The Lifeworks Group, Inc.

  By: Christine Hammond LMHC Every family has unspoken rules like: don’t wake-up mom when she is taking a nap, no matter what it tastes like say dad’s cooking is good, or always clean before grandma comes to the house. These guidelines are followed without question to keep the family running smoothly. However, when a narcissist is added to the mix, the rules take on more intensity. The consequences for not following the guidelines are severe such as giving a person the silent treatment for days, withholding financial resources for groceries, verbal assaults, or hour long anger rants. No one is immune from the effects, the spouse and children are expected to adhere to the standards without question. Here are a couple of examples:   1.        Only their perspective matters. A narcissistic spouse was keeping track of his wife’s menstrual cycle, so he could manage her “crazy mood swings”. Knowing that he did this, ...

By Matt W. Sandford, LMHC Do all couples fight? Over the years I’ve certainly seen plenty that do, and I’ve also have seen a fair share who claim they don’t or that they never saw their parents fight. It’s my proposition that pretty much all couples fight. I would wager that those who claim they don’t fight either are using a style called withdraw or alimentation as their form of fighting, or they don’t have enough of a relationship to even bother to fight. You see, fighting in marriage may be really bad stuff and may represent a road to the end – divorce is on its way. But , fighting in marriage may also represent two people who are really different, living in a fallen world, trying to get their needs met, express themselves and make their marriage work, all while under stress. What if a lot of fighting in marriage isn’t really bad, it’s just badly managed? What if often we aren’t really trying to be a jerk or bitch and we don’t hate the other person, but instead we are...