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

anxiety counseling

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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How to Overcome Claustrophobia: A Therapist's Guide

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How to Overcome Claustrophobia: A Therapist's Guide

Elevators, MRIs, and crowded rooms don't have to run your life. Here's how to overcome claustrophobia, step by step, and why the fear responds so well to treatment.

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10 Type A Personality Traits That Drive Success

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10 Type A Personality Traits That Drive Success

Type A personalities are driven, competitive, and time-urgent. Here are the 10 Type A personality traits that fuel success, the real link to stress, and how to keep your edge without burning out.

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How to Calm Your Fear of Confrontation and Difficult Conversations

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How to Calm Your Fear of Confrontation and Difficult Conversations

You have been rehearsing the same conversation in your head for three days. Maybe it is asking your boss for a raise, telling a friend they hurt you, or finally bringing up something with your partner that you have been avoiding for weeks. Your stomach knots, your heart picks up speed, and a quiet voice insists that it would just be easier to say nothing at all. If that sounds familiar, you are dealing with something very common and very treatable.

Communication anxiety is the intense fear or dread you feel before, during, or after important conversations, especially serious ones that carry the risk of conflict or disappointment. For many people, this shows up most strongly as a fear of difficult conversations, the kind where the stakes feel high and the outcome feels uncertain. In this blog, you will learn what communication anxiety is, why your brain treats hard talks like a threat, what keeps the fear going, and how therapy can help you speak up without spiraling.

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Mental Health TikTok: Helpful Insight or Anxiety Trap?

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Mental Health TikTok: Helpful Insight or Anxiety Trap?

You open TikTok to decompress for a few minutes and, forty-five minutes later, you've watched seventeen videos about attachment styles, taken a mental quiz about whether you have ADHD, and learned the name of a trauma response you've apparently been experiencing your whole life. You close the app feeling more informed, but also somehow more worried than you were before. Sound familiar?

TikTok anxiety is the psychological tension that builds when short-form video content, especially mental health content, triggers self-comparison, overstimulation, or compulsive scrolling in ways that leave you feeling worse rather than better. This blog explores both sides of the TikTok mental health conversation: the ways it can genuinely increase self-awareness, the ways it quietly fuels anxiety, and how to tell the difference in your own life.

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What Is Pure O OCD? Understanding Mental Obsessions and Intrusive Thoughts

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What Is Pure O OCD? Understanding Mental Obsessions and Intrusive Thoughts

If you've ever had a thought pop into your head that horrified you, one you'd never act on, one that felt completely out of character, and then spent hours trying to push it out, you know how disorienting that experience can be. For people with OCD, that's not an occasional moment. It's a cycle that can take over large chunks of the day. OCD obsession is an unwanted, repetitive thought, image, or urge that triggers intense anxiety and pulls the mind into a loop of trying to neutralize or escape it.

Most people picture OCD as someone checking the stove or washing their hands. But for many people with OCD, the disorder lives almost entirely in their head, as a flood of unwanted, disturbing intrusive thoughts they’d never act on but can’t stop having. This subtype is often called Pure O OCD, and it’s one of the most misunderstood and underdiagnosed forms of the disorder. This post explains what Pure O looks like, why intrusive thoughts feel so threatening in this kind of OCD, and what genuinely helps.

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Are Empaths Real?

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Are Empaths Real?

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

An empath is a person with an extraordinary sensitivity to the emotions, energy, and moods of the people around them, experiencing those feelings as if they were their own. It's a term that gets used a lot on social media and in wellness communities, but the question of whether empaths are real is worth answering honestly. The science turns out to be more interesting than either the skeptics or the true believers tend to admit.

In this blog, we'll look at what the research says, how psychology understands high emotional sensitivity, and what it all means for your mental health and relationships.

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Anxiety After Job Loss: Why It Happens and How to Get Through It

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Anxiety After Job Loss: Why It Happens and How to Get Through It

Losing a job can pull the floor out from under you. One day you have a routine, a paycheck, a place to be every morning. The next, all of that is gone, and the anxiety that moves in can feel impossible to shake. If you've been lying awake running the numbers, second-guessing every decision that led here, or dreading the question "so, what do you do?", you're not overreacting.

Anxiety after job loss is one of the most common and least talked-about mental health challenges adults face. This blog will walk you through why it hits so hard, how long it typically lasts, what actually helps, and when working with an anxiety therapist at Anchor Therapy can make a real difference in how quickly you get back on your feet.

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How to Cope With a Breakup as a Man (And Why It's Harder Than Anyone Tells You)

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How to Cope With a Breakup as a Man (And Why It's Harder Than Anyone Tells You)

You're doing fine until you're not. Maybe it hits you in the car on the way to work, or at 11pm when you reach for your phone and remember there's no one to text. The relationship is over, and even if part of you saw it coming, nothing quite prepares you for the weight of it.

If you've landed here searching for how to cope with a breakup as a man, you're probably not someone who talks about this stuff easily, and that's exactly why it tends to hit so hard. Men are rarely given the tools to process emotional pain, let alone permission to feel it. This blog is going to walk you through what's actually happening when a breakup wrecks you, why the things you're feeling make complete sense, and what can genuinely help, including how working with a male therapist at Anchor Therapy can change the way you move forward.

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Is Doomscrolling Really That Bad?

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Is Doomscrolling Really That Bad?

Doomscrolling, the act of endlessly scrolling through negative or distressing news on social media, has become an all-too-familiar habit in today’s digital age. While it may seem like a harmless way to pass the time, research suggests that this constant exposure to unsettling information can have a real toll on our mental health. The more we consume, the more likely we are to feel anxious, overwhelmed, or even helpless as the barrage of bad news seems relentless and often out of our control. 

Despite its reputation, doomscrolling does not have to be an inherently damaging activity. It all depends on how we engage with the information and how much we let it affect us. With the right mindset and conscious boundaries, we can learn to navigate the digital world without letting it drag us into a spiral of stress and anxiety. Understanding why doomscrolling happens and how to break the cycle can offer a path toward a healthier relationship with the constant flow of news.

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Why Do I Get Anxiety During Grocery Shopping?

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Why Do I Get Anxiety During Grocery Shopping?

While it may sound niche, many people experience anxiety during trips to the grocery store. It is an increasingly common, yet overlooked issue. From making what feels like making endless decisions to navigating crowded supermarkets, grocery store anxiety has many causes. 

Ongoing grocery store anxiety can impede on your ability to enjoy grocery shopping or do it effectively. Your weekly trip to the supermarket for yourself and/or your family may become something you dread doing. Many people feel overwhelmed when it is time to do their restock, but with some calming techniques and the support of an anxiety therapist at Anchor Therapy, grocery shopping can become an enjoyable experience once again!

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Why Do I Get Anxiety In The Summer?

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Why Do I Get Anxiety In The Summer?

As many of us know, weather and the changing of seasons can certainly affect our mood. Dark skies and cold temperatures that plague the winter doom can trigger Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as SAD, and depression. If you are struggling with this, check out our blog “What is Seasonal Affective Disorder and How Is It Treated?”. 

While many people, especially children and teens, look forward to the summer months, warm weather can negatively affect people too. Summer anxiety is a major issue that many people can deal with. By working with an anxiety therapist at Anchor Therapy, you can overcome your anxious thoughts and make the most out of your summer!

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