Let’s talk about St. Dymphna—the patron saint of mental illness, nervous breakdowns, and, presumably, anyone who has ever attended Thanksgiving dinner with their extended family.

Dymphna was a 7th-century Irish princess whose life story reads like a Greek tragedy had a baby with a Lifetime movie.

Her father, a pagan king named Damon, was heartbroken when his wife died. And when I say heartbroken, I mean that in the most red-flag, run-for-the-hills way possible.

Because instead of, say, working through his grief in a healthy manner—perhaps by channeling his emotions into a meaningful hobby, such as literacy—he decided that the only woman who could possibly replace his wife was… his daughter.

Families are complicated. They are a mix of love, history, unresolved grievances, inside jokes, and at least one person who refuses to apologize for anything. And while we all hope for harmony, most families—at some point—find themselves trapped in cycles of miscommunication, resentment, or the Great Thanksgiving Argument That Never Ends.

Family therapy exists because relationships, especially those built over decades, require maintenance, repair, and the occasional complete system overhaul.

Fortunately, some research-backed exercises can genuinely improve how families function.

If your family dynamic feels like an endless loop of frustration, silence, or passive-aggressive sighing, these five exercisesmight help. They are based on decades of research and are designed to promote meaningful connection, effective communication, and long-term change.

If you’ve ever been in couples therapy, you know the deal:

✅ You sit across from your partner.
✅ A therapist gently asks probing but insightful questions.
✅ One of you suddenly remembers an old wound from 2013 and brings it up.
✅ The other person sighs deeply and says, “Are we really bringing that up again?”
✅ Someone gets uncomfortable, deflects with a joke, and the therapist calmly redirects the conversation.

It’s hard, but when done well, couples therapy is magic.
People learn how to communicate, repair, and break toxic patterns.

📌 Now take that exact same dynamic… and add more people, generational baggage, and at least one person who thinks therapy is “bullsh*t.”

Welcome to family therapy.

Today, we’re diving into:
✅ Why family therapy is just couples therapy on steroids.
✅ The biggest fights that happen in families (and how to actually fix them).
✅ What every family can learn from healthy couples.
✅ Why repairing family relationships is harder—but worth it.

So, you did it.
You cut off a toxic family member.

Maybe it was your emotionally manipulative mother who treated guilt like a competitive sport.

Maybe it was your overbearing father who never respected boundaries.

Maybe it was your sibling-turned-nemesis who somehow turned every conversation into a battle.

At first, you felt relief.

But now?

• You’re second-guessing yourself.

• You’re wondering if you overreacted.

• You’re thinking, "What if I regret this?"

📌 Welcome to the Estrangement Aftershock: The phase where guilt, doubt, and ‘maybe I should reach out’ thoughts sneak in.

Once upon a time, family was forever.

No matter how toxic, dysfunctional, or emotionally unhinged your relatives were, you stuck it out.
Because blood is thicker than water, right?

Well, apparently, a lot of people are rethinking that.

📌 Welcome to the Great Estrangement Boom—the era of "Yeah, I don’t talk to them anymore."

If it seems like more people than ever are going no-contact with parents, siblings, or entire extended families, that’s because they are.

There is no greater act of self-respect than setting a boundary.

And yet, when that boundary is set with a mother who has spent the last few decades reading your emotional barometer like a seasoned meteorologist, the response is often not gratitude but something closer to existential betrayal.

Research confirms that boundary-setting is essential for mental health and relationship satisfaction (Prentice et al., 2022). But what happens when the person on the other end of that boundary has historically responded to your needs with sighs so theatrical they deserve a Tony Award?

What happens when your mother—your primary attachment figure, the woman who taught you how to tie your shoes and allegedly went through 23 hours of labor to birth you—calls you difficultsimply for trying to protect your own peace?

The answer: you keep going.

You didn’t just inherit your mom’s nose or your dad’s awkward small talk skills—you inherited their emotional coding, too.

By the time you were out of diapers, your subconscious had already absorbed:

• How to respond to love (Do I have to earn it?)

• How to handle conflict (Is it a war? A cold war? A polite avoidance strategy?)

• How to process guilt, shame, and boundaries (Spoiler: Most of us learned that boundaries are bad.)

And now, years later, here you are—adulting, kind of—realizing that your default responses to stress, love, and relationships aren’t really yours at all.

The good news? You can debug the system.
The bad news? It’s going to feel weird as hell at first.

Have you ever spent an entire Saturday afternoon assembling an IKEA dresser, only to feel an irrational sense of pridein your slightly uneven, structurally questionable creation?

There’s a reason for that. Psychologists call it the “IKEA Effect”—the idea that we value things more when we’ve invested effort into making them ourselves (Norton, Mochon, & Ariely, 2012).

And guess what? Relationships work the same way.

We don’t fall in love with people because they are flawless, perfectly pre-assembled products. We fall in love because of the effort, the struggles, and the emotional labor we invest into the relationship. The act of building something together—whether it’s a shared life, a home, or even just inside jokes—is what makes love meaningful.

So why do some couples thrive while others give up mid-assembly, throwing the metaphorical instruction manual across the room? Let’s break down how the IKEA Relationship Principle explains why love isn’t found—it’s built.

In the BDSM community, “aftercare” is a well-known and cherished practice.

It refers to the tender, intentional care provided to a partner after an intense experience—particularly for a submissive partner who may have been (consensually) physically or emotionally vulnerable during the encounter.

For many, this post-intimacy ritual is as essential as the experience itself, if not more so. But aftercare isn’t just for BDSM.

In fact, for souls with a trauma history, aftercare can be a lifeline—a bridge between past wounds and present love.

The Christian doctrine of ordo amoris—the idea that love must be properly ordered in a divine hierarchy—has long shaped theological and ethical discussions.

From Augustine to Aquinas to C.S. Lewis, Christian thought has framed love as something to be ranked, structured, and disciplined.

But beneath the surface of this doctrine lies an implicit, often unspoken reality: ordo amoris may function less as a true ethical framework and more as an inventory of social capital—an ideological system that organizes human relationships in ways that sustain social, religious, and economic hierarchies.

In post we will explore how ordo amoris has historically served as a ledger of obligations, a method of managing social bonds, and a theological tool for maintaining power.

If love is something to be ranked, prioritized, and allocated, then who benefits from this system? And who gets left out?

There was a time when if you told someone your father wasn’t speaking to you, they’d assume it was because you crashed his Buick or stole money from his wallet.

Now, they assume you set a boundary.

Welcome to therapy culture: the religion of our modern age.

While our ancestors fretted over sin and salvation, we wring our hands over trauma and self-actualization.

We used to confide in a Imam, rabbi, or priest. Now we unload on a therapist (or, more commonly, the internet).

Instead of redemption, we seek closure.

Instead of community, we have self-care.

Instead of a Higher Power, we have, (most appropriately) our inner child.

And, in many ways, this shift has done wonders—destigmatizing mental health struggles, improving emotional intelligence.

But, like all religions, therapy culture has its excesses, hypocrisies, and unintended consequences. So let’s talk about it.

It’s ok. I’m a marriage and family therapist.

Evolutionary psychology (EP) is the field that insists every weird human behavior—from falling in love to overspending on throw pillows—can be explained by the survival strategies of our prehistoric ancestors.

It tells us that men hoard wealth because cavewomen loved mammoth hunters, and women prefer taller men because Neanderthal Chad had better rock-throwing skills.

It’s a compelling theory, and in fairness, EP does have its moments.

But too often, it veers into “just-so stories,” sloppy science, and some suspiciously convenient explanations for why the world is the way it is (and why we shouldn’t bother changing it).

More troublingly, it tends to treat humans less like self-aware souls and more like confused primates still fumbling through modern life with prehistoric instincts.

So, let’s take a closer look at the cracks in EP’s foundation—because humans deserve a better story.