Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Life Coach

More Info & Free Downloads at www.reneehaas.com

(Note: The information below describes my therapeutic services. If you're more interested in life coaching, visit my life coaching website at www.midlifecoach.org.)

Specialties: Intimate relationships can be among life's most rewarding and most difficult experiences. As a relationship specialist, I focus on: 1) doing couples counseling, and; 2) working with individuals who are having relationship problems with their current or ex-partners, children, parents or others, as well as adults struggling with being single again after a major relationship ended.

For Couples Therapy Clients: Are you feeling the deep loneliness and hurt that comes from being in an unhappy relationship? Do you repeatedly find yourselves having destructive arguments that started out as trivial spats? Do you feel that your partner isn’t there for you when you need support? It’s sad to see that pain drain the energy out of you and negatively affect other areas of your life, including your ability to work, parent and attend to your health.

If you and your partner are committed to repairing your broken connections, our first goal is for each of you to communicate your primary causes of relationship pain and ensure that your partner fully heard you. Then you can move away from "attack and defend" mode and find new ways to live together lovingly and respectfully.

For Individual Therapy Clients: Individual therapy can help you address current relationship problems and also look at past patterns to help ensure that your future connections are healthy ones.

Among our goals in therapy will be to:
• Examine the primary causes of pain or conflict in your relationships.
• Discover new perspectives and ways of living that are most likely to result in successful relationships.
• Identify your "hot buttons" and explore why they set you off. (Those sensitivities are often caused by unhealed past emotional wounds.)
• Make peace with aspects of relationships that are unlikely to change.

Although I am a relationship specialist, I also help my individual clients address such common psychological problems as depression, anxiety, unresolved grief and poor self-esteem. Ultimately our goal is for you to live happily with yourself and others.

Contact: (805) 306-1595 or info@reneehaas.com

Available in Person or Via Phone/Webcam: I am available to work with clients in person in my Moorpark, CA, office, or via phone or webcam. I can provide therapy services to California residents and coaching services to clients anywhere.

Free E-newsletter: To get on the mailing list for my free e-newsletter, just e-mail me a request at info@reneehaas.com. To see past messages, visit the Blog page on this website.

Education & Licensure: M.A., Clinical Psychology, Pepperdine University, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, MFC 42747

Electronic Payment Options: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and debit cards, PayPal

Insurance Accepted (For therapy clients only): Any plan that accepts out-of-network providers; I provide clients with monthly statements to submit to their insurance carriers for partial reimbursement of therapy costs.

Memberships: California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Conejo Valley Mental Health Professionals Association

Certification: Certified as anger management provider by Anderson & Anderson

(All articles written by Renee Haas)

Keep the Spark Alive:               Tips for Couples

Maintaining a healthy connection with your partner can be challenging in today's busy world. Here are a few tips and conversation starters to help keep your relationship alive, pleasurable and enriching.

•    Create a relationship "wish list." Each partner writes down 10-15 things they consider to be part of an ideal relationship. Then the partners review each other’s lists and develop one list that includes the major things they will strive to achieve together.

•    Especially if you have children, be sure to schedule at least one adults-only "date night" per week. Switch off who gets to pick where to go and what to do. Use your imagination. Surprise each other. Have fun.

•    Choose platinum over gold. The Golden Rule asks that you treat others as you would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule encourages you to treat others (including your partner) as they would like to be treated.

•    If a disagreement is getting too heated, one of the partners can call a time out. That person then takes responsibility for re-raising the issue sometime within the next 24 hours, when the partners have calmed down and can communicate more productively.

•    Have a quiz night. Ask your partner 5-10 questions about yourself, such as "Who do I consider to be my best friend and why?" or "What was my favorite vacation we’ve taken together?" Even in long-term relationships, there's always plenty you can learn about each other.

•    Share with your partner what lessons about relationships you learned from your family-of-origin. Explore which lessons have been helpful and harmful. Tell your partner several relationship skills you learned from him or her.

How to Diffuse Arguments: Timeouts for Battling Couples

Most of us associate the word “timeouts” with children who have to sit in the corner or go to their room when they’ve been naughty. But adults can benefit from timeouts, too, by taking a break from discussions that have disintegrated into hurtful, nonproductive arguments.

If you and your partner are talking about something and one or both of you have escalated to the point where you’re screaming or name-calling or dredging up unrelated topics from the past, or doing anything else that isn’t going to help the situation AT ALL if you keep it up, I advise one of you to call a timeout.

A timeout is different from just ending the argument. Plenty of people exit a fight by saying something like, “OK, that’s it. This conversation is over.” Or they just leave the room or in some way depart the situation without resolving anything.

A timeout, on the other hand, also requires a time-in. I recommend that, within the next 24 hours, the person who called the time-out takes responsibility for approaching their partner and restarting the conversation. They might say something like, “Hey, is this a good time for you? I’d like to finish that discussion we were having about…” whatever the argument entailed.

When calling the time-in, choose your time wisely. If your partner isn’t a morning person, don’t try to reinitiate your difficult conversation first thing in the morning. If they’ve made it clear they’ve had a really hard day at work, give them some time to relax before you approach them. And, once you’ve begun talking, stay on topic and, if things start getting ugly again, nip it in the bud right there.

You can certainly have heated, passionate discussions if that’s your style. Just make sure that your language, your tone and your approach to your partner are going to keep you on track for a productive conversation, not a mean-spirited argument that just damages your relationship.

Would Therapy or Coaching Better Meet Your Needs?

You know you want to improve your quality of life, and you’ve decided to seek professional help. Now one of your choices is whether to use the services of a psychotherapist or a personal coach. What are the differences?

To begin with, people seeking therapy often have a fairly significant problem, such as depression, anxiety, major relationship distress or bereavement. Coaching clients are usually high-functioning people who are looking to their coach to help them address specific situations in a focused, action-oriented way.

Many therapists believe it’s important for clients to deal with unresolved issues from the past before they can optimally live in the present and fulfill their potential for the future.

In addition to addressing the current stressors that may have brought them to therapy, clients often explore such topics as patterns of past relationships with other people, including their families of origin. In the process, the clients frequently deal with emotional issues, heal past wounds and develop self-insight that can guide them more productively in the present and future.

Personal coaching, on the other hand, almost exclusively focuses on pragmatic elements of the present and future. Coaches and clients work together to assess major facets of the clients’ current lives, articulate goals in areas the clients want to address and develop action plans related to meeting those goals. Along the way, coaches help motivate clients and keep them accountable in order to produce results.

Licensed therapists must meet rigorous requirements related to advanced education and licensure, and they must abide by specific laws and codes of ethics. At this point, personal coaching is an unlicensed, self-regulating industry. Certification is optional.

When and where do coaching and therapy take place? Although this is not always the case, psychotherapy clients typically come in once a week to their therapists’ offices. Coaches usually go to locations convenient to their clients or, more commonly, they work over the phone and via e-mail.

Those are just some of the distinctions between therapy and coaching. Despite the differences, therapy and coaching are both oriented toward tapping into clients’ potential and helping them lead more fulfilled lives. They just go about it in different ways.

Five Most Common Mistakes in Love Relationships

If you have a problem or are feeling frustrated, do you want to talk to someone who will simply listen empathically or someone who will help you solve the problem? Your gender might have a big influence on your answer.

When someone is talking about a problem with a man, the man often feels he needs to fix the problem or at least suggest some possible solutions. Women are frequently more comfortable merely venting, getting something off their chest that’s bothering them and having their feelings validated without expecting the person they’re talking with to come up with any suggestions for solving their dilemma.

This difference in communication styles can cause some serious problems in relationships. For example, if one person just wants to vent, they might get quite annoyed if their partner instead says, “You know what you ought to do about that…” or “Oh, I ran into a problem just like that awhile ago, and here’s what I did that worked really well…” In these cases, the person who wants to be listened to might feel cast aside and their message ignored, while their partner takes the spotlight as the heroic figure with the grand action plan.

On the other hand, if someone is talking about a problem and they really do want to brainstorm about possible solutions, they might feel frustrated when their partner is simply listening intently, nodding and sympathizing, rather than contributing suggestions.

If you experience these kinds of communication mismatches in your relationship, it can be helpful if you state right up front what you’d like to get out of the conversation. You might say, “My boss is making me absolutely crazy right now. Can I just lay here and complain to you about him for a few minutes?” On the other hand, you might say, “My boss is driving me up the wall. You know how she is! Do you have any ideas about how I can reduce the constant tension between her and me?”

In either case, your partner has a good idea what you’re looking for in the conversation, and there is less likelihood of the discussion going awry when your partner is offering what he or she thinks are helpful responses, but they’re not you want and need in that moment.

Will You Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions?

We're well into 2010. It's time to take a look at how well you're progressing on your New Year's resolutions. Turning those goals into reality is a difficult task for many people, as good intentions fall into the “Oops,” “Well, I really meant to….” or other category of  wishes that didn't quite translate into action.

What can you do to keep your 2010 New Year’s Resolutions and, in general, increase your ability to follow through on self-improvement goals?

A couple of key components in creating lasting change are to know yourself well and to build pleasure into the process.

For example, if you want to lose weight and improve your health, you might join a gym even though you’re not a “gym person” at heart. After a few weeks of doing cardiovascular exercise on a treadmill or elliptical machine, you might be bored to pieces and throw in the towel on the concept of exercising altogether.

If you had done some self-exploration before joining the gym, you might have remembered how much you loved playing AYSO soccer as a kid. Or you might have noted how much you look forward to watching one of the dancing shows currently so popular on television. If that’s the case, you might be better off joining an adult soccer league or signing up for salsa lessons through your local parks and recreation department. You’d be getting your exercise in a way that meets your personal criteria for fun.

Other elements of successful change are making realistic goals with short-term steps, and forgiving yourself when you stumble.

Some goals seem so overwhelming that people essentially give up on ever achieving them. But small, incremental improvements can be very powerful over time.

If your marriage is foundering, rather than creating a large, unspecific objective such as “We need to improve our communication,” start with small, achievable positive statements. These might include things such as, “During the coming week, I will make a sincere effort to stop interrupting my wife when she’s speaking to me” or “By next weekend, I will plan a date night with my husband where we can talk in a quiet restaurant away from the kids.”

Achieving these goals and seeing the positive results can then feed your belief that larger, more global changes are possible if you keep working toward them.

Compassion toward yourself can also go a long way. If you’re on a diet and find yourself face-down in Belgian chocolate one day, that doesn’t have to mean your diet is a permanent failure. Be kind to yourself, look at what triggered your slip, take a break if needed and then get back on track when you’re ready.

And don’t be ashamed to ask for backup. Enlist the help of your partner, a friend or relative, a therapist or personal coach to achieve your goals. Life is short. Commit yourself to achieving your dreams, starting today.