Do you ever find yourself thinking things like:

• I’d better give her a call or she will think I don’t like her.
• If I do what I want to do he will be mad.
• If I don’t explain myself they will think I don’t care.
• If I wear the same outfit again they will think less of me.

And so on….

Do you automatically adjust your behavior to try to have some control over what others think of you – trying to get approval and avoid disapproval?

Has a connection with a personal source of spiritual Guidance eluded you? Discover how powerful your intention is in raising your frequency high enough to access your spiritual Guidance.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

I received the following email from someone who had read one of my articles:

“One topic that I feel that I haven’t seen covered much is the issue of body-image related stress, anxiety, and insecurity, and how to fight it. We all age. Personally, I am 27 years old, and rapidly going from a handsome full-headed young man to a completely bald individual in a very looks-dependent society. This process has been devastating to my mental well being in the last 3 years. However much I tell myself that I am in control of how I feel about myself, I cannot rid myself of the fear of never finding the right woman because of a lack of initial attraction on their part.”

There are two ways that we can define our worth: externally or internally. As long as your worth is defined by your looks or your performance, aging will create stress. Telling yourself that you are in control of how you feel about yourself is not going to change the fact that you are defining your worth externally.

Half of good parenting is being there for your children, and the other half is being a role model of personal responsibility for your own feelings and needs. Discover how important it is to your children for you to love yourself.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah. Are you are ready to discover loving and joyful parenting? Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome/parenting_help.html, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Leah called me for a phone session because she was menopausal and was having a very hard time losing weight. She had gained 12 pounds and was unhappy about it.

“Everything I used to do doesn’t work anymore,” she told me. “I used to be able to cut back on my food for a few days or a week and lose 5 pounds. Now nothing happens. Even with exercise. I don’t know what to do.”

All of us, as we were growing up, learned a myriad of ways to try to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. One of the ways we might have learned is to lie.

We all had many opportunities to learn this way of protecting ourselves, which is a form of manipulation/control:

Most anxiety is caused by various forms of self-abandonment. Discover today how you may be causing your anxiety and how the practice of Inner Bonding® is the ultimate way to emotional freedom.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

We all want to be respected by others. And, we would all love to have control over whether or not others treat us respectfully. Is this realistic?

Nigel, one of my clients, has a lot of confusion about this issue. He believes that people, especially his wife and children, “should” be respectful to him, and he gets very angry when they treat him disrespectfully – which they often do.

What Nigel has failed to understand  – which is what led him to seek my help – is that others are often a mirror of how we treat ourselves.

Much of my work with Nigel has centered around becoming aware of the many ways he disrespects himself and what would be respectful to himself.

Emotionally:

• He often judges his own feelings, discounting his feelings and telling himself that he “shouldn’t” feel this way.
• He often ignores his feelings, staying focused in his head instead of his body, and turning to addictions, such as sugar and TV to numb his feelings.
• He sees himself as a victim of others’ choices, making others responsible for his feelings rather than taking responsibility for his own pain and joy.

Physically:

Do you live your life with your heart mostly open or mostly closed? Do you spend most of your time protecting against rejection or being taken advantage of, or most of your time open to sharing love with others?

As children, many people had very heartbreaking experiences that caused them to close their heart. What experiences led to you closing your heart?

* Various forms of physical and/or sexual abuse
* Various forms of emotional abuse, such as criticism, judgment, blame, ridicule, or sarcasm
* Being neglected, ignored, discounted, unseen
* Being engulfed and smothered by a parent – pulled on and used to fill up their emptiness
* Rejection by parents, siblings, and/or peers
* Loss of a parent through divorce or death
* Loss of a beloved sibling, friend, or relative
* Physical defects that created limitation

As children, when you experienced any of these and other very challenging situations, and there was no one there to lovingly help you through the pain, the heartbreak may have been too intense for you to manage and you might have closed your heart to survive. You may have learned to be in your head rather than your heart.

However, now, as adults, keeping your heart closed has many negative consequences. While it was necessary for your survival as a child, now it is causing you a lot of pain. As adults, we all need to learn to lovingly manage our heartbreak without closing down.

What Happens Now When You Keep Your Heart Closed?