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
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Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents Often Carry These 10 Patterns

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Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents Often Carry These 10 Patterns

Maybe you spent your childhood reading a parent's mood before you walked in the door, adjusting your voice, your plans, even your personality to keep things calm. Maybe you're an adult now with your own apartment and your own job, and you still flinch a little every time your phone lights up with their name. Growing up with a narcissistic parent means being raised by someone whose need for admiration, control, or validation consistently came before your own emotional needs, and the effects of that don't stay in childhood.

This post walks through ten of the most common, well-documented ways growing up with a narcissistic parent can shape you as an adult, from how you talk to yourself to how you learn to trust the people you love. Some of these might sound exactly like you. Others might describe a sibling who had a noticeably different role in the family than you did. Either way, recognizing the pattern is usually the first real step toward changing it.

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Are Empaths Real? What the Science Says

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Are Empaths Real? What the Science Says

Have you ever walked into a room and felt the emotional temperature shift right away? Maybe you picked up on a friend's sadness before they said a single word. Or you left a party feeling drained by emotions that weren't yours. If that sounds familiar, you've probably wondered whether you're an empath, and whether empaths are real.

An empath is a person with an extraordinary sensitivity to the emotions and moods of the people around them, experiencing those feelings as if they were their own. You've seen the word all over social media, and the question of whether empaths are real deserves an honest answer. The science has something to say to both the skeptics and the true believers. In this blog, we'll look at what the research says and what being an empath means for your mental health and relationships.

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No Contact With Parents and How to Know When It Helps

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No Contact With Parents and How to Know When It Helps

Maybe it's the third holiday in a row you've spent bracing yourself before a phone call. Maybe you've rehearsed what you'll say to a parent who never actually lets you finish a sentence. If you've started quietly wondering whether the relationship is worth what it costs you, you're not the only one asking. No contact with parents means deliberately ending communication with a parent, usually after other ways of managing the relationship haven't worked, and even considering it can come with guilt before you've made any decision at all.

This post walks through what no contact actually means, why so many adult children are choosing it right now, and how to tell whether it might be the right move for you. We'll also get into what the research shows about how common this really is, what tends to happen to these relationships over time, and how to go about it if you decide that's where you're headed.

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Is It Normal to Be Bored in a Relationship After a Toxic One?

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Is It Normal to Be Bored in a Relationship After a Toxic One?

Your new partner texts back within the hour. They say what they mean and mean what they say, and there's no guessing where you stand or waiting to see what mood walks through the door. And somehow, instead of feeling relieved, you feel restless, maybe even a little bored. If you've caught yourself missing the highs of a relationship that was bad for you, you're not broken and you're not secretly attracted to chaos.

If you're wondering whether it's normal to be bored in a relationship that's finally healthy, you're far from the only one asking. Feeling bored in a healthy relationship after a toxic one is a common nervous system response, where steady, consistent affection registers as unfamiliar because your body spent so long adapting to unpredictability. That flatness has a cause, and it doesn't mean this new relationship is wrong for you. In this post, we'll get into why healthy relationships can feel boring after a toxic one, what's happening in your body when that happens, how to tell the difference between real incompatibility and a nervous system still catching up to safety, and what helps you build a tolerance for calm instead of quietly sabotaging the good thing in front of you.

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The Psychology of Situationships: Are They Toxic?

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The Psychology of Situationships: Are They Toxic?

If you have ever been with someone, but not really with someone, then you have likely been in a situationship. You are more than friends but you are not exactly in a relationship. You are making last-minute plans, talking inconsistently, and your romantic connection is not exactly defined. In modern culture, casual relationships are extremely common. What was first known as a “booty call” morphed into “friends with benefits” and it is now known as a “situationship.”

If it was a movie, you and your situationship would witness the blossoming of friendship into an official romantic relationship. You two would fall in love and live happily ever after. But, as you may have guessed, life is not a picture-perfect movie and things do not always work out as you wish they would. The real question is - are situationships unhealthy?

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Emotional Support Animal Benefits: How Pets Help Your Mental Health

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Emotional Support Animal Benefits: How Pets Help Your Mental Health

If your dog hears your keys in the door and is already waiting by the time you walk in, or your cat curls into your lap on the exact night you need it most, you already know your pet does something for you. You've probably wondered if that's just in your head, or if there's something real behind it. There is. Emotional support animal benefits are the measurable ways a pet you're bonded to calms your body and mind, and they're backed by research on stress hormones, your nervous system, and the way you experience anxiety and loneliness day to day.

You don't need an official Emotional Support Animal (ESA) letter for any of this to apply to you. This post walks through what's happening in your body when you're with your pet, why some pets seem to help more than others, and where a pet's support has real limits. By the end of this, you'll know what the research shows, what to look for in your own relationship with your pet, and when it's time to bring in more support than your pet alone can give you.

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Narcissistic Traits vs NPD: How to Tell Where the Line Is

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Narcissistic Traits vs NPD: How to Tell Where the Line Is

Someone in your life is difficult, self-centered, hard to reason with. You've called them a narcissist more than once, probably out loud, probably to a friend who nodded along immediately. But somewhere in the back of your mind, a real question is sitting there: is that actually true, or is it just the word everyone reaches for now.

Narcissistic tendencies are traits like self-focus, a need for admiration, or difficulty with empathy that show up occasionally or in certain situations, without meeting the bar for an actual diagnosis. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD, is a specific, diagnosable condition where those same traits are pervasive, rigid, and present across nearly every context and relationship. Almost everyone has narcissistic tendencies sometimes, and very few people actually have NPD. This post covers what separates the two, how to tell which one you might be dealing with, and why the distinction matters more than it might seem.

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Sunday Scaries Meaning: What Your Dread Might Say About Your Job

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Sunday Scaries Meaning: What Your Dread Might Say About Your Job

It's 4:00 pm on Sunday and something in your chest just dropped. Nothing happened, no email came in, no calendar reminder went off. You were just sitting there, and then suddenly you weren't relaxed anymore. If this happens to you almost every week, you've probably already looked up what it's called.

If you're wondering about the Sunday scaries meaning, here it is in plain terms: the Sunday scaries are the anticipatory dread and anxiety that show up on Sunday afternoon or evening as the work week gets closer. Most explanations stop there and treat it like a harmless quirk everyone gets, and sometimes that's exactly what it is. Other times, your Sunday scaries are pointing at something bigger, like real dissatisfaction with your job. This post covers what the Sunday scaries mean, how to tell which version you're dealing with, and what to do once you know.

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Somatic OCD and the Exhausting Loop of Noticing Everything

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Somatic OCD and the Exhausting Loop of Noticing Everything

You notice yourself blinking. Now you can't stop noticing yourself blinking. An hour later you're still aware of every single blink, every swallow, the way your tongue sits in your mouth. You're not sick, nothing is actually wrong with your body, but you can't get your attention to let go of it either.

Somatic OCD is a subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) where you become fixated on a normal, automatic body process, like breathing, blinking, or swallowing, and can't stop monitoring it once it's caught your attention. The sensation itself isn't dangerous, what's distressing is the awareness, the sense that you're now trapped noticing something you used to do without thinking at all. If you've ever gotten stuck on your own breathing or heartbeat for hours and wondered if something was seriously wrong with you, you're not broken, and you're not alone. This post covers what somatic OCD actually is, how it's connected to sensorimotor and hyperawareness OCD, and what actually helps you stop feeding the loop.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Covert Narcissist: The Quiet Signs Most People Miss

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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.

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What Emotional Contagion Looks Like in a Family

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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.

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10 Cognitive Distortions That Are Common Thinking Traps

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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What Kristen Doute's Postpartum Season on The Valley Shows About Marriage Strain

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What Kristen Doute's Postpartum Season on The Valley Shows About Marriage Strain

You watch Brittany Cartwright describe living with her husband like a roommate. Something about it lands differently once you know they had a toddler at home. You watch Kristen Doute talk about "postpartum rage" on a reality show, and you recognize the exact feeling from your own living room at 3:00 am. For a lot of The Valley's cast, this has turned into a show about what a new baby does to a marriage, playing out in real time.

Postpartum marriage strain is the drop in relationship satisfaction, communication, and closeness that many couples experience after having a baby, driven by exhaustion, identity shifts, and a sudden, uneven division of labor. Three storylines on The Valley: Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright, Kristen Doute and Luke Broderick, and Nia and Danny Booko, show three different versions of it, each shaped by a different set of circumstances. 

If you've watched any of these couples and felt a little too seen, you're not imagining the overlap. This post looks at what happened with each couple, what the research says about why new parenthood is so hard on a relationship, and what actually helps once you're in the middle of it.

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How Scrupulosity OCD Turns Your Conscience Into a Compulsion

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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.

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