This is often what clients who seek my help ask me in a first session. Because they have never learned to manage and learn from their pain, they want to avoid it, eliminate it – find a way to hide from it.
The problem is that they have been unsuccessfully hiding from their pain for years by abandoning themselves – by staying focused in their head rather than their body, hoping that if they avoid feeling their feelings, the feelings will go away. They have been judging their feelings and turning to various addictions for the same reason.
When trouble comes, which it inevitably does, they intensify their avoidance of their feelings. Continue reading Are You Hiding?
Pamela writes this question for my webinar on food addiction:
“I am a 22-yr old female weighing 220 lbs with a height of 5.9″. I am very much over-weight and I know this. However the motivation to get fit is not there. I usually tell myself that I will get up early in the morning and work out but that never seems to work out. I see most of my friends modeling and doing things that I would feel too ashamed to do at my size but want to. I really want to get back down to size but don’t know where to start. Can you help me please?”
Pamela, here is what you need to ask yourself: “What is more important to me than getting back down to size?”
Is it more important to you to use food to avoid your painful feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness or heartache? Eating addictively is a form of self-abandonment. You are using food to fill the emptiness within that can only be filled with love – love for yourself. Until you want to learn to love yourself, you will not be motivated to get fit. Continue reading Overweight and Miserable
Are you seeking the formula for attracting the partner of your dreams? Here it is!
Rochelle asks:
“If I assess myself quite objectively, if I know my accomplishments as well as my drawbacks, is there a chance to be loved by a worthy solid and wholesome man – the one I feel I`d be happy with? By the one who is objectively stronger and wiser and kinder? `Cause it seems to me that I`m not worthy of him, because I know really bad sides of myself such as envy, unhealthy jealousy, pride, cowardice… And I am still trying to do away with them and do not know how much time it will take to get rid of them for it is a life-time process.”
Rochelle, in order to find the man of your dreams, you need to become the person you are seeking – the strong, wise and kind person you want to partner with. We all have positive and negative qualities, because we all have an incredibly wonderful essence as well as a wounded ego self. Continue reading Finding The Partner Of My Dreams
Do you believe that feelings of abandonment are coming from others abandoning you – or do they come from self-abandonment?
When we think about abandonment, we generally think about being left by someone. But abandonment is about leaving someone we are responsible for – a child or an old or sick person who cannot take care of themselves and whom we have agreed to take care of.
As a healthy adult, another adult can leave you, but they cannot abandon you, since they likely have not agreed to be responsible for you.
It might seem strange to you, but, as a healthy adult, when you feel abandoned by someone, it is not actually about them. It is about having abandoned yourself.
Most people don’t think about how they abandon themselves because they don’t recognize that they are responsible for themselves – physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, relationally and organizationally. Continue reading Are You Abandoning Yourself?
Are you contemplating leaving your partner because you have fallen out of love? Read this first!
We have only to look at the divorce rate—41% for first marriages, 60% for second marriages, and a whopping 73% for third marriages (http://www.divorcerate.org/)—to know that people often fall out of love with their spouse. Why do so many people fall out of love?
Don, 37 and Megan, 32, fell passionately ‘in love’ soon after meeting. They had fiery chemistry and loved being together. Now, two years into their marriage, the passion is gone and they both believe they made a mistake. But did they? Continue reading Have You Fallen Out of Love With Your Partner?
A client of mine asked, “Is there such a thing as healthy caretaking?” Here is the answer!
I was trained by my mother and grandmother to be a caretaker. The messages were: “Your feelings are not important to us at all. You need to learn to completely ignore your own feelings and instead take care of our feelings. In return for this, we will occasionally give you some approval for being a good girl.”
I learned my lessons well. I learned to stay in my head rather than my heart and soul so that I wouldn’t be aware of my own feelings. I learned to be very vigilant regarding others’ feelings and to do all I could to be what they wanted me to be. I completely lost touch with myself. Continue reading Is There Such A Thing As Healthy Caretaking?
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