two: one version of you exists only at work, and another exists everywhere else.

Severance is a psychological thriller. A company offers its employees a procedure that permanently separates work memories from personal ones. The show has become a cultural touchstone. It takes something a lot of people already wish for, a clean break between work and everything else, and turns it into something deeply unsettling.

In this post, we'll look at the real psychology behind the show's work-life balance themes, what the "innie" and "outie" split gets right about dissociation, and why so many viewers say it feels less like science fiction and more like an exaggerated day at the office.

, , ,

Weaponized Incompetence in Families: How to Spot It and Stop Carrying It

, , ,
Weaponized Incompetence in Families: How to Spot It and Stop Carrying It

Your brother says he "doesn't know how" to book your mom's follow-up appointment. So you do it, again. Your dad still can't figure out the thermostat after fifteen years in that house. So you drive over and reset it yourself.

You've stopped asking why. You already know the answer. If you wait long enough, it becomes your job. That quiet, exhausting handoff has a name.

Weaponized incompetence is when someone repeatedly performs a task poorly, or insists they can't do it at all, until someone else steps in and takes it over. It isn't always a conscious choice. But the pattern still shifts the workload, the planning, and the mental load onto one person in the family. In this post, we'll look at how weaponized incompetence shows up between siblings and parents, how it differs from an actual skill gap or learned helplessness, and what you can do when you're the one who always ends up handling it.

, , , ,

Flying Monkeys Meaning: Why People Get Used By A Narcissist

, , , ,
Flying Monkeys Meaning: Why People Get Used By A Narcissist

Flying monkeys meaning explained by our Hoboken, NJ therapists: the people a narcissist recruits to pressure you, and how to protect your peace.

, ,

Bridgerton Family Expectations and the Weight of Being the Responsible One

, ,
Bridgerton Family Expectations and the Weight of Being the Responsible One

Bridgerton family expectations hit a nerve for a lot of viewers, and Anthony Bridgerton is usually why. He inherits the title at 18 after his father dies, and from that day on he's the one holding everyone together. If you grew up as the reliable one in your family, watching him grind through duty after duty probably feels a little too familiar.

That specific weight, getting handed adult responsibility before you're ready for it, has a clinical name. Parentification is when a child takes on adult-level responsibility for a parent's emotional needs, household duties, or younger siblings, well before they're developmentally ready for it.

, , , ,

Noah Kahan Documentary Out of Body: His OCD Diagnosis and Body Dysmorphia

, , , ,
Noah Kahan Documentary Out of Body: His OCD Diagnosis and Body Dysmorphia

Out of Body is a Netflix documentary that follows Noah Kahan for about a year, and it's the first time he's talked publicly about his OCD diagnosis and years of body dysmorphia. Fans expected tour footage and Vermont scenery. What they got was a look at two things he'd kept almost entirely private. If you've been searching for what he actually said, this post walks through it.

, , , ,

One-Sided Friendships: Why You're Always the One Reaching Out

, , , ,
One-Sided Friendships: Why You're Always the One Reaching Out

A one-sided friendship is one where one person does most of the work. You reach out first. You remember the small stuff. You show up when things get hard. Here's how to spot the pattern and what to do once you see it.

, , , ,

Do I Have Anxiety? Take the Quiz and Learn 5 Instant Calming Tips

, , , ,
Do I Have Anxiety? Take the Quiz and Learn 5 Instant Calming Tips

Not sure if it's anxiety? Take our anxiety quiz and get 5 calming tips you can use right away.

, , ,

Birth Order Theory: What Your Place in the Family Actually Shapes

, , ,
Birth Order Theory: What Your Place in the Family Actually Shapes

Is the oldest really bossy and the baby really spoiled? Here's what birth order theory actually says about your personality, your relationships, and who you tend to date, plus what the newest research says about whether any of it holds up.

Best of Hoboken 2017 winner Best of Hoboken 2021 winner Best of Hoboken 2022 winner Best of Hoboken 2024 winner Inclusive & Welcoming — Member of TherapyDen
Contact us