Good Relations – Mary Jo Rapini, MEd, LPC, Speaker, Psychologist, and Author – Building Healthy, Happy Relationships

Mary Jo Rapini, MEd, LPC, speaker, psychologist, and author, talks about her important work helping people build healthy relationships.

Rapini is a noted psychotherapist who specializes in intimacy, sexual issues, and relationships. Rapini is a celebrated author, lecturer, and frequent television personality. Rapini's stated mission is to help others build healthy relationships, and that process begins with the relationship we have with ourselves.

Rapini talks about her extensive work with individuals and couples dealing with sexual issues, physical and emotional. She discusses some of the major issues that many people deal with, and how these problems can catch up to us quickly. While pills work for some people, grief and emotional issues/stressors can promote feelings of anger and depression

that may not be solved by pills. Therapy may be the answer for those who are suffering.

Rapini discusses marriage and emotional maturity, and the reasons why some marriages have trouble. She talks about cognitive behavioral therapy and its importance to her therapy practice. She outlines some of the many social problems that lead people to therapy. As she states, in order for therapy to work, the person must be curious and want

to change. She speaks about the importance of awareness, and how we must approach therapy with a self-awareness about what we want to accomplish.

The psychotherapist discusses the importance of having purposeful relationships, and the many hallmarks of healthy relationships. What's really important is not so much how you communicate but that you do communicate. She explains that it is important to not compare your marriage to others, and that each partner of the relationship will have their own desires and needs. She talks about the importance of sharing, keeping balance, and accommodating for your partner, and other issues that are critical to maintaining a good, healthy relationship. And she discusses how she deals with many of these issues one on one with her clients.