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

personal growth

, , , ,

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.

, ,

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.

, , ,

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.

, , ,

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