Emotion

Does Being in Love Come from the Brain or Heart?

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:12:36-06:00Emotion, Heart|

Most people don’t think about what is happening in their brains when they are in love. It’s all about the heart, right? After all, Cupid doesn’t shoot an arrow at your brain on Valentine’s Day — he points it at your heart! And everything that happens when you are in love, as your heart races and the mere sight of that special someone takes your breath away, can only be described as a giant ball of feel-good emotions. So, it’s natural that anyone with a brain would shout HEART if asked, “does being in love come from the brain or heart?” Do you really know why and how you love [...]

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Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Understanding vs. Problem-Solving

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:12:37-06:00Conflict, Emotion|

Everyone wants to be better at problem-solving. After all, it’s what helps drive effective communication — at work, with friends, and as couples. Many couples I see in my practice definitely want to problem solve. And yes, they do need solutions for their issues and problems; we all want those things in our lives. While I do want to help them with problems, I’m really trying to teach people how to improve their emotional understanding. This might surprise you, but problem-solving is the last thing I do. Starting with problem-solving is a waste of time! Starting anywhere except attending to emotions will derail you most of the time [...]

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Express feelings with your Spouse to unlock Secret Places

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:13:02-06:00Emotion|

It’s one thing to share your thoughts when trying to communicate with your spouse. But how would you rate your ability to actually express feelings? You know, letting loose on all that makes you vulnerable, scared, happy, loved, desired, safe, etc. Regardless of whether or not you gave yourself a passing score, I think we can all agree that expressing feelings is hard — even for women, who, let’s be honest, are great at it in comparison to many men. That’s because it still takes a lot of courage to share what’s going on beneath the surface. How will my spouse respond? Will I be validated or simply brushed off? [...]

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Healthy Marriage Relationship starts with a Healthy YOU!

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:13:50-06:00Emotion, Relationships, Uncategorized|

A healthy marriage starts with two healthy people. What we mean by that goes beyond eating right and exercising, though those are still two very important things. More importantly, it means thinking the right way about your marriage, learning to self-soothe, practicing good self-care, influencing your partner, and being emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy. We’ve touched on this over the previous four blogs, which on the surface were about improving relationships but really focused on how being the best YOU inevitably makes your relationship great. Your marriage can’t be healthy if only one of you subscribes to that mindset. As they say, it takes two! And If you’re both healthy [...]

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Flooding-What is it and why is it so damaging to my Marriage?

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:14:02-06:00Emotion, Flood|

We know what anger is. It’s our most volatile emotion. And while it’s natural to experience it, the damaging effects of too much anger (hurtful words, screaming, demeaning actions, aggressiveness, etc.) in our marriage can last for years and trigger intense emotions that sometimes lead to flooding. But wait. What is flooding, and why is it so damaging? You may not know the term flooding — yet! But in 70% of couples today, one or the other floods in the middle of conflict. This is very important because it is a fight or flight response to anger, which will only hurt our marriage more. “I’ve had just about all [...]

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Putting good things into your marriage: Rituals of Connection

Glenn Kimball2024-09-19T09:56:14-05:00Connection, Emotion|

Every couple and each marriage are unique. But having worked with and spoken to as many married couples as we have over the years, it is clear that the ones who are at their absolute happiest together — the ones who are continually putting good things into their marriage — share a lot of striking similarities and rituals of connection that ultimately help them feel safe and connected. Display a healthy amount of fondness and admiration for one another. Are in love and look for ways to have fun together. They have more heart talk than work talk. Meeting each other’s emotional needs is paramount to [...]

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Putting good things into your marriage: Fondness and admiration, heart and emotional talk, meeting emotional needs

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:14:04-06:00Care, Emotion|

As a counselor, I see love mainly through our actions and the words we use to show someone value and importance. In other words, it’s all about putting forth the effort — putting good things into your marriage. We can scream to the mountaintops that we love someone, but if the behaviors (fondness and admiration) don’t match or are non-existent, then their needs won’t be met. Our needs won’t be met, either. And if that happens, our sense of being in love diminishes. And, well, no one wants that, right? We started a blog conversation two weeks ago to share different ways to create and maintain healthy marriages. The [...]

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Emotional Intelligence: Are you stressing out you and your spouse?

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:14:10-06:00Emotion, Stress|

Let’s say a problem has come up in your marriage. It could be anything — your spouse isn’t 100% truthful about something, or you’re beginning to feel like your spouse doesn’t love you anymore. Regardless of how big or small the issue, it’s getting to the point where you’re withdrawing emotionally. And naturally, it’s stressing out you and your spouse. Do you keep your mouth shut? Or do you finally say something? Stressing out you and your spouse! Most of us would like to believe we’d say something. After all, it’s the only way to get all our feelings and emotions on the table to see if the situation is [...]

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Would you ROCK an emotional intelligence pop quiz?

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:14:10-06:00Communication, Emotion|

If you ask any woman how well she thinks she’d do on an emotional intelligence pop quiz, she’d probably say, “Ha! I imagine I’d score somewhere near the top.” Ask her husband the same thing, and he’d likely say, “Contrary to popular belief, guys are more emotionally intelligent than you think. And that includes me.” Great! So let’s find out! Oh, wait — you mean there’s a quiz for that? Yes! There’s actually several. We published an emotional intelligence pop quiz a few years ago on our blog and included it again in this post. If you’ve taken it before, let’s see what’s changed. If this is your first time, [...]

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Emotional intelligence and why we need more in our marriage

Glenn Kimball2024-01-08T01:14:11-06:00Emotion|

Raise your hand if you did a double-take when you heard the term emotional intelligence for the first time. I mean, who can be emotional and intelligent at the same time, especially when you consider emotions travel at warp speed? One minute, everything is fine between you and your spouse, and the next, she’s crying, you’re yelling, and neither of you has a clue what just happened, whose fault it is, or the wherewithal to understand where each other is coming from. While emotional intelligence sounds foreign, the importance of it is more obvious than you think. Emotional intelligence is the ability to make your emotions work for you rather [...]

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