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.

Yet, in spite of our fears, we all long for deep emotional connection. Sharing our real feelings with someone in a non-threatening way is often a good way to establish that deep emotional connection with them. For those of you who are ready to take that risk, I’ve put together 6 tips that will assist you in that process.

6 Tips for Emotional Intimacy in Relationships:

1. Share your feelings instead of your opinions. No two people who are honest with each other ever see the world the same way. Everyone has their own opinion, based on their background and their life experience. Opinions are what separate us and feelings are what bring us together.

2. Use ‘I-messages’ instead of ‘you-messages.’ When you say “You should feel like I do,” or “You should do what I believe is right,” your partner will hear it as control and shut you out of their heart. But when you say “I feel sad” or “I feel excited,” your partner is much more likely to open their heart and want to hear you.

3. Ask open ended questions and listen without interrupting. Healthy relationships require that both partners really listen to each other. If your partner starts to talk and you interrupt them or make them wrong in some way, they’ll probably shut you out.

4. Paraphrase back what you heard with feeling words. For example “When you talk about your job, you sound frustrated and overwhelmed.” Then let your partner tell you whether you heard them accurately or not. Paraphrasing back what you hear helps you both to slow down and really understand each other.

5. Treat everything your partner shares with you as sacred ground! Never, ever use your partner’s vulnerable feelings against them when you’re angry. Your relationship could be permanently damaged by doing that. When someone shares their heart with you, always treat their feelings with the utmost love and respect!

6. Be sure to share your joy and laughter as well as your challenges. No one wants to be serious all the time. If you want a deep connection, it’s very important to share the good things that happen to you and the funny things that make you laugh. Laughing together can be just as bonding as crying.

Leave a Comment or a Question

I’d love to hear your comments and questions.

Have you experienced anything like this in your life?

What would you like to hear more about?

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More Information

For more information, you may also want to read:

The Verbally Abusive Relationship

21 Questions to Avoid a Painful Divorce

A Marriage Counselor’s 10 Best Tips

Help the Man You Love Express His Feelings

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

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.

When I started to feel better in my own life, I took what I had learned and began practicing it with my clients in therapy. It’s been a wonderful experience. My ‘JoyIAm Process’ has worked beautifully with my clients. They blossom into happy, healthy people when they practice it.

Unresolved Emotional Pain

So let’s get to your question— “Why do I have anxiety or depression?” You have symptoms of anxiety or depression because there was hurt or pain sometime in your life and you never learned healthy ways to express and release your feelings.

You see, your unresolved emotional pain is stored in your unconscious mind. When you don’t know how to release it in healthy ways, it creates problems in your life. Sometimes it shows up as anger or negative behavior, and sometimes it creates symptoms of anxiety or depression.

Have you ever had a really good cry and then woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and rejuvenated? That’s because expressing your feelings actually releases your emotional pain, so that your body doesn’t have to store it up anymore.

It feels absolutely wonderful when you can let go of some of your emotional baggage! It makes you feel like laughing and having fun again.

Our Psychological History

But to go a little deeper with answering your question about why you have anxiety or depression, it helps to understand that Psychology is still a new science.

Freud, who was the Father of Psychology, only practiced in the early 1900s. Your parents and grandparents who were growing up then didn’t have the knowledge and awareness that we take for granted today. No one taught them how to be healthy and happy.

So even if they were well-intentioned, they simply didn’t have the tools that they needed to help you become emotionally healthy. They were probably struggling with their own emotional issues when they were raising you.

The problem is that children don’t just magically know how to be healthy and happy. They need nurturing, guidance, support and validation. They need to be shown what to do when they’re hurt or angry.

When no one guides and supports a child through the challenges of life, the child has to survive the best way they can. What often happens is that a child’s feelings become repressed and those unresolved feelings develop into anxiety or depression later in life.

It’s Not Your Fault!

But I’ve got some great news for you today! There are actually several things I want to share with you that are wonderful news for anyone who’s struggling with anxiety or depression.

The first thing I want you to know is that it’s not your fault that you have anxiety or depression. Your parents didn’t teach you the skills you needed when you were young, because the knowledge simply wasn’t available back then.

The second thing I know you’ll want to hear is that releasing your anxiety or depression doesn’t require a college degree. It’s not rocket science. I’ve taught it to people of all ages, in all walks of life and I’ve found that all of them can learn it if they really want to.

You Can Decrease Your Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression!

So here’s the best news of all; If you learn some simple skills for emotional health and happiness and you practice them with patience and persistence, I know that you can decrease your anxiety or depression.

You probably want to know how I know that, and I don’t blame you at all! I’d want to know too, if I was you. I know that my JoyIAm Process works because of all the grateful people I’ve worked over the years.

It’s pretty wonderful to hear all the amazing stories of people who have practiced the JoyIAm Process. Their lives are very different today than they once were!

There’s a great quote by JK Rowling that I’d like to leave you with today. It says, “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

Leave Your Comments and Questions

I’m going to share more videos with you soon that answer more of your questions. Until then, I’d really love to hear your response to what we’ve discussed today.

Was this video helpful to you? Is there anything you’d like to hear more about?

Please do leave your comments and questions in the space below. I’ll be reading every one of them.

Sign Up Now!

Then, if you’re not already on my email list, please do sign up before you leave today. You can Sign Up Now in the blue and white box in the right column of this page. When you do, I’ll send you more goodies and surprises in the future!

More Information:

For more information, you may also want to read some of my other posts:

The Shocking Statistics on Anxiety and Depression

The JoyIAm Integrated Psychotherapy Process

50 Long-Term Benefits of the JoyIAm Process

Why the JoyIAm Process Far Surpasses Medications

How to Practice the JoyIAm Process

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

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!

Recently I made a video called ‘Finding Hope’ where I described a simple experiment that anyone can do to begin bringing your dreams into reality. If you haven’t already watched that, I hope you’ll go back and watch it soon.

It’ll give you some great tips for how to use your unconscious mind to manifest your dreams into reality. There’s also a great story in it about transforming your fear and getting what you want, simply through utilizing the power of your own imagination.

Transforming Fear

Transforming fear is actually the essence of all healing. Fear is what keeps us trapped in old patterns that block us from getting what we really want. Whether it’s a fear of vulnerability, or a fear of judgment or a fear of rejection or abandonment, everyone struggles with some type of fear in their life.

I love the quote by the great poet Hafiz that says “Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you living in better conditions.” In other words, anyone can live their life by fear, but it takes courage to move past your fear and create a life that you really want.

The important thing to know about fear is that fear always originates from old hurts, traumas or disappointments in your life. Sometimes those hurts or traumas happened so long ago, that you don’t even remember them anymore, but fear is always learned.

The good news is that you can always transform your fear, by simply being willing to release the feelings from the traumas or disappointments that you’ve experienced in your life. When you’re willing to do the healing work it takes to transform your fear, you can definitely become confident and empowered again.

Changing Negative Thoughts, Beliefs and Expectations

Fear is a very sneaky feeling. It’s not usually as obvious and easy to identify as hurt or sadness or anger. One of the most common ways fear shows up in your life is through your negative thoughts. The problem with having negative thoughts is that too often you accept them as the truth and you live your life expecting them to come true.

I’m sure you’ve heard the statement “Our thoughts become our reality.” When you find yourself thinking “I’ll never get what I want,” it’s important to realize that this is a negative thought and that it’s not based on the truth; it’s just your fear from the hurts or disappointments you’ve experienced in the past that you’ve now projected onto your future.

When you realize that your fear thought is not really true, you can decide to change it and replace it with a positive thought that will be more supportive for getting what you want. Instead of telling yourself, “I’ll never get what I want,” you could replace it with something you want to believe. For example, maybe you want to tell yourself, “Miracles are happening in my life every day.”

Powerful Exercises that Make it Fun and Easy

There’s a fun little exercise you can use to change your negative thoughts, beliefs and expectations. The first step is just to pay attention to the thoughts you are telling yourself every day.

When you notice a negative thought, imagine that your negative thought is written across your computer screen. Then all you have to do is hit the ‘Delete’ button and replace it with a positive thought you want to think. Just make it a game that’s fun to play and before long your life will start changing.

If it’s hard for you to trust and believe that good things could actually come to you, there’s also a powerful phrase I heard recently that can help you get past that self-doubt. The phrase just says, “I love the thought that…,” and then you fill in the blank with whatever you want.

For example you could say, “I love the thought that miracles are happening in my life every day!” Or “I love the thought that no matter how good my life is, it can always get better!”

The Law of Attraction

Have you heard about the Law of Attraction? A lot of people are talking about it these days. The Law of Attraction is simply a universal law that says that our minds are like magnets. Whatever we focus on, we draw into our lives. If we focus on drama and pain, we attract more pain and drama, but if we focus on love and joy, we naturally attract more love and joy.

One of the easiest ways to work with the Law of Attraction is simply to focus on what you already have in your life that you’re truly grateful for. When you focus on the things you’re grateful for, you naturally draw more of those good things into your life.

It’s very important when you’re practicing gratitude to really get the feeling of what you are thankful for. Don’t just say “I’m grateful for my health, my family and my job,” because that’s too general and matter of fact. Think of something you really appreciate from your heart and be specific.

For example you could say, “The flowers in our garden are so incredibly beautiful this year! I’m so thankful for their beauty and all of the incredible colors!” Or you might say, “I’m so thankful that my friend stopped by to visit me this afternoon. For the first time in months, we finally had time to really laugh and talk.” Do you see how there’s much more positive energy in being grateful for specific things that you actually enjoy?

Practicing gratitude on a regular basis helps you live in a higher energy vibration. That higher energy vibration is exactly what’s necessary to believe that you can have what you want and to bring your dreams into reality.

Keeping the Faith

Probably the most challenging part of creating a better life for yourself is keeping the faith, while your dreams are in the process of manifesting. The challenge with keeping our faith is that we don’t get to decide when or how our dreams will become reality. The Higher Power is in charge of how it all happens. Sometimes it takes longer than we prefer and we lose patience and trust that it will ever come true.

If you’ve been hurt a lot in your life, it’s easy to give up during this part of the process and slip back into the old negative thinking that says “I tried that Law of Attraction stuff and it didn’t work.” The truth is NOT that it doesn’t work, it’s that we lose patience and trust and we give up before we get there.

Rabindranath Tagore has a beautiful quote about faith that I really love. He said “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark.” In other words faith is keeping ourselves in that higher energy vibration where we’re happy in advance for the good we know is coming, because we trust and believe that it will actually arrive.

If keeping the faith is challenging for you, just be kind and patient with yourself. Remember that your fear is just the result of the hurt and pain in your past. The easiest way to overcome fear is with kindness and gentleness. When you find yourself wanting to give up and go back to your old negative thinking, write a few pages in your journal about what this situation reminds you of, until you can release the fear and let it go.

When you feel peaceful again, gently go back to changing your negative thoughts to positive and focusing on the positive thoughts that will support your dream. Over time, this process gets easier and easier because your positive thinking becomes a habit that replaces your old negative habits. 

Receiving Your Miracle

It’s so wonderful when the miracle arrives and your dreams finally come true! That’s my favorite part of the process! It’s probably your favorite part too! Often it happens in ways you would never expect, like coincidences that happen out of the blue and bring you exactly what you’ve been imagining or praying for.

When you receive your miracle, just be careful not to sabotage it in any way. Remember to be grateful and acknowledge your good and keep focusing on the new tools that you’ve learned.

Keep in mind that even when you get what you want, there are always more challenges that come over time. Life is an on-going growth process. If we want to have healthy, happy lives, we have to be willing to keep learning and growing throughout our lives.

Leave a Comment or a Question

I’d love to hear your comments and questions.

Have you ever experienced anything like this in your life?

What would you like to hear more about?

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More Information:

For more information, you may also want to read some of Kari’s other posts:

Finding Hope in Challenging Times

Letting Go of the Past

10 Tips for Creating a Better Life for Yourself

Stay Stress-Free and Light-Hearted During Tough Times

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

 
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?”

I’m going to answer that question today, and I’m also going to give you some tools you can use immediately that can help you to find hope in difficult  times.

Transforming Hopelessness

Usually when we’re feeling hopeless and powerless in our lives, it’s because we’ve given away our power. We’re letting someone else tell us what we should do, or how we should think or how we should live our lives.

Sometimes we’ve been letting other people direct our lives for so long that we don’t even realize that we could own our own power, and listen to our own inner voice and take positive action on what feels right and true inside ourselves.

We’re going to discuss an experiment today for transforming hopelessness and powerlessness into hope and faith. This experiment is very dear to my heart, because it’s made a huge difference in my own life. I’ll tell you a story about that in a little while but first let me tell you about how the experiment works. It involves using the power of your own unconscious minds to bring about positive changes in your life.

I learned about this experiment many years ago and I’ve done it many times through the years and experienced some amazing results. I’ve also suggested it to many other people and watched it make positive changes in their lives, too, so I know that it can be very powerful.

Try a Simple Experiment!

So let’s talk about how to do the experiment. First of all, you have to be willing to spend 10 minutes a day for the next 30 days and keep a daily record of your results. You don’t have to believe that the experiment will work. You just need to keep an open mind. When your fears and doubts come up, which they will, you’re just going to practice setting them aside and replacing them with positive thoughts that will support your experiment.

On the first day, you’re simply going to write a list of things you might want in your life. Maybe you want better self-esteem, or maybe you want better relationships, or maybe what you want is a better job or a better financial situation. Just write anything that comes to your mind—don’t censor anything. No one is going to read this list but you.

On the second day, you’re going to pick the one thing on your list that is most important to you right now. When you’ve made your choice, I’d like you to write a few paragraphs about what it would be like if you already had what you want.

Use all of your 5 senses when you write these paragraphs, including what you would see, how you would feel, and what you would be hearing, or smelling or tasting when you imagine already having what you want. Make this fun! It’s not a chore, it’s actually a very fun experiment.

Listening to Your Inner Self

So for the next 28 days, I’d like for you to read what you’ve written every morning for 10 minutes and as you read, just imagine what it would be like if what you want was already true in your life. Again, it’s very important to have fun with this. Don’t make it work—let it be fun and playful!

After you’ve imagined your dream already true in your life, you’re simply going to ask your Inner Self 2 questions:

1. What actions could I do today to move forward towards fulfilling this dream?
2. What thoughts could I think today that would support bringing my dream into reality?

It’s good to jot down any answers that come to you that day. Remember this is your own experiment—it’s not for anyone else to read—just you, so you can write any answers that come.

Then, before you complete each day, say a prayer in your own mind, and ask for Divine help and guidance to bring your dream into reality.

So that’s the whole experiment! The rest of it is simply keeping track of the dates and times when you see real life changes happen that are related to what you’ve been imagining.

My Story

Let me tell you a story of something that happened many years ago when I did this experiment. I was a young single mother at the time and I had 2 small children to raise on my own. My ex-husband didn’t have a job for a couple of years after we were divorced so he didn’t pay me child support during those years.

I was very dedicated to being a good mother back then, so that was my primary focus in life, but because of my financial situation, I was also working part time. I did hypnosis at that time for people who wanted to stop smoking, lose weight or improve their self-esteem. The problem was that I wasn’t getting enough business in my small town, and without child support coming in, I wasn’t able to pay all of my bills.

After a few months of not being able to pay my house payment, I received a notice that my house was going into foreclosure. As you can imagine, that was very frightening and I really didn’t know what to do. I spent a week feeling very worried and scared and trying to come up with a solution, but there was nothing I could think of to resolve the situation.

With my house in foreclosure, I couldn’t apply for a loan. I didn’t know anyone back then who could loan me the money I needed to get caught up on my mortgage. But fortunately, when I talked to a dear friend of mine about my situation, she suggested that I try the experiment that I just described to you.

Nothing to Lose!

I had nothing to lose at the time, so I decided to give it a try. It wasn’t hard to choose what I wanted to focus on. More than anything, I really wanted to be able to keep my home, so that my little girls and I would have a safe place to live. My little girls had already had their lives turned upside down with the divorce and I didn’t want them to have any more trauma than they already experienced.

To do the experiment, I wrote a paragraph about walking into my bank and handing the lady at the counter a check for the full amount I owed on my mortgage and then walking out. I pictured it in living detail, with how it would really look and feel when I was at the bank paying off my bill. Then I read the paragraph every day and simply imagined it coming true.

When I asked myself daily what actions I could take to bring the dream into reality, I had some trouble, because nothing I did seemed to be working, but I decided to keep doing the experiment anyway.

Choosing positive thoughts to support my dream was something I could do, however, so I worked very hard on that. One of the positive thoughts I chose to affirm was that I knew there was a way for me to save my house, even though I didn’t know what it was. I also chose to affirm that there really is a power greater than me that can bring about miracles in my life.

Miracles Do Happen!

I kept imagining what I wanted for close to a month with no apparent results, but then one afternoon my clients cancelled at the last minute and I decided to stop by a health food store on my way home, to pick up a product for my youngest daughter’s allergies.

While I was at the health food store, I ran into a friend of mine who introduced me to another friend of his who was also shopping there. The three of us sat down and talked about what was going on in our lives and then somehow we got into a deep discussion about hypnosis and some of the amazing things it can do.

I was completely surprised with what happened a couple days later. The person I met at the health food store called to schedule a hypnosis session with me. When he arrived for his session, he told me that he had thought it over and he decided that he wanted to pay me for full year of hypnosis sessions in advance. The interesting thing was that the amount he wanted to pay me just happened to be the exact amount I needed to pay off my mortgage.

Soon after that, my dream came true just like I had pictured it. I walked into the bank and handed the lady at the counter a check for the full amount I owed on my mortgage and I walked out.

To this day, I still remember the feeling of leaving the bank that morning and walking out into the cool air outside and just feeling completely exhilarated! It felt like a miracle to me! It also showed me loud and clear just how powerful my creative mind really was.

Try it for Your Self!

If you’re going through a difficult time right now, I really hope you’ll try the experiment and keep a record of your results. None of us can guarantee the results we’ll get when we imagine our dreams coming true, but there’s always something positive that happens.

When we get clear about what we really want and we imagine it already true in our lives and then follow our inner guidance, miracles can happen. It’s pretty amazing to see how powerful we really are and how intelligent our inner guidance can actually be.

Leave a Comment or a Question

I’d love to hear your comments and questions.

Have you ever experienced anything like this in your life?

What would you like to hear more about?

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More Information:

For more information, you may also want to read some of Kari’s other posts:

10 Tips for Creating a Better Life for Yourself

Stay Stress-Free and Light-Hearted During Tough Times

10 Tips to Reduce Your Stress With Change

Overcome Depression Naturally

Conquer Anxiety Through Personal Power

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

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. 

Before we get started, I just want to say that I didn’t always know the wisdom that I’m sharing with you today. I spent many years of my life struggling with relationships and always wondering what I was doing wrong.

The reason that I’m a good psychotherapist today is that I remember very well how it feels to be struggling. Everything that I teach you, I had to learn the hard way just like you, by falling down over and over and then picking myself up again and starting over.

I saw an interesting quote recently that said relationships are the only class we take in life where we get the test first and the lessons come later.  That’s very sad to say, but it’s often true. We spend many years in school preparing for our lives and our careers, but how many years do we spend preparing for healthy relationships?

What is a Healthy Relationship?

So let me answer the question, “What is a healthy relationship?” A healthy relationship is one where you feel safe and comfortable be your real self and you still feel loved, valued and supported. I’m not talking just about a romantic relationship—I’m talking about any relationship, whether it’s with a partner, a family member or with a friend.

In a healthy relationship, there is trust, honesty, kindness, openness, vulnerability and support. There is also fun, laughter, joy, silliness and happy shared experiences.

All of us want healthy relationships, so why is it so hard to actually create them and sustain them over time? I believe that our inability for having healthy, happy relationships with others is very much tied to the relationship we have with ourselves. When we work to develop a better relationship with ourselves, our relationships with others will naturally blossom.

Know and Love Yourself First

So the first key for having healthy relationships is knowing and loving yourself. If you want to have healthy relationships with others, it’s very important that you know who you really are and that you truly love yourself.

Knowing who you really are involves knowing what you feel and being able to express your feelings in healthy, positive ways. When you don’t recognize your own feelings, or you don’t express them honestly and directly, they tend to come out in negative, hurtful ways that damage the people around you.

Loving yourself is about valuing and appreciating who you really are, instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you. It’s also about feeling empowered to speak your truth in the world and setting clear expectations and boundaries for how you want to be treated.

When you love yourself, you get clear in our own heart that you simply won’t tolerate control, manipulation or abuse in your life. Fortunately, it’s much easier for other people to respect you and treat you with love and kindness when you have clear expectations and boundaries for how you want to be treated.

Practice Healthy Communication and Win/Win Conflict Resolution

The second key for having healthy relationships follows very closely behind the first. It’s practicing healthy communication and win/win conflict resolution.

Healthy communication starts with really listening and trying to understand what someone else is feeling and why they feel what they do. When you can put yourself in their shoes and understand their feelings, it’s much easier to talk to them with kindness and respect.

Healthy communication also involves using ‘I messages’ rather than ‘you messages.’ Rather than saying, “You’re a jerk and you really hurt me,” you say, “When you tell me you’ll be home for dinner and you don’t call to let me know that something came up, I feel very hurt and frustrated.”

Win/win conflict resolution is still a new idea to a lot of people in our culture, because most of us grew up in situations where there was always a winner and a loser. Win/win conflict resolution involves both people in a relationship really listening to each other and taking the time to understand each other’s feelings and needs. Then, when you really understand your partner’s feelings and needs, you can brainstorm with each other to find a solution that’s good for both of you.

The key for win/win conflict resolution is to continue communicating and really listening to your partner until you both feel loved, valued and understood and you have found a solution that feels good to both of you.

Treat People the Way You Want to be Treated

The third key for having healthy relationships is treating the people you care about the way you want to be treated. Most of us like to be valued and treated with love and kindness, yet in our crazy busy world, sometimes we forget to think about how we are treating the people we love the most.

For example, it’s very easy to slip into old patterns, and use manipulation or control to get someone you love to do what you want them to do. But if you take the time to put yourself in that person’s shoes and think of how they must be feeling, you realize that manipulation and control doesn’t feel good, to you or to them.

Relationships feel much better when everyone has free choice. When you treat each other as equal human beings who all have important feelings and needs, you can communicate respectfully with each other and work together to support each other’s goals and dreams.

If you want to treat others the way you want to be treated it’s also important to let go of all criticism in your relationship and replace the criticism with validating, supporting and complimenting each other. Criticism never feels good, even when people say it’s constructive criticism. But doesn’t it feel great when someone takes the time to validate you or compliment you for who you are, or for something you did or said?

If you want to have healthy relationships, it’s important to remember that the people around you need love and support and kindness too. When you treat others the way you want to be treated, everything in your life starts to change for the better.

Rewards and Payoffs of Healthy Relationships

If you are just learning about how to have a healthy relationship, it’s very important to be kind and gentle with yourself in the process. Healthy relationships take work and effort. You won’t learn everything you need to know in a day. It takes time and patience to develop the skills you need.

The good news is that healthy relationships are worth every moment of time and effort you put into them. There’s nothing that feels better than connecting heart-to-heart with someone and feeling loved, supported and connected at a deep level.

Leave a Comment or a Question

I’d love to hear your comments and questions.

Do you struggle with finding or sustaining healthy relationships in your life?

What would you like to hear more about?

Sign Up Today to Receive Kari’s Future Blog Posts

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More Information

For more information, you may also want to read:

Creating Emotional Intimacy

How Can I Find Healthy, Supportive Relationships?

Replace Isolation and Loneliness with Healthy Connections

The Surprising Health Benefits of Laughter

The Verbally Abusive Relationship

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

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!

Who is Dr. Lissa Rankin?

Lissa Rankin, MD is an OB/GYN physician, author, keynote speaker, consultant to health care visionaries, professional artist, and founder of the women’s health and wellness community OwningPink.com. Discouraged by the broken, patriarchal health care system, she left her medical practice in 2007 only to realize that you can quit your job, but you can’t quit your calling.

This epiphany launched her on a journey of discovery that led her to become a leader in the field of mind/body medicine, which she blogs about at OwningPink.com and is writing about in her third book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013).

Mind-Body Healing

Dr. Rankin teaches both patients and health care professionals how to “make the body ripe for miracles” by healing the mind and being healthy in all aspects of life. She promotes healthy behaviors like good nutrition, exercise, and adequate sleep, but also encourages health and authenticity in relationships, work, creative expression, spirituality, sexuality, finances, and living environment.

She is leading a revolution to feminize how health care is received and delivered by encouraging collaboration, fostering self-healing and reconnecting health care and spirituality. She empowers patients to tap into the mind’s power to heal the body and encourages women not to settle for being merely well, but to strive for living vital, joyful, authentic lives full of “mojo.” When not spreading the word, Dr. Rankin “chills out,” paints, does yoga and hikes.

Leave a Comment or a Question

I’d love to hear your comments and questions.

What are your experiences with health and healing?

What do you find most beneficial for bringing healing into your life?

What would you like to hear more about?

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More Information:

For more information, you may also want to read some of Kari’s other posts:

How to Heal Your Body, Mind and Spirit

Unresolved Emotions Cause Long-Term Health Problems

Replace Loneliness and Isolation with Healthy Connections

Laughter as Medicine

Hearing Your Angel’s Guidance

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

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.

The real truth is that it’s not always easy to let go. Sometimes the things that happen to you imprint you so deeply that you carry them with you for years. When someone tells you to let go and move on, it sounds like you should be able to just make a decision in your mind and do it.

But emotions are not quite that simple. You can make a decision not to talk about your hurts and wounds anymore, but letting go emotionally goes deeper than that. In order to truly let go on an emotional level, you have to feel and express the feelings that you were never able to express when the hurt or trauma happened.

Fortunately, you don’t have to talk directly to the person who hurt you or traumatized you, but it is important to think of what you would want to say to that person. Then find a way to say what you need to say, whether you do it with a counselor, a friend or in your own journal.

How to Practice Letting Go

One way to practice letting go at home is to write a letter to the person who hurt you. Don’t worry! You’re not going to send the letter. You’re just writing it as an exercise in letting go.

When you write the letter, it’s important to say what you wish you could have said when the hurt or trauma originally occurred. It helps to let your emotions come to the surface and say anything you want to say. Don’t hold anything back. It’s good to cry if you need to cry, or express the anger that you’ve been holding back.

The only rule you always need to remember in doing this process is to NEVER EVER hurt yourself or anyone else when you’re expressing your feelings. Even though you may want to hurt someone to let them know how deeply they hurt you, it never actually helps to do that. It only creates more problems in your life.

You see, expressing your feelings is for one purpose, and one purpose only. That purpose is to set you free so that you can finally move forward and become the person you want to be. It’s like taking off the chains that have held you back and kept you from being who you know you could be in the world.

Natural Transformation

There’s something wonderful that happens when you honestly express your true feelings.  What happens is that you start to realize deep down inside that the negative beliefs you took on about yourself when the hurt or trauma occurred were never actually true.

Maybe what happened to you made you believe you were not important, or not good enough, or not worth loving. None of those beliefs are actually true, but if the hurt or trauma you experienced left you believing them, you may still be carrying those negative beliefs around.

It’s pretty exciting to watch what happens when people express and release their emotional pain. They generally start to realize at a deep level that they really are good enough, and smart enough, and capable enough to have the life they really want.

How Do I Become The Person I Want to Be?

So let’s move on to the second part of the question. That question was “How do I become the person I want to be?

Becoming the person you want to be is kind of a ‘catch-up game.’ I don’t mean ketchup like the sauce we put on hamburgers, but catching up, like we often have to do when we get behind on something.

A lot of us got behind in our lives on becoming the person we really want to be, because we never learned the skills and tools we needed for being a healthy, happy person. If you watched some of my earlier videos, you know that it’s not your fault that you never learned those skills and tools.

You see, your parents probably never taught you the skills and tools for being healthy and happy because no one ever taught them. The field of psychology didn’t actually discover the tools until the last 20 or 30 years, so not many people know them still today.

I won’t be able to teach you everything you need to know to be healthy and happy today, but I can tell you some road signs to watch for along the way.

Road Sign #1: Inner Peace

The first road sign to watch for is inner peace. When you have really expressed your feelings and let go on an emotional level, you’ll feel calm and peaceful inside. It feels pretty wonderful when you get to that feeling.

Have you ever played Monopoly? Feeling inner peace is like the card you get in the monopoly game that says “Get out of jail FREE.” It feels comfortable and relaxed, like someone just gave you a new lease on life.

Road Sign #2: Self-Love

The next road sign I think is important on the road to emotional health is self-love. There are many ways to love yourself. If you’ve read my JoyIAm Blog, you may have already seen some of them.

The one I always teach people for starters is just to look into the mirror and say kind, loving words to yourself in the mirror. You can start with “I love you just the way you are.” It’s good to say that one over and over until you really start to believe it. That statement is pretty powerful all by itself.

Then when you really start to feel the love, it’s fun to also tell yourself other loving messages, like “I believe in you,” or “I’m always going to be here for you.” Or you could say “You’re handsome” or “You’re beautiful,” or anything else you’ve always wished other people would say to you.

The mirror process is very powerful. Just keep practicing it over time. It’ll give you some amazing results with loving yourself.

Road Sign #3: Changing Negative Thoughts

The last road sign we’re going to talk about today is changing your negative thoughts to positive. That can be as simple as saying “It’s a beautiful day today,” instead of “Do I really have to go to work today?” Or maybe saying “I really appreciate you taking the time to help me” instead of “Can’t you ever do anything right?”

When you start actually turning your negative thoughts to positive and speaking more positively on a regular basis, you’ll know you are well on your way on the road to emotional health.

The road to emotional health is very fun and uplifting. It gets more exciting the further you go. I really hope you’ll decide to follow it, if you’re not already there. It’ll make such a huge difference in your life!

Leave Your Comments and Questions

I’m going to share more videos with you soon that answer more of your questions. Until then, I’d really love to hear your response to what we’ve discussed today.

Was this video helpful to you? Is there anything you’d like to hear more about?

Please do leave your comments and questions in the space below. I’ll be reading every one of them.

Sign Up Now!

Then, if you’re not already on my email list, please do sign up before you leave today. You can Sign Up Now in the blue and white box in the right column of this page. When you do, I’ll send you more goodies and surprises in the future!

More Information:

For more information, you may also want to read some of my other posts:

The Shocking Statistics on Anxiety and Depression

The JoyIAm Integrated Psychotherapy Process

50 Long-Term Benefits of the JoyIAm Process

Why the JoyIAm Process Far Surpasses Medications

How to Practice the JoyIAm Process

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

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.

Reason #1: You Haven’t Found a Healing Process that Really Works

You see, talk-therapy, by itself, won’t help you actually overcome your anxiety or depression. If you really want to get better, you have to be willing to go deeper.

I regularly meet people in my psychotherapy practice who have been going to counseling for many years, but nothing has really changed. Often that’s because what they’re doing in counseling is just talking about their problems.

There are a lot of wonderful types of therapy available today that help you understand your issues and make positive changes in your life. All of them are helpful in one way or another.

I’ve found, however, that if you want to actually decrease your symptoms of anxiety or depression, you have to go deeper and work with the emotional pain in your unconscious mind.

Reason #2: You Have an Addiction that’s Blocking Your Progress

Your addiction could be to drugs, alcohol, food, love, sex, gambling, work, shopping or even video games. It really doesn’t matter what you’re addicted to, because any addiction will ALWAYS numb out your real feelings.

Keep in mind that numbing your feelings is why you have the addiction. Addictions distract you from your emotional pain and make it easier to avoid dealing with your real issues.

Reason #3: You’re Not Getting in Touch with Your Deepest Feelings

If you’ve been working on issues that aren’t bringing about positive results in your life, you probably need to look a little deeper.  Maybe there are feelings you’ve stored deep inside yourself that need to be brought to the surface and aired out.

Healing anxiety or depression is like pealing an onion; when you take off one layer of issues, the next one has a way of showing up. A lot of times what we think is the problem is actually just covering what the real issue is.

Are There Issues You Don’t Want to Face?

Sometimes there are issues in our lives that we really don’t want to deal with. I know that when I first started working on my own issues, years ago, I was very happy to work on the hurt or anger that I had been feeling. It felt great to finally be able to release those feelings.

But one day a friend of mine suggested that maybe I needed to work on setting boundaries in my life. I hardly knew what boundaries were back then, and I was very uncomfortable with learning to set them.

Even though my friend kept reminding me, still it took quite a while before I was willing to face my own resistance. But surprisingly, when I finally worked through the deeper feelings that were blocking me, it was very freeing! For the first time in my life, I actually started to feel light and happy as a person.

The Hard Work Always Pays Off!

I’m so grateful today that I chose to face the issues that I needed to face back then. When you’re in the growth process, you never realize all of the amazing results that will come about in your life as a result of doing your inner work. The transformation you experience ripples out into every part of your life.

It was actually by working through my deeper issues that I developed my JoyIAm Process that has now helped so many other people transform their lives. The JoyIAm Process been an amazing blessing to me and to them.

Become the Person You Want to Be

Before we finish today, I want you to know that my JoyIAm Process can help you overcome the issues in your life, too, when you’re ready to do that.

It’s a simple, streamlined process that will help you get in touch with what you really need to deal with, and teach you how to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.

The good news is that when you deal with real issues, everything in your life will take a turn for the better! It’s so unbelievably wonderful to watch the changes that happen when people decide to actually transform their lives.

There’s a great quote by the great psychologist Carl Jung that says, “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”

Leave Your Comments and Questions

I’m going to share more videos with you soon that answer more of your questions. Until then, I’d really love to hear your response to what we’ve discussed today.

Was this video helpful to you? Is there anything you’d like to hear more about?

Please do leave your comments and questions in the space below. I’ll be reading every one of them.

Sign Up Now!

Then, if you’re not already on my email list, please do sign up before you leave today. You can Sign Up Now in the blue and white box in the right column of this page. When you do, I’ll send you more goodies and surprises in the future!

More Information:

For more information, you may also want to read some of my other posts:

The Shocking Statistics on Anxiety and Depression

The JoyIAm Integrated Psychotherapy Process

50 Long-Term Benefits of the JoyIAm Process

Why the JoyIAm Process Far Surpasses Medications

How to Practice the JoyIAm Process

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books

When we find ourselves in difficult, challenging times, we can learn to turn it all around by choosing to focus on what we really want. Yet, in my work as a psychotherapist, often I find that people are not aware of the tremendous power that is available to them.

Because of that lack of awareness, I’ve put together some information that you can utilize to make your own life better. If you practice these principals even for a month, you will see amazing changes happening in your life!

The Law  of Attraction

Several yeas ago there was a movie called ‘The Secret’ that went viral all over the world, discussing something called ‘The Law of Attraction.’ The Law of Attraction’ is a law of the Universe that explains how we create our own reality through our thoughts and beliefs. In essence, the ‘Law of Attraction’ is quite simple. It simply says:

Defining Manifesting and Prosperity

What is Manifesting? The term ‘manifest’ simply means using your natural power and intention to bring your inner dreams into outer reality. We all manifest constantly, whether we are aware of it or not.

What is Prosperity? Prosperity is having the very best that life has to offer you in every area of your life, from good self esteem, to work that you enjoy, to a beautiful home, a loving family, dear friends, laughter and fun, and money to do the things you enjoy.

How can I manifest more prosperity? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? The good news is that there are simple skills you can utilize every day to create more prosperity in your life. If you take five to ten minutes every day to practice these skills, your prosperity will definitely begin to improve!

10 Tips for Manifesting Prosperity in Your Life

1. Acknowledge God as your Source. Whatever your spiritual beliefs are, simply affirm that there is a Higher Power who wants you to be happy and successful.

2. Be sincerely thankful for the good you already have in your life. Take a moment to be grateful for all that you already have and all that you have received in your life.

3. Get clear about what you don’t want. Make a list of the things you complain about. Get clear with yourself about what you don’t want in your life for the future.

4. Decide what you do want. What would you like to have in your life to replace your current situation? Be very clear and very specific about what you do want!

5. Think of how your life would be better if you already had what you wanted. List all the wonderful benefits you would receive if you got what you wanted.

6. Imagine having what you want, as if it was already true right now! Utilize all your five senses. Hold the focus for at least 90 seconds, just basking in the sheer joy of already having exactly what you want.

7. Change your negative thoughts and beliefs to positive ones! Don’t buy into the negative collective consciousness belief structure. Affirm that you are worthy of happiness and success and that the Higher Power can overcome anything!

8. Let the Universe be in charge of manifesting your dreams! When you try to take control and do things your way, life feels like a struggle. But when you let the Higher Power take charge, it can manifest miracles that you could never do on your own!

9. Listen to your intuition, and follow it! You intuition is your inner voice telling you what you can do right now to begin bringing your dreams into reality.

10. Be grateful in advance for the answer to your prayers. Being grateful in advance helps you create an attitude of happiness and expectation that your good is on its way. Then you can relax and have fun, while allowing your good to arrive in ways you would have never dreamed possible before.

Leave a Comment or a Question

I’d love to hear your comments and questions.

Have you experienced anything like this in your life?

What would you like to hear more about?

Sign Up Today to Receive Kari’s Future Blog Posts

If you have enjoyed this post, you can sign up today to receive Kari’s future posts in your email. Just fill in your name and e-mail address in the blue and white box on the upper right column above Kari’s picture and we’ll be very happy to notify you when the next post is ready!

More Information:

For more information, you may also want to read some of Kari’s other posts:

The Surprising Health Benefits of Laughter

Stay Stress-Free and Light-Hearted During Tough Times

10 Tips to Reduce Your Stress With Change

Overcome Depression Naturally

Conquer Anxiety Through Personal Power

100 Best Psychology/Self-Help Books