Dec. 8, 2019 "Stressed before the wedding? A therapist could help": Today I found this article by Alyson Krueger in The New York Times. The customer Gregory gave me the section. This reminds me of the TV show Starting Over where this Filipino woman Jennifer is preparing for her wedding. Her goal is to mainly "Surrender control."
This is a really good article about therapy and self- help. It's not only for people getting married:
Parts of Shira Notrika’s wedding planning were fun. And parts definitely were not.
Ms. Notrika, 30, who lives in London and is qualifying to be a lawyer there, was married Oct 27. She was happy with her wedding location, an underground ballroom that used to be an 18th century vault. She also thought it was fun to be close to the Tower of London.
But the process took an emotional toll. She has a sister who bickered with her every step of the way. Ms. Notrika also has multiple sclerosis so drama can and often leads to physical strain. There were nights she was so upset, she couldn’t sleep.
“Planning the wedding has been a breeze, but I wasn’t anticipating the stress around dealing with other people,” she said. “I was regretting having a wedding at all and regretting not just eloping.”
One day in March, during a particularly troublesome period, an advertisement popped up in her Facebook newsfeed for AisleTalk, a counseling service for people planning weddings.
It was started by Landis Bejar, whom she knew in high school from Miami and who is a licensed therapist now based in Manhattan. For the next few months they held six Skype calls where she picked up tricks to face the family turmoil without getting so upset.
“I can’t predict what my sister is going to do, but I can anticipate it,” she said.
“So Landis and I broke down her behaviors that triggered me,
and then she taught me how to not engage with them.”
During the rest of the wedding planning process, she employed these techniques. The result was that the next few months leading up to her wedding along with the big day were less tumultuous.
Couples and their families are turning to therapists who specialize in helping them navigate wedding planning. Some clients need help with a narrow issue and are helped after one meeting. Others are searching for broader emotional support.
For many, seeing a therapist during their wedding planning becomes a practice they continue after the big day. After all, navigating stress and family doesn’t end after a wedding.
The reality for many couples is that wedding planning is a tricky time. Deep-rooted family problems sometimes rear up.
Some families face financial strain or must deal with contrasting values of how money should be spent.
It’s also a time when couples and their families are going through big, fragile transitions.
“The idea that this has to be the happiest, most blissful time in your life, that is clever advertising,” said Jocelyn Charnas, a Manhattan psychologist who offers services to brides and grooms.
Many of the problems brides and grooms face are deep-seated, involving family dynamics that have been embedded for a very long time. They can flare up during the wedding planning process.
“These problems aren’t as simple as bridal magazines make them out to be,” Ms. Bejar said. “There aren’t seven simple things you can do to reduce this kind of stress.”
Ms. Bejar founded AisleTalk in January 2018 (she had already been practicing as a therapist for four years) after witnessing her sister-in-law and mother-in-law fighting in a dressing room over the fit of the former’s wedding dress.
“I intervened and smoothed things over, and my mother-in-law joked that I should be a bridal therapist,” she recalled.
“I laughed, but then I started thinking about it.
All the stress my clients and friends had planning their weddings, why doesn’t that exist?”
She now offers services for individuals, couples or their families.
Allison Moir-Smith, a psychotherapist in the greater Boston area, has run a practice she calls Emotionally Engaged, that focuses on clients planning weddings, since 2002. But in the past year she has expanded it to better suit a range of clients’ needs.
This month she started a service for parents of brides and grooms. “There is so much pain parents feel,” she said. “Last year I worked with someone whose mother got horribly depressed during her engagement because she was grieving the loss of her daughter.”
She is also working with more grooms. “This year I’ve had four grooms, and that is a lot for me,” she said. “It’s a growing part of my business.”
Ms. Charnas, whom New York Magazine dubbed “the Wedding Doctor,” has a range of clients including couples, families, and brides and grooms. One of the issues she is helping brides and grooms contend with is social media.
“I see the pressure it puts on people,” she said. “It exacerbates the expectations on the couple, the expectations of looking a certain way, of having the same wedding Meghan Markle had.”
The costs for wedding therapy vary. Ms. Landis’ fee varies depending on the type of service and goal of the clients, but she said her median session fee is around $150. Ms. Moir-Smith also charges around $150.
Ms. Bejar reminds potential clients that wedding therapy doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out process. She has some clients who feel better after one or two sessions.
“It can be as simple as,
‘I can’t make a decision about who to have as my bridesmaid,’
or, ‘I don’t know how to have a conversation with someone about not picking them as my bridesmaid,’” she said.
“I want people to know it can be short term. There can be a stigma of therapy, of not wanting to commit to it for a long time.”
Ms. Moir Smith agreed: “What I generally do is say, ‘Let’s work together for three sessions and turn this ship around.’ Some people just need the insight, the context that it is normal to not be totally happy during this time.”
Kimberly Perry, a 28-year-old senior account manager who lives in Brooklyn, got married at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on June 16, 2018. She and her mother had tension before the wedding because her mother lived across the country and it was difficult to feel connected during wedding planning. She turned to AisleTalk about four months before her wedding and was shocked that one meeting, where both of them were present, did the job.
“That one session helped build trust,” she said. “It made it so we could enjoy the planning together and not be stressed about it.”
While clients don’t have to commit to a long-term relationship about a quarter of the people Ms. Bejar sees continue therapy after their wedding.
Ms. Notrika said she started seeing a therapist in London. “Even though what I have been doing with Landis has been managing the relationship and stress regarding the wedding, it made me realize this is a deeper issue,” she said.
Often wedding woes relate to a family member or friend, and it isn’t always possible to bring them into therapy.
“I’m lucky my tension was with my mom, and we were both open to seeing a therapist,” Ms. Perry said. “But if the dynamic is with your future in-laws, maybe they wouldn’t be as open to seeking help. I know plenty of couples where they couldn’t have an open conversation with their future mother-in-law.”
But she also said she understands the process is more about getting to know yourself and handle forces out of your control.
“I think a lot of people planning their wedding are like, ‘It’s fine, I’ll deal with it,” she said. “But they don’t know that instead of going through the stress, they can get rid of it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/fashion/weddings/why-stress-when-you-can-see-a-wedding-therapist.html
My opinion: I like the last line:
“But they don’t know that instead of going through the stress, they can get rid of it.”
Apr. 15, 2024 "4 wedding red flags that are telltale signs a couple won't last, according to a dating coach": Today I found this article by Maria Noyen on Yahoo:
A dating coach says you can often tell whether a couple will last based on their wedding.
Anwar White, who has more than 580,000 TikTok followers, outlined four red flags at weddings.
His telltale signs include how much the bride or groom acts out and who's mentioned in the speeches.
Wedding season is right around the corner.
If you're attending nuptials this year, Anwar White, a dating and relationships coach, says there are a few signs to look out for to determine whether the marriage will last.
White — who has advised clients on how to find love for 14 years and regularly shares dating advice with his more than 580,000 followers on TikTok — outlined four red flags at weddings that foreshadow speedbumps ahead for the couple.
White shared the markers that a marital union might not be long for this world in a video posted on TikTok on April 3. The clip has 1.6 million views.
Here, he breaks down each red flag to look out for at weddings this year.
A groom shoving cake into a bride's face could be a sign of underlying aggression, White says.
White says one of the biggest red flags that a couple won't work out in the long run involves wedding cake.
For some, it's tradition for the bride and groom to rub cake on each other's faces before the dessert is served to their guests. White says paying attention to how the couple approaches the act of rubbing cake is key.
"If it's loving, if it's more of a caress, that's one thing," White said. But if the cake rubbing is more forceful, he says, it indicates that the groom may harbor "deep-seated aggression" and is comfortable humiliating a partner.
"If a groom is willing to do that in front of your friends and family, I can't imagine what he's willing to do in the privacy of your own home," White said.
If either the bride or groom shows off during the wedding, it shows they aren't willing to share the spotlight, White says.
"When I see someone pulling focus to themselves, that lets me know that they're trying to make this event about them and not about the union," White said.
Examples, he says, include if the bride or groom puts on a skit that involves dancing or singing or if there's a comedic interlude or show-off moment when walking down the aisle or during the reception.
"These are all moments where it's about me, it's about me, it's about me," he said. "That's something that I always look out for, and when I see it, I'm like, 'OK, I can see how this relationship is going to be.'"
White also says he pays attention to whether the bride or groom refers to the wedding as "my day" instead of "our day."
A big wedding can also be a sign that a partner's priorities are in the wrong place, White says.
Some of the most successful marriages White has seen have started with an elopement or a more casual celebration.
By contrast, he says, some of the least successful couples hosted elaborate weddings, which can come across more like spectacles than authentic celebrations of love.
"A lot of brides really try to make the wedding as big as possible. And that is often a telltale sign that a bride is more focused on the wedding than they are on the marriage," White said.
"What this means is 'I care about what other people think more than I care about the actual union.'"
If family members' speeches don't refer to both partners, it's a sign they don't like or don't know who their loved one is marrying, White says.
People giving wedding speeches will devote most of their remarks to the person in the couple they know best, White says.
But somewhere in the speech, he says, there should be at least a mention of the other person.
If the speech-giver is solely focused on their person, he says it could mean one of two things: "One, they don't like the person. They are going by the old mantra of if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all. Or two, they don't know the other person enough."
"What you want to see is positive things being said about the other person and how they represent themselves in your person's life," he said.
Friends and family can be better judges of whether a relationship will last than the people actually in the relationship.
White says he likes to refer to friends and family of his clients as their "love jury" because they can help individuals "have all of the perspectives" they need to make "the most informed decisions" about their romantic lives.
Even if the wedding red flags aren't foolproof, White says, they can be indicators of a relationship's success.
White knows his red flags aren't an exact science.
"None of these are always right," he said. "But these are things that you can look at and be like, 'OK, this is interesting.'"
Backing up his theories is years of experience, both as a relationships coach and a frequent wedding guest.
"I probably go to a wedding once a quarter," White said. "Maybe one out of five, sometimes two out of five, will have some of these markers in it."
Read the original article on Business Insider
https://ca.yahoo.com/style/4-wedding-red-flags-telltale-113501165.html
These are the other 2 blog posts:
"Only fools work in August, so why is everyone still working this year?"/ "More office workers call in sick on August 24 than any other day"
"Why older CEOs hate letting employees work from home"/ "Older and younger bosses don't agree on remote work"
My week:
Wed. Aug. 7, 2024 "Colin Farrell Starts Foundation in Honor of Son with Angelman Syndrome as He Opens Up About Their Life (Exclusive)": Today I found this article by Julie Jordan on People and Yahoo. I like this because it's about helping people and charity:
As for the foundation, Farrell has "for years wanted to do something in the realm of providing greater opportunities for families who have a child with special needs, to receive the support that they deserve, basically the assistance in all areas of life," he says.
James, and those like him, have "earned the right to have a greater degree of individuality and autonomy on life, and a greater degree of community."
For now, the actor chooses to believe "that if James knew getting his photograph in the back garden with me, which is not my favorite thing to do, if us doing this could help families and other young adults who live with special needs, he would say, ‘Dad, what are you talking about? Why are you even asking me? It’s a no-brainer,' " Farrell adds. "So that’s why we’re doing it. This is all because of James— it’s all in his honor.”
For more information or learn how you can offer support, visit www.colinfarrellfoundation.org.
Sat. Aug. 3, 2024 Downtown Farmer's Market: I went there this morning. I was on Facebook last week, and saw that it was open.
There are lots of:
-fresh fruits and veggies,
-some alcohol from breweries
-baked brownies, cookies
-lemonade
-jewelry
-art: paintings, prints
-seafood
Live performances
You can bring your dog.
There are a few new restaurants at 104 St.
Dare Ulitmate cookies: I bought the lemon, chocolate fudge, maple cookies. They're $1.88 at Shoppers Drug Mart. I never tried these before. They're average.
Dare Whippet: I remember I tried the Whippet flavors from Wal- Mart. They're like marshmallows and covered in chocolate with a flavor in them.
Hostess cupcakes: The Shoppers Drug Mart don't really sell these, but there was a vanilla one on sale for $2.50 so I bought it.
