We all know that when we’re stressed, we’re not our best selves. But what happens when this stress threatens to erode our most important relationships, and we feel powerless to change the dynamic? Returning guest Elizabeth Earnshaw joins Dr. Solomon to address this pressing yet common issue. Liz is a licensed family and marriage therapist, Certified Gottman Therapist, AAMFT Approved Supervisor, and founder of A Better Life Therapy. She’s known for her popular Instagram account @lizlistens, is the author of I Want This to Work, and has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, and more. Her newest book, ‘Til Stress Do Us Part: How to Heal the #1 Issue in Our Relationships, is an empowering guide to stress-proofing your relationship.

While we may initially believe it’s our relationships that are the cause of our stress, Liz says that it’s often the other way around: that “the unprecedented collective stress we all face today is the cause of many relationship challenges couples are experiencing.” In this episodes, you'll hear Liz’s deeply empathetic re-frame of this issue. Liz and Dr. Alexandra discuss why our partner often gets the “worst” version of us, how we can understand different types or “buckets” of stressors, and the small but mighty changes we can make that will serve our relationships for the long haul. They also focus on the pressures of parenthood and what makes this moment particularly challenging for parents. Finally, they answer a question from a listener in Idaho named Amber about how to move forward after a rift in a friendship.

Relevant Links:

• Liz’s book: 'Til Stress Do Us Part: How to Heal the #1 Issue in Our Relationships
• Liz’s website and Instagram
• Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents (2024)
• Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s essay in The New York Times Opinion section, August 2024: Surgeon General: Parents Are at Their Wits’ End. We Can Do Better.
• Order Dr. Alexandra's latest book, Love Every Day
• Subscribe to Dr. Alexandra’s Newsletter
• Submit a Listener Question

Build essential relationship skills with MasterClass. Dr. Alexandra, Ryan Holiday, and other experts share how you can improve communication, resilience, and relationships with the class “Using Ancient Wisdom to Solve Modern Problems”. Learn more at http://www.masterclass.com/alexandrasolomon

Hey Reimagining Love Listeners! Quick note here that we’re publishing new episodes on an every other week schedule with occasional bonus episodes sprinkled throughout, at least until the end of the year. If you're craving more content in the meantime, you can always search the back catalog and/or find juicy blog posts and other resources at http://dralexandrasolomon.com/

Today’s episode is the first of a new solo episode series on Reimagining Love about Family-of-Origin Roles. Tune in on the first two Tuesdays of each month to learn about how the roles we were cast into as children and held within our family systems shape how we show up in our relationships today. Whether you were the one who held the family together, the rebel who pushed back against household norms, or the “easy” kid who flew under the radar, we all inhabited a position in the community of our family and absorbed certain messaging about love, connection, and worthiness as a result.

To start off this series, we’re revisiting this in-depth solo episode, in which Dr. Alexandra explains the six common roles we might have played in our original family systems. Through understanding our past, we can see how these roles continue to show up in our relationships today and use that knowledge as a powerful Relational Self-Awareness tool. In December, we’ll begin releasing role-specific episodes for each of the six roles, starting with “The Perfect One,” so be sure to catch that conversation next month.

Relevant links:

Take the Family of Origin Roles Quiz

Reimagining Love: “Tending to “Little You” & Exploring Your Family of Origin”

Dr. Alexandra’s Psychotherapy Networker Article

Order Dr. Alexandra’s book, Love Every Day

Subscribe to Dr. Alexandra’s Newsletter

Submit a Listener Question

Build essential relationship skills with MasterClass. Dr. Alexandra, Ryan Holiday, and other experts share how you can improve communication, resilience, and relationships with the class “Using Ancient Wisdom to Solve Modern Problems”. Learn more at http://www.masterclass.com/alexandrasolomon

Hey Reimagining Love Listeners! Quick note here that we’re publishing new episodes on an every other week schedule with occasional bonus episodes sprinkled throughout, at least until the end of the year. If you're craving more content in the meantime, you can always search the back catalog and/or find juicy blog posts and other resources at http://dralexandrasolomon.com/

Have you ever felt like different parts of yourself were competing for attention and power? Maybe you have aspects of your personality that you’re proud of, and others that you’d rather keep hidden from the world—the ones that tend to rear their heads in your not-so-shining moments. According to Internal Family Systems Therapy, a framework developed by today’s guest, Dr. Richard Schwartz, we are all made up of sub-personalities or “parts.” IFS posits that by investigating and understanding where each of those parts come from and how they are dictating our current behavior, we can better understand our unique mental world and determine how to make change to support our healing and improve our relationships. Dr. Alexandra talks with Dr. Dick about how IFS has the potential to help individuals understand themselves, strengthen their romantic relationships, or even navigate the dating world. They also explore a question from a listener in Toronto who wants to feel more deeply understood in conversations with her boyfriend.

IFS is a theoretical framework that has helped many folks, but as always, Dr. Alexandra encourages you to see what resonates with you in this conversation and what might be helpful to bring into your own processes of self-discovery and healing, and to your relationships.

Relevant Links:

• IFS Institute: ifs-institute.com
• Intimacy From The Inside Out: https://ifs-institute.com/store/116
• No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz, Ph.D.: https://bookshop.org/p/books/no-bad-parts-healing-trauma-and-restoring-wholeness-with-the-internal-family-systems-model-richard-schwartz/16396062?ean=9781683646686
• You Are the One You've Been Waiting for: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships by Richard Schwartz, Ph.D.: https://bookshop.org/p/books/you-are-the-one-you-ve-been-waiting-for-applying-internal-family-systems-to-intimate-relationships-richard-schwartz/18790456?ean=9781683643623
• Story on IFS from NPR’s Morning Edition: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/25/nx-s1-5055753/parts-work-therapy-internal-family-systems-anxiety#:~:text=At%20the%20center%20of%20IFS,his%20book%20No%20Bad%20Parts.

Build essential relationship skills with MasterClass. Dr. Alexandra, Ryan Holiday, and other experts share how you can improve communication, resilience, and relationships with the class “Using Ancient Wisdom to Solve Modern Problems”. Learn more at http://www.masterclass.com/alexandrasolomon

Hey Reimagining Love Listeners! Quick note here that we’re publishing new episodes on an every other week schedule with occasional bonus episodes sprinkled throughout, at least until the end of the year. If you're craving more content in the meantime, you can always search the back catalog and/or find juicy blog posts and other resources at http://dralexandrasolomon.com/