Archives For Emotional Healing
Intimacy isn’t just sexuality! True intimacy begins with deep emotional connection and then blossoms out into friendship or intimate sexuality, depending on whom you’re connecting with.
It can be just as satisfying to connect deeply with a dear friend
as it is to connect with an intimate partner,
when you’re both sharing your true self with each other.
The word intimacy can be broken down into four parts ‘in to me see.’ That means in order to have true intimacy you have to allow someone to see who you really are. People often have fears of emotional intimacy. Allowing someone to see who you really are means taking the risk of being criticized, judged or rejected.
Recently someone wrote and asked me the question, “Why do I have anxiety and depression?” I’m going to answer that question today. I’m also going to tell you what you can do to decrease your symptoms of anxiety or depression.
Overcoming Anxiety and Depression
Before I start, just let me say that I’ve been a psychotherapist for over 30 years, but I wasn’t always a therapist. I started out being very anxious and depressed, just like some of you who are watching today.
My most important lessons about anxiety and depression didn’t come out of the psychology books that I studied—they came from my own experience of struggling to overcome my own anxiety and depression.
Have you ever had a fear that no matter what you do, you’ll never get what you really want? You’re not alone! I talk to people every day who have similar fears.
One of my favorite parts about being a psychotherapist is that I get to be part of people’s transformation. It’s very exciting to witness people who were once anxious or depressed when they begin to empower themselves and take back the control of their lives.
I dearly love what happens when my clients start getting what they’ve always wanted in their lives. It’s pretty amazing to be present when that happens! I’m going to talk today about what it takes to get what you really want, so stay tuned!
Life can be very overwhelming at times! When you’ve tried everything you know and nothing seems to be working, sometimes it’s very hard to find hope and faith inside.
I received a question on my blog recently from a sweet woman who’s experiencing a challenging time. She asked “How can I find hope when everything around me is falling apart?”
Relationships are the school of life. They give us the opportunity to learn valuable life lessons that can help us to become healthier, happier people.
In my work as a psychotherapist, almost everyone who walks through the doors of my office is struggling with a relationship in their life. One question that people often ask me is “What is a healthy relationship?” I’m going to answer that question today and I’m also going to share 3 important keys to creating healthy, happy relationships in your life. Continue Reading…
A few months ago I wrote a blog called “How to Heal Your Body, Mind and Spirit,” which included a book review of Dr. Lissa Rankin’s recent book “Mind Over Medicine.”
Today I’ve got a special treat for you. Dr. Rankin has given a TED Talk that I want to share with you. In it, she presents wonderful news for all of us about the fascinating connection between our minds and bodies.
The talk is just 18 minutes long. Find a time when you won’t be interrupted and then sit back, relax and ENJOY! I know you’re going to love it!
Did you know that symptoms of anxiety and depression are the result of unresolved hurts and traumas from the past? I’ve found in my psychotherapy practice that when people regularly practice letting go of the past, their symptoms naturally decrease.
A lot of people have trouble letting go of the past. One of my readers asked me a question about that recently. The question was, “How do I let go of past hurts and traumas and become the person I want to be?”
That’s actually two questions, so I’m going to answer them one at a time. The first part is “How do I let go of past hurts and traumas?” That’s a big one, isn’t it?
Letting Go Isn’t Always Easy
Most of you have been told at one time or another to let go of the past and move forward. You’ve probably heard people say, “The past is past. You can’t do anything about that now. Just let go of it!” Does that sound familiar to you?
The problem is, if it was as easy to let go as they make it sound, you probably would have done it already.
Someone wrote me recently and asked, “Why doesn’t my anxiety or depression ever get better?” That’s a million dollar question, isn’t it?
I’m going to answer that question today and I’m also going to tell you what you can do to overcome your anxiety or depression, so stay tuned!
So let’s get to your question: Why doesn’t my anxiety and depression ever get better?
What I’ve found in my psychotherapy practice is that there are generally 3 reasons why you’re not getting better.
If you were like most children when you grew up, you probably thought your family was ‘normal.’ That’s because children believe that whatever they experience is ‘normal.’ They have no frame of reference to compare it against.
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I was definitely one of those children. I thought all fathers were angry and abusive. I thought everyone had older siblings who teased them unmercifully and laughed at their expense. I thought it was common to cry all the time and never be comforted or protected. It never occurred to me that my family was dysfunctional at the time. I thought that there was just something very wrong with me.
If you want to become a healthy, happy person, it’s important to learn about choosing the ‘growth path.’ The ‘growth path’ offers you a life of learning and growing, rather than just tolerating the life you already have and surviving.
Of course, the ‘growth path’ is filled with obstacles and challenges, but fortunately, you’ll find that behind every obstacle is a valuable life lesson that will help you become more authentically your real self.
So how can you follow the ‘growth path’ when things feel challenging and overwhelming around you? Great question! You see, life is full of choices. Every choice we make takes us closer to our happiness and fulfillment or further away from it.
Continue Reading…
As a psychotherapist, I regularly hear clients tell me they don’t want to cry. Many clients believe that by simply talking about the challenges in their lives, things will improve somehow.
When I hear a client say she (or he) doesn’t want to cry, I know my job for the moment is to help her feel safe and comfortable. I want to help her open up and express her feelings, in whatever way those feelings need to be expressed.
But even though I can’t tell my client what she (or he) is not ready to hear, I know in my heart that when I help her express her true feelings, her honest expression will almost always lead to laughter.
All of us have experienced hurt feelings at some point in our lives. Generally it’s something someone says or does that just leaves us feeling hurt, misunderstood, unappreciated or unloved.
Getting through those difficult feelings and getting back to feeling happy again can be very challenging. Sometimes they stay with us for days, or weeks or months, even though we really want to be free of them.
What Causes Hurt Feelings?
When someone says or does something that hurts us, our first impulse is generally to look at what’s wrong with the person who hurt us. We often think, “How could he have said the things he said? What kind of person is he (or she) to behave like that?”
Independence Day, on the Fourth of July, is a US holiday that commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, which declared our freedom and independence from Great Britain.
In the US, July 4th is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, family reunions and political speeches and ceremonies that celebrate the history, government and traditions of the United States of America.
Celebrating Freedom
There are many types of freedom including religious and political freedom, freedom of speech and the acceptance of our Basic Human Rights. Many of us who have grown up with these basic freedoms tend to take them for granted. We assume that everyone in the world has the same inherent freedoms that we do.
The JoyIAm Process is an alternative treatment for stress, anxiety, depression or poor self esteem that brings you back in touch with your true, authentic self. It utilizes your body’s natural way of releasing the emotional pain from difficult experiences in your life.
The JoyIAm Process involves learning to identify, express and release your feelings, so that you naturally come back to love and peace inside yourself. Usually it begins with getting in touch with tears or anger that you’ve been holding back and often it ends with laughing and having fun.
Gratitude is a very important part of being a healthy, happy person. When we learn to be genuinely grateful, it opens the door for more happiness and prosperity to come into our lives.
It’s important to be grateful not just for the basic things in our lives, like health, family and job; but also for the more specific moments that are really special to us, like a good talk with a dear friend, a new inspiring insight or a refreshing walk on a beautiful day.
Gratitude for Our Challenges
Being thankful for what we’ve already received is wonderful, of course, but often we forget to also be grateful for our challenges. Our challenges are the learning tools that help us grow into bigger, better human beings.
In Emotional Healing and recovery work, emotionally healthy men often feel like they’re getting a ‘bad rap,’ because all they tend to hear about are the negative, hurtful things other men have done.
Because men have not been encouraged to express their feelings in our culture, many men in the past have acted out their emotional pain in unhealthy ways, creating pain and suffering for their families and friends. But fortunately there are millions of good men in the world, who truly care about the world and the contribution they are making.
It’s important to appreciate these emotionally healthy men in our lives. They make a huge difference to all of us everyday by contributing their kindness and wisdom.
What is a ‘Good Man?’
Women often talk about a ‘good man’ like he’s a rare commodity. It’s pretty common to hear surprise in a woman’s voice when she talks about someone she knows who’s a really ‘good man!’
Women love to complain that their husbands or partners never express their feelings. Often women get angry because they think that their partners don’t have feelings and don’t really care.
In my work as a psychotherapist, I help men learn how to express their feelings every day. I know from many years of experience that men do have feelings, and that when they feel safe and supported, they can definitely learn to express them.
Healthy relationships do require that men and women learn to discuss their feelings with each other. I believe that we, as women, need to help our partners overcome the old programming that says real men don’t show their feelings.
A dear friend was asking me about forgiveness the other day. She asked ‘What’s wrong with me that I can’t forgive people? Even though I’ve tried to forgive them many times, why do I just keep thinking about what happened again and again?”
As we talked, I realized that this was a conversation that you might like to hear, too. Nowadays, everyone is writing and talking about the need for forgiveness, but why is it so hard to do?
What is Forgiveness?
The Encarta Dictionary defines forgiveness as “the act of pardoning somebody for a mistake or wrongdoing.” Forgiveness is not condoning a wrong that has been done to you. It’s simply letting go of the emotional pain of what happened so that you are free to move forward in your life without your past still holding you back and dragging you down.
One of the things I love to do is to share books that I find inspiring with people that I care about. That’s why I have a special treat for you today.
It’s a beautiful book that just came out last week by a non-conventional physician named Dr. Lissa Rankin, called Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself
Getting off of Medications
Dr. Lissa Rankin started by healing her own body. When she began her research, she was taking 7 medications, getting weekly allergy shots, and she had undergone surgery on her cervix.
Yet, despite all the medical interventions, her blood pressure was still out of control, her allergies were so bad she could hardly leave her home, her heartbeat was skipping and her cervix was still showing precancerous changes, even after her surgery. She described her condition as a “hot mess on the way to an early heart attack,” and says that her doctors didn’t know what to do with her.
We live in an interesting world today. We have telephones, televisions, computers, internet, e-mail, cell phones, texting and ipads, but we still don’t know how to connect heart-to-heart with each other.
With all of these modern methods of communication, we should be more connected than we have ever been, yet many of us still feel lonely and isolated.
Social Isolation and Loneliness
The experience of social isolation or loneliness comes from not feeling safe to share your real self with others. This pattern often originates from difficult experiences in your life, such as going through a divorce, the death of a loved one or moving to a new area.
Feelings of loneliness and social isolation can also originate from negative experiences or abandonment in past relationships. Sometimes we feel lonely or isolated when we are carrying huge responsibilities in our lives or when we think we are too busy to pursue friendships.
Abuse is one of the most obvious components of many dysfunctional families, whether it is verbal, physical, sexual or emotional abuse.
Abuse in childhood is like a vampire that steals a child’s feelings of self worth or self esteem and makes him or her vulnerable to negativity and abuse later in life.
Defining Verbal, Physical, Sexual and Emotional Abuse
Let’s define each of the types of abuse before we continue:
I attended a Counseling Training for Attitudinal Healing last weekend. As I listened to the speakers at the training and what they offered, I thought of you, the lovely readers on my blog. I thought that you might enjoy hearing more about Attitudinal Healing too.
Dr. Jerry Jampolsky, a psychiatrist from Tiburon, California, founded the International Center for Attitudinal Healing (ICAH) in 1975. The center was based on the belief that LOVE is the most powerful healing force in the world.
Attitudinal Healing
Attitudinal Healing is a self-healing method that allows us to remove self-imposed blocks. It focuses on letting go of our fearful attitudes, like our judgments of ourselves and others, that hinder our experience of love, peace and happiness in our lives.
As a psychotherapist, I’ve found that it’s very important to support my clients in developing a spiritual connection. When you’re working to heal the past, there are always days where you really need help and guidance and there isn’t anyone available on the human level to give you exactly what you need.
You can develop your spiritual connection in many ways. Praying for help and guidance always works great, in whatever spiritual tradition you are in.
One of my favorite ways to pray for spiritual help is to ask my angels for help and guidance. Remembering to ask my angels for help has gotten me though many challenging times in my life. Hearing my angel’s guidance always feels like an incredible blessing to me.
Who Are the Angels?
Angels are messengers of God’s incredible, unconditional love for us. They are sent by God to help us and guide us whenever we remember to ask for their help.
No matter where we grew up, who are parents were, who we’ve been in relationship with or who we’ve worked for, all of us have had some version of ‘The Legend of the Lousy Bastard’ in our lives.
‘That lousy bastard’ undoubtedly hurt us, betrayed us, used us, abused us, overpowered us or abandoned us in the middle of some horrific time or situation in our lives.
In our personal legend, ‘that bastard’ generally didn’t listen, didn’t care, didn’t try, wasn’t honest, wasn’t fair, wasn’t trustworthy or wasn’t kind. He or she didn’t validate us, acknowledge our right to be human, or give us the love and respect we so desperately needed at that time.
Our ‘lousy bastard’ may have been male or female, young or old, rich or poor, smart or stupid, but whoever or whatever he or she was in the world, he or she obviously never treated us the way we deserved to be treated.
People who have anxiety disorder often have sudden and repeated periods of fear that last for several minutes. These symptoms are called panic attacks. Panic attacks happen when someone has a fear of disaster or losing control, even when there is no real danger.
Panic attacks often have very severe physical symptoms. Anyone who has experienced a panic attack knows how frightening and overwhelming they can be.
Symptoms of Panic Disorder
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (http://www.nimh.nih.gov), people with panic disorder may have:
- Sudden and repeated attacks of fear
- A feeling of being out of control during a panic attack
- An intense worry about when the next attack will happen
- A fear or avoidance of places where panic attacks have occurred in the past
- Physical symptoms during an attack, such as a pounding or racing heart, sweating, breathing problems, weakness or dizziness, feeling hot or a cold chill, tingly or numb hands, chest pain, or stomach pain.
There was a wonderful show on Oprah’s network on her ‘Super Soul Sunday’ show recently. It featured Dr. Brene Brown discussing her newest book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.
Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past twelve years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. Her groundbreaking research has been featured on PBS, NPR, CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Brené’s 2010 TEDxHouston talk, ‘The Power of Vulnerability’, is one of the top ten most viewed TED talks on TED.com, with approximately 6 million viewers. Additionally, Brené gave the closing talk at the 2012 TED conference where she talked about shame, courage, and innovation.
Continue Reading…
Finding a safe place to express your honest feelings can sometimes be challenging.
You can do it through finding a counselor or psychotherapist that you trust, through developing a deep friendship with someone in your life, or you can learn to express your feelings in your own journal.
Any way of releasing your feelings is good, so long as you don’t express them in negative ways that hurt someone else. But when no one else is available to support you, the one thing you can always do is write in your own journal.
Your Personal Journal
The good news about writing in your own personal journal is that you can literally say anything you want. You don’t have to censor what you say at all. Whether you write in a spiral notebook or on your computer, your personal journal is for you alone.
Do you feel stressed and overwhelmed with your busy life? Do you struggle just to keep up and do what absolutely has to be done? Do you sometimes feel stressed, anxious or depressed?
Having some stress, anxiety or depression in your life is normal, but when these symptoms become more prominent, they’re often related to unresolved issues.
The truth is we all want more joy in our lives, as well as more laughter, more inner peace, more love, more friends and more prosperity. The more stress, anxiety and depression we have, the less of those positive experiences we’re likely to experience.
Healing yourself emotionally is undoubtedly the biggest gift you could ever give to yourself. It frees you from the past and allows you to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.
When you heal the emotional issues you’ve stored up for a lifetime, little by little, everything in your life naturally transforms!
The Value and Importance of Healing Your Emotions
Dr. Candace B. Pert, the author of Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, writes about the importance of our emotions to our overall health and well-being. Continue Reading…
Love is magical! Love can open doors in your life, it can take down walls that have been there for many years, it can heal wounded hearts. Love is like sunshine; it brings light into the dark places inside of you.
Love is talked about, written about and sung about more than any other word in our language. Yet, wherever we look, there still seems to be a lack of love in the world.
Longing for Love
When I was young, I had an intense longing for love. Even though I didn’t understand the true meaning of love, somehow I knew that love was the missing piece in my life.
Laughter is a powerful healing force and the most inexpensive medicine you will ever find! Laughter can strengthen your immune system, increase your intellectual performance and improve your cardiovascular flexibility.
Laughter is also an instant vacation. It can help you see the world from a broader perspective, expand your creativity and allow you to feel more deeply connected to the people you love. Laughter helps you release your stress, anxiety or depression and puts you back into the flow of life.
The Many Benefits of Laughter
In 1979, Norman Cousins wrote a book called “The Anatomy of an Illness” where he described fighting a life-threatening illness through humor. His remarkable story of triumph is still inspirational today.
Negativity is very common in our 21st century way of life. Although it is incredibly debilitating and destructive, negative thinking has become our culture’s everyday norm.
Negative people can be very difficult and challenging to be around. They seem to notice only the negative aspects of anything that is going on around them. They also point out the negative possibilities of anything that could change things for the better. They even joke sarcastically about other people who are making an effort to improve themselves.
Negative energy has become so common that many people think it’s just the way life is. Often it doesn’t even occur to them that their own negativity is keeping them stuck right where they are, with no way out and no hope for a better future.
For many years traditional medicine has believed that our genetics are the primary cause of our physical health. In the 1990s, however, scientific research found that our emotions play at least an equal or possibly even a greater role in determining whether we will be faced with illnesses like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, fibromyalgia, obesity, alcoholism, fractures or chronic pain.
Your Emotions Affect Your Health
One of the best research studies available involving the effect of emotions on physical health is the ACE study, which was conducted by the Federal Centers for Disease Control, where researchers studied people who had an “adverse childhood experience” before the age of 18. (www.acestudy.org)
“Adverse childhood experiences” included recurrent physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; growing up in a dysfunctional family where someone was clinically depressed, alcoholic, mentally ill or suicidal; or in a situation where the parents were separated, divorced, or taken away from the child in some way.
I was doing therapy with a beautiful young woman recently when she looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked “What happened to my happily ever after?”
I was struck with the intensity of her emotional pain, but at the same time I realized how commonplace her feelings are.
Most of us grew up hearing fairy tales about how everything will work out someday. For little girls, we believe that someday our prince will come and everything will be beautiful after that. For boys, it’s expecting that someday you’ll be that knight in shining armor and save the day for your beautiful princess, and then you’ll both “live happily ever after.”
When I was 17 years old, I was asked to give a speech at my high school graduation on the topic of my choice. The topic I chose was “What makes people happy?” I chose that topic because at that time, I wondered if anyone was really happy or if everyone was faking happiness like I was.
I quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thorough, Abraham Lincoln and many great philosophers who wrote about happiness down through the ages, but none of them answered my own burning questions. I had no idea at that time that pursuing my own happiness and helping others find happiness would become my life’s work.
Positive Psychology and the Happiness Frenzy
According to Psychology Today (www.psychologytoday.com), there is a ‘happiness frenzy’ going on in bookstores today. Carlin Flora reports that in 2008, there were 4,000 books published on happiness, while only 50 books were released on that topic in 2000.
As we start the New Year, many people are thinking about their New Year’s resolutions. Are you going to focus on getting healthy and working out at the gym? Do you want to be a better parent and spend more quality time with your kids?
New Year’s resolutions are good, but as we all know, they often fall by the wayside when life comes along and throws obstacles in our way. It’s very easy to let them all go and go back to our old negative behaviors. Too often we find ourselves sitting in front of the TV instead of exercising and creating that slim, healthy body we had hoped for.
