Lisa Find Love

1. My dog drinks the water from the tree stand. Is that bad?

In short: Yes. That tree stand is probably filled with water that’s far from fresh. Tree preservative, often made with fertilizer and fungicides, can cause vomiting or upset stomach in pets; bacteria can also multiply in the standing water. Snugly wrap a tree skirt around the trunk to make the water harder for your pet to get to.

 

2. Can I hang a few “indoor” lights outdoors? 

Many holiday lights manufactured today are intended for both indoor and outdoor use, but you may come across some that are location specific. Indoor lights aren’t as resistant to moisture, which may cause electrical shorts and damage in wet weather. Many products tested for safety in the United States are labeled with a UL tag (for Underwriters’ Laboratories, a certification company that inspects such products). Indoor lights have a tag marked with a green UL. Outdoor lights are marked with a red UL.

 

3. Is it actually dangerous to have poinsettias around children or pets?

It’s not as risky as you might think. Despite its “poisonous” reputation, the plant is only mildly toxic. A 50-pound child would need to eat more than 500 poinsettia leaves to reach potentially toxic levels, and no deaths have been documented from consumption. A child may get queasy or throw up after eating, say, five poinsettia leaves—but not much more will happen. (Plus, the leaves taste unpleasant, so it’s unlikely many would be consumed.) The plants may cause drooling, vomiting, or diarrhea in cats and dogs, but medical treatment is rarely necessary unless symptoms are severe. To be safe, keep poinsettias out of the reach of pets and young children, but there’s no need to banish your favorite holiday plant.

The post Yikes! 3 Christmas Decorating Screw-Ups You Don’t Want to Make appeared first on Reader's Digest.

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In our regular interview series, we feature different therapists every month, asking them all sorts of questions about their professional and personal lives. We delve into what they love about working with clients and what they find to be the most challenging part about being a clinician. We talk about the biggest obstacles for clients and the biggest myth about therapy.

We talk about how each therapist copes with stress and whether they’d take the same professional path today. We also explore the one thing they wish their clients knew and their suggestions for leading a meaningful life — and much, much more.

This month we’re pleased to talk to Anna Osborn, LMFT, the owner of My Happy Couple. Osborn focuses her work on reconnecting couples and inspiring individuals. She works with couples and individuals on improving communication, deepening intimacy and changing negative patterns of disconnection in their love relationships.

As a licensed psychotherapist and relationship specialist, Osborn provides therapy and relationship workshops; and hosts speaking events that help individuals create and grow the love they want.

Visit http://ift.tt/1kaCLSG for more information on Osborn and her work in the Sacramento community.

1. What’s surprised you the most about being a therapist?

As cliché as it may sound, I’m continually surprised by people’s reactions when you tell them what you do. It’s not uncommon for them to tell you very intimate details about their lives after a brief “hello.” It happens from the grocery stores to dinner parties. Before I became really comfortable in my role as a therapist, I used to tell people I was a hairdresser to avoid this. But now I’m used to it and it doesn’t phase me a bit.

2. What’s the latest and greatest book you’ve read related to mental health, psychology or psychotherapy?

It’s actually been a few months since I’ve read a psychology book as I enjoy reading more business and entrepreneurial books lately. Graduate schools teach therapists many great things, but not much on building and running a business. The last book I read was The One Thing and loved it. It’s all about how to focus on what matters most to you professionally and personally.

3. What’s the biggest myth about therapy?

I think the biggest myth about therapy is that you have to be in extreme crisis or distress before you reach out for help. Therapy should be a great tool that we turn to often in our lives when we’re stuck or needing additional insight and support. You don’t need to wait until things are so terribly bad before asking for help.

4. What seems to be the biggest obstacle for clients in therapy?

I think the biggest obstacle for clients in therapy is an incongruency between thoughts and actions. Often time clients can clearly articulate what they want to change, but struggle with following through on the work needed to make that change a reality. A big part of therapy is not so much clarifying a client’s goals but removing obstacles they may unknowingly be putting in their own way.

5. What’s the most challenging part about being a therapist?

The most challenging part is when you see your clients headed down a dark or risky path and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. You’ve done all the work that you can together and you still know the crash from their decision-making is going to catch up to them. It’s heartbreaking because you don’t want to see them hurting, especially when it seems avoidable.

6. What do you love about being a therapist?

I love that every day is different. I love that I’m constantly challenged and get to use my creative mind all the time. And I love working with the most amazing, vulnerable, courageous, bravest people you’ve ever met.

7. What’s the best advice you can offer to readers on leading a meaningful life?

Be authentic and continually offer yourself grace. As humans, we’re far from perfect, and the less we shame and criticize ourselves and the more we stay true to our morals and values, the more meaningful our life will be.

8. If you had your schooling and career choice to do all over again, would you choose the same professional path? If not, what would you do differently and why?

I’d absolutely do it all over again. I can’t imagine doing anything else, and I love that this job allows me the freedom to shift and meet my growth as an individual. I used to supervise new therapists and teach graduate students while also working in my private practice.

Over the last few years, I now work purely in private practice, run couples weekend intensives and am launching a relationship podcast in the new year. Being a therapist is an extremely diverse field, and it’s a great place for creativity and personal growth.

9. If there’s one thing you wished your clients knew about treatment or mental illness, what would it be?

I wish all the clients that I work with knew how strong they are. I think most of them do, as it’s something that we talk about often, but I really wish each one knew in their hearts how amazing they are and what a blessing it is to work with them.

10. What personally do you do to cope with stress in your life?

I’ve been doing this work since 2004 and have learned how to create a balance between my personal and professional life so I always have enough to give to my family and my clients. I exercise regularly and try to eat healthy. I make sure I laugh as much as possible… I’m not afraid to use humor with my clients too.

I also offer myself grace when I need to get more rest, say no or just insulate myself a bit. I try to limit my contact with news and current events as I’ve learned over the years how quickly that can saturate me. I would rather be present with my clients than make sure I’m up to date with tragedies in the news.

I work hard to surround myself with the good deeds people are doing in the world because when you look for it, you’ll find lots of it.

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If there is one common theme in almost every female singer’s repertoire it is a ballad or anthem about being treated with respect. We are empowered by the music and the passion of the words, we are determined to be that woman who has equality at home.

But do we actively seek and expect equality in our relationships as much as we expect it in our workplace and in politics? Universally, we all want to be respected, to be appreciated, to be told that we matter, that we are loved and desired.

We want to feel that we are also vital and important in our relationships – that we are equal partners in friendship or in love. These are all important wants. These wants have the ability to make us feel magical or unimportant. And as easy as it is to say you must love yourself before you can love someone else or you need to be your own best friend, it is a lot harder to put into practice. We have developed a need to be validated by others.

Sometimes our needs and wants cause us to set aside our desire to be equal participants in our relationships. Sometimes that need for validation, allows us to accept behavior or people that we know are not healthy for us.

Maybe we are afraid of being alone, maybe our social environment revolves around couples, maybe we have not created a life for ourselves that is immune to outside pressure. There are many possible variables but the one variable that cannot be negotiated is to be treated with respect as a partner, as an equal participant in any relationship.

I have watched so many relationships where power is in one person’s hands; where control over the relationship and the other person is more important than any other emotion. The concepts of love and respect, courtesy and consideration are nowhere to be found. The concept of partner equality was nowhere to be found.

Equality and respect in our relationships is an absolute must. We need to create the conditions for that to happen. We need to come to the relationship ready to be a partner.

How can you do this?

1. Know yourself. Know what traits matter to you in another person. Traits like loyalty, respect, trust, honesty, intelligence, humor, curiosity. Know what your deal breakers are. Relationships require care and attention; it is best to start with someone who is has traits that matter.
2. Don’t settle. If you get the sense or know that the relationship is not working, don’t convince yourself it is. Compatibility is very important to relationship longevity. As hard as it may seem, being alone is always better than being disrespected.
3. Have self-respect and integrity. Create boundaries for yourself that you are unwilling to negotiate. Only you can decide what your boundaries are. Create your boundaries with the best thoughts of yourself and what you believe you deserve.
4. A healthy relationship is based upon mutual appreciation, mutual respect. Degradation, belittling, abuse never belong in a relationship. If you find that you are on the receiving end of any kind of inappropriate behavior, seek counseling and an end to the relationship. Never ever allow yourself to believe that you are at fault for being a recipient of abuse.
5. You complete yourself. You want someone who is your partner – your equal – and who adds to your healthy sense of who you are. If you are looking for some emotional need to be met by another person, you set yourself up for disappointment and an imbalance of power. Never expect someone else to complete you.

Relationships are hard work, but being treated as a vital participant is worth it. We all deserve healthy love, and uplifting and joyful experiences. We should expect to be an equal partner, deserving of respect. Respect is the foundation of all good things. Allow yourself the opportunity to discover all that a relationship can be – with your self-esteem and value leading the way.

About the author:

Carlynne McDonnell is the author of THE EVERY WOMAN’S GUIDE TO EQUALITY.  She has a Master’s in Public Policy and has been working in the corporate, education and non-profit worlds for over 30 years. She is also founder of the nonprofit Change in Our Lifetime, which is dedicated to achieving equality for women.

 

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You're proud of yourself for finally sticking with an exercise routine. Learn if it really helps with weight loss at HowStuffWorks.

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Make it a holiday to remember! Enter daily for your chance to win the $1,500 December prize.

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I’m on the other side of fifty and childless. When I talk with friends in the same situation about how we will live as we age, inevitably somebody floats the idea of buying a big house and all living together, to look after each other in our dotage.

This is neither a new nor an original idea, and it’s already working for a lot of people. In her engaging new book, How We Live: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century, social psychologist Bella DePaulo peers into the lives of some of these people, and others — of all ages — who don’t live in the nuclear family/single family home setup.

To gather research for the book, DePaulo, who writes the Single at Heart blog for Psych Central, traveled the country visiting people in their nontraditional living situations — what she calls “lifespaces.”

These included shared housing, co-housing, places where someone has returned to the family home as an adult, new iterations of elder living, and living alone. She looks at ways people create community through architecture and mutual agreements, find support as single parents, build families of friends, and make roommates of family. She talks to people in long-term, committed relationships who choose not to share a home — she calls this Living Apart Together. (About seven percent of women and six percent of men in the United States live this way.)

“Some of the innovations I learned about in my research were contemporary inflections of longstanding traditions,” she writes. “Living with a group of friends under one roof, for example, is no longer just a young-adult way of living. That arrangement has become so popular among ‘women of a certain age’ that there is an organization devoted to making it happen; it is, of course, called Golden Girl Homes.”

And multigenerational homes, she writes, “might sound old-fashioned, but they, too have become increasingly popular over the past decades. The twenty-first-century versions accommodate more generations and more diverse sets of relatives than ever before.”

DePaulo includes sensate descriptions of physical environments — lots of sunny rooms, lush gardens, and inviting kitchens — as well as home layouts and house rules. In doing so, she introduces readers to more living scenarios than we may have imagined. And she judiciously puts herself in the scene, too: her personable and personal interviews vividly illustrate the people who populate these lifespaces.

While she’s showing us different ways of living, DePaulo also introduces us to different ways of viewing community, friends, family. Many of the people she meets are living with friends. Some were friends before they lived together, some became friends in the course of living together. Some are not so much friends as voluntary support systems living in close proximity.

She writes: “In this nation of ever-shrinking families, sometimes geographically dispersed, there is a claim that people like to make when they have found a group of non-kin who have a special place in their hearts: ‘We’re like family.’ Family has that rock-solid there-for-you sheen that no other kind of relationship has ever achieved. Despite decades of cynicism on all sorts of other matters, family is still sentimentalized. Yet,” she continues, “it may be friendship, more so than family, that captures the essence of twenty-first-century life.”

Although DePaulo presses everyone she interviews for the negatives of their choices, and asks how they would live if they had all the money they need, the book is unabashedly upbeat. (To the latter question, pretty much everyone responds, “exactly as I am!”) DePaulo cops to this positive spin. She’s not interested in quashing what she views as a revolution in how Americans live.

“This book is biased,” she writes. “I wasn’t looking for a representative sample of people, taking the happy with the unhappy. I set out to find people who were (mostly) proud of their lifespaces.”

And while she enjoys visiting, and is intrigued by, the many different lifespaces she profiles, DePaulo ultimately confirms that her own chosen lifespace — living alone, which also gets a chapter in the book — is the best choice for her.

Indeed. Some of the lifespaces described in here sound a little too close for comfort to me. Others sound comforting. Still, whether you’re a traditionalist or revolutionary about how you live, it’s nice to know this many interesting options exist.

Sophia Dembling is author of Introverts in Love: The Quiet Way to Happily Ever After.

How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century
Atria Books/Beyond Words, August 2015
Hardcover, 320 pages
$26

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Discover why you don't suffer anxiety 'for no reason'. Why it has some unexpected as well as common causes.

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