One of my grandmothers died when I was 17, just days before I left for college. Her funeral was a powerful event in my life, an ending to one part of my life as I moved into a different one. The gathering after the graveside services was held at my mother’s home where I had previously lived. The guests trickled in after a 45 minute drive from the cemetery, and almost all of them brought alcohol with them. One set of in-laws brought a full shoe box of liquor bottles. My grandmother had been married to an Irishman for 30 years, and anyone with strong Irish genes will testify to the abundance of alcohol at most traditional Irish and Irish-American wakes. Yet as I watched all of this alcohol being brought in, my teenage self was able to see a clear irony: My grandmother had been an alcoholic as was her late husband. He died from his drinking; she recovered. She was sober for the entirety of my memory, but that does not erase all the years in which she drank. Even at that young age, it seemed horribly inappropriate to me to commemorate the life of an alcoholic with an abundance of alcohol.

Likewise, every time Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” comes on the radio, I cringe and turn the station. Just those first lyrics of “They tried to make me go to rehab but I said, ‘No, no, no‘” make me shudder. I don’t understand why radio stations feel it’s appropriate to play a song about an individual refusing to go to rehab when the singer herself died at age 27 from alcohol poisoning likely due to an unintentional overdose. While I’ve never liked the original song or this remake, I do understand it was popular in the general culture. However, it seems to be the song of hers that is most played on the radio almost four years after her death; I only rarely hear “You know I’m No Good” and “Back to Black.” Somehow I doubt that the song is being played as reminder to listeners of the consequences of overdrinking. I often wonder, though, if I’m the only one who sees the irony in "Rehab" being the primary song of hers that is still played.

Our society’s relationship to alcohol is a strange one indeed. We know it’s a problem, and yet we refuse to see the problem right when it’s in front of us. We continue to celebrate a singer who died from an alcohol overdose by frequently playing a song about refusing therapeutic treatment for alcohol addiction. While drunk driving rates have been cut in half in the past 35 years, almost half of all driving fatalities still involve alcohol. I know of too many adults who, despite being educated about the dangers of drunk driving, continue to drive under the influence. I hope that our society will someday start to understand the discordance between our words and our actions around alcohol use and abuse. By ignoring alcohol-related problems, we compound the issues rather than helping solve them.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(spoiler alert and trigger alert regarding the death of a child)

My kids and I continue to work our way through Star Trek: The Next Generation. We’re now watching season 7. In episode 7, Counselor Deanna Troi’s mother Lwaxana Troi is aboard the Enterprise as a diplomat assisting with communications with a telepathic race. In the process of working with this new species, Lwaxana begins to have debilitating fatigue and headaches. The medical doctors and others on the crew suspect that her overuse of her telepathic abilities with this new species has drained her. Eventually, Lwaxana collapses and enters what we would describe as a coma.

However, the truth about Lwaxana’s collapse was far more dastardly than just exhaustion. One of the members of the telepathic species, Maques, believes that there is a part of Lwaxana’s mind that she has shut down. As Deanna and Commander Will Riker investigate the past to see what Lwaxana might be repressing, they find a great number of missing years in Lwaxana’s journals, supporting Maques’ theory that there is something major that Lwaxana is hiding. Eventually through a mind meld of sorts, Deanna is able to help her mother’s subconscious process the truth about a situation that was so painful that she’d had to deeply repress it until it festered and caused her body to collapse. The trauma involved was that Lwaxana’s oldest daughter Kestra (Deanna’s older sister whom she’d never previously known about) died in a tragic accident when Deanna was only a baby.  Lwaxana blamed herself for the death of her elder daughter. The pain of losing her child was so excruciating that Lwaxana tried to block it all out so that she could avoid and forget the pain.  Eventually that mental and emotional pain caught up with her and shut down her body.

This isn't science fiction. While the details of the case are very much fictional, the reality of how the body, mind and spirit interact is true.  It is entirely possible for us to store our pain in our mind and our body eventually leading to our body’s collapse. For most of us this process doesn't result in a spontaneous coma. Instead, we have unexplained back pain, fibromyalgia, the flu or cancer among many other health issues. I am in no way denying that all of these conditions have physical, biological roots as well. The flu, for instance, is a virus. However, why is it that with two people in the same family with the same diet one might get the flu every year while the other never gets sick? Clearly genetics may play a role, but stress and other life experiences also condition our bodies to be predisposed to illness or health.

As someone who has experienced the unexpected and tragic death of a child, I know firsthand that it is something that is so traumatic that it could eventually destroy our health if we do not thoroughly process our grief about the situation. The pain that a child dying causes is unlike any other pain in the world.  It’s excruciating. Every day the bereaved parents wake up to feeling that part of their future has been stolen from them. Their empty arms may literally ache from the absence of their child, and they almost certainly will feel the pain of heartache in their chests. In my case, it took thirteen years of work in order to fully process the pain that came from my daughter’s death, in part because I thought I had already processed it all. I didn't realize that there were subconscious memories stored in my body that I still needed to release. Once I finally released those traumatic emotions, I finally found true peace around my daughter’s death.

When we face health challenges, it is important that we work not just to eliminate the pathogens or the pain but that we also relieve and release the emotional pain that is often behind our poor health. This is not always something straightforward and easy. It sometimes takes time to find the roots of our pain or illness and work through them. This process is entirely possible, but oftentimes it requires the assistance of a professional such as me to clarify the issues behind the problems. Lwaxana needed the assistance of Maques and Deanna to go into her mind and find her issues. While I definitely can’t meld with anyone’s mind, I can speak with higher powers who help me find issues stored within the bodies of clients so that they can release whatever is making them ill. I've gone through this process myself; it is what helped me to regain my health after many medical professionals had given up on me. Working with the mind-body-spirit connection can provide incredible healing for us in the real world just as it did for Lwaxana Troi in the fiction of the 24th century.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

If you want to know God, enjoy the company of lovers. ~Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

I have an account with many boards on Pinterest that I use for collecting work related articles and pictures.  Because I have boards about relationships and spirituality, Pinterest will often suggest pins to me that are about traditional Christian marriage values.  While I can see where the algorithm is getting the idea these articles might be of interest to me, it couldn't be further from the truth in pinpointing my beliefs.

Lately I’ve been seeing quite a few pins that are variations on the idea that “True Love Always Waits.”  Someone in the Universe must be encouraging me to do some deep healing because this is a very touchy (no pun intended) issue for me based on my personal history. I was raised Catholic and attended an all-girls' Catholic school from grades 6-12. As is required by Catholic teachings, we learned that sex before marriage was a sin. We also learned that boys who pushed us for sex rather than waiting didn't really love us. As young women, we were not expected to actually want to have sex except under pressure from our dates.  These ideas are wrong on so many levels, and in many cases, they are psychologically damaging.

To start with, I do not believe that sex before marriage is a sin.  In my view, sex is an intimate connection between two people. I believe it is sacred, and I believe that it can bring us closer to God.  However, I also believe it can be a lot of fun and can help bond a couple regardless of their marital status. For many people, marriage is no more than a legal piece of paper. It in no way reflects the commitment and love shared by the couple in most cases.  It’s merely a formality for the sake of society.

The idea that sex belongs in marriage began for two different reasons. The first was a male dominated culture that wanted to ensure that the bride was a virgin who would only bear the fruit of her husband’s loins. The second was an attempt to prevent the spread of STDs.  The first is obviously irrelevant in today’s age of genetic testing. The second is still a legitimate concern, though we now have condoms to help with it.

When I was in high school taking a required love and marriage class in my senior year, the concept of sexual compatibility was not even remotely discussed. Sex was presented as having a magic formula of one man and one woman. With a little foreplay thrown in to satisfy the woman, that’s all that a couple needed to have a successful sexual relationship.  The reality of that couldn't be further from the truth. Sex between two amazing people who love each other can still be truly awful if the chemistry is not there or if their sexual preferences are not in alignment with each other. Getting stuck in an unhappy marriage without sexual compatibility is a realistic situation when one believes that sex should not happen until after marriage.  No amount of love or therapy can fix a situation like this.

Another topic that was very much omitted in high school and in our society in general is the idea of women wanting sex: That’s completely healthy and normal. However, if you pay attention to magazine article titles while standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, you’ll quickly notice that our society functions on a misguided belief that all women have low sex drives and all men have high sex drives.  Women aren't supposed to want sex in the same way men do. That means that for women who do want to have sex but are partnered with a man who wants to wait, they can end up feeling like misfits, sexual freaks of nature or undesirable women.

Another common line is that men only want sex for pleasure's sake but that they don’t really love women if they have sex before marriage.  Men wanting sex absolutely doesn't mean they don’t love the women involved.  It means they are human.  When men are wanting sex alone with no emotional involvement or commitment, women may find that situation to be problematic. However, there are a lot of variations between the two extremes.  Finding that fine line of knowing he loves you and wants you for more than just your body is hard, especially when one is young.  However, it’s entirely possible that a man may want to have sex with a woman before marriage to show his love and develop intimacy.

Then there’s that horrible idiom, “Why buy a cow when you can get milk for free?” This line implies that if a woman gives a man sex before marriage, he’ll never marry her.  Aside from the terrible idea of comparing women to farm animals, this saying denigrates both men and women.  Women are not objects to be bought or sold.  Not all men are unable to control their sexual urges nor are they out to just use women for sex.  Many do have good intentions at heart.

In today’s modern world, marriage is not always a viable or practical option. When my ex and I were dating, we were in high school and college; marrying would have meant that we would have lost our health insurance policies through our parents' employers. I have heard of other situations where elderly widows and widowers can’t afford to remarry because they would lose their late spouse’s pension and therefore would not be able to support themselves even meagerly in retirement.  I know another couple who has chosen not to marry because it would cost them tax benefits on the two homes they own, one under each of their names.  Sadly, finances are an important part of survival in our world.

In my own relationship with my ex-husband, the “true love waits” idea was a huge problem for us.  We both grew up Catholic; my ex was far more strict in his moral beliefs than I was, though.  (Ironically, he’s now an atheist.)  He came from a family where sexuality wasn't ever a topic of discussion except to say how wrong sex was before marriage.  Like most young humans, my ex deeply absorbed those views that were being presented to him.  The problem arose when my ex and I had been dating for far too many years to remain celibate (5+ years before we married). There’s no magic number of how long any couple should or shouldn't wait. However, in our case, not having sex actually became very damaging to our relationship after several years even though all those Catholic tales swore that having sex before marriage was the damaging thing. My ex-husband eventually realized much later that his previous views were damaging to our relationship, and he regretted them. His apology during marriage therapy gave me an amazing amount of relief, though it didn't happen soon enough to prevent a great deal of pain in our relationship twenty years earlier.

So what do I teach my children? I have taught them that sex is intimate and powerful. It can be amazing in the right circumstances but it also can be emotionally painful and damaging if it happens in the wrong circumstances. My general belief is that if you’re not willing to deal with the logical consequences of sex (getting pregnant, a realistic risk since no birth control method aside from complete abstinence is 100% reliable), then you shouldn't be having sex. It’s just basic logic to me. Once you’re in a place in your life where you could support and raise a child, then you should wait to have sex with someone who truly cares about you and respects you. That person should see you as a whole person, not just a body to provide physical pleasure. Sex should be a part of an intimate relationship with your partner, an act that brings you closer together regardless of your marital status.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

This past week I was battling strain B of influenza.  It was not much of a battle though: I succumbed to hanging out on the couch reading and watching tv for the most part.  My one son was also home sick with it for the first two days so he guided the Netflix viewing on those days.

On my own on Wednesday evening, I watched Stonehearst Asylum which I had put into my queue some time ago.  Netflix has it categorized with a lot of horror movies, but I would describe it more as a mild psychological thriller.  I don't do horror movies, and I don't handle movies with a lot of violence or suspense, but I had no issues with most of this movie.

The movie begins in 1899 with a male Oxford University medical school lecturer presenting cases of medical illnesses to his students. The attitudes presented towards women and “hysteria,” a now-extinct description of emotional issues arising from the uterus, are horrifying but unfortunately accurate for beliefs of the time.  At the end of the scene, the doctor proclaims, "Thus, I caution you all, gentlemen, as you embark on your careers as alienists [psychiatrists], believe nothing that you hear and only one half of what you see."  Sadly, that’s not a 19th century attitude.  It’s one that many doctors, not just psychiatrists, still hold today.

As the movie unfolds, the main character of Dr. Edward Newgate meets a woman in the Stonehearst Asylum who is clearly suffering from what we would call PTSD but who is not mentally ill at a level that requires institutionalization.  One of their first discussions brought a great laugh to me:

Lady Eliza Graves:  Are you quite certain you're a doctor?
Edward Newgate, MD: Yeah, well, of course I am.
Graves:  Because I've never known one to apologize. Or, for that matter, give a damn who he offended.
Newgate: Well, I'm not like other doctors.

Again, it’s a sad truth that still applies to many doctors and healers today.  

As the movie progresses, we see what horrifying treatments of the period looked like; some are still in practice today including drugging patients into a manageable stupor.  We also get a glimpse into what it might be like if patients ran the asylum.  The difference in care is amazing.  During a concluding scene in the movie, the lead character Dr. Newgate tells another character in all sincerity and disgust, “You're mad.”  The other character retorts, “We're all mad, Dr. Newgate. Some are simply not mad enough to admit it.”  Again, it’s a statement that echoes with truth.

Stonehearst Asylum contains several surprising twists that kept me captivated all of the way to the end of the movie.  The themes of who is sane and who is mad continue to run through my head. The engaging characters also seem to have possessed my mind.  I really enjoy movies like this one that leave me with great thoughts for many days after.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

For my entire life, I have sworn that I will never move to California.  I have been absolutely certain that half the state is about to fall into the ocean due to earthquakes.  When my ex-husband graduated from grad school, we had two options of where he could work given his specialty: Silicon Valley in California or Austin, Texas.  Given the cost of living in California and my prejudices against the whole state, we stayed in Austin.

Fast-forward 20 years, and I was watching the original Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve with my kids.  Suddenly I realized my childhood viewing of this movie was the origins of my prejudice in California:  The whole premise of that movie is that Lex Luthor is planning to create an earthquake that will drop half the state into the ocean in order to create new ocean front property so he can make a hefty profit.  I sat there in amazement and horror as I watched the film.  Had one movie really influenced my thought patterns that much for the majority of my life?

More recently, Fifty Shades of Grey is a movie that is having a much larger impact on our society.  When the book by E.L. James first became popular, friends of mine who are active in the local BDSM community came out strongly against the book.  Many of these people are highly educated, and their first critique was always about how terribly written the books in the series are.  Several told me not to bother reading the series because the writing errors would make the English teacher in me crazy.  I trusted the friends enough to believe them, so I have never even perused the books.  I don’t feel like I’m missing too much.

The next critique from my openly kinky friends was that the books are not representative of a healthy BDSM lifestyle. As many reviews, blogs, and articles have noted, the book (and its subsequent movie) does not reflect the ideals of safe, sane and consensual sexuality. Rather, Fifty Shades of Grey promotes a damaged relationship based on abuse.  This is not the healthy ideal of a sexual relationship nonetheless a healthy kinky relationship.

So how does this play out in its influence on our greater American culture?  On one hand, by being an antithesis of positive sexual relationships, Fifty Shades of Grey has certainly promoted many enlightening discussions about what healthy romantic and sexual relationships look like. It has also brought attention to the abuse suffered by many women.  The more that these issues are discussed, the more opportunities there are for people to learn and grow.

On the other hand, there has been an increase of Christian Grey wanna bes on dating websites.  In some cases, these men are harmless:  They’ve been inspired by the movie to explore their kinky sexual sides.  More power to them for wanting to find out more about themselves.  However, in many other cases, it’s clear that something much more sinister is at work. There has also been an uptick in angry sadistic men looking to vent their violent emotions on women as they mimic Christian Grey.  In one profile I viewed recently, a very bitter man began his profile with a profanity laden tirade about how horrible all women are, but then he ironically wanted to find women who would submit sexually to his desires.  His profile picture was a teddy bear whose face had been eviscerated leaving Polyfil stuffing falling out.  I can only hope that any woman who reads his profile will recognize as clearly as I did that this man has serious issues and likely needs professional help, not a whipping girl.  This is the negative side of Fifty Shades of Grey:  People who feel validated in their anger and abusive actions against the opposite sex.  

Movies have a greater power to shape mass and individual consciousness than many of us realize.  Most people are well aware of the potential impact of violent video games upon children teens, but the impact of movies upon our consciousness is not as well recognized. Entertainment is not just fun:  It shapes our culture, our ideas, our desires, and our prejudices. The titillating nature of Fifty Shades of Grey propelled it to the forefront of our discussions, but let’s hope that it also creates a positive impact in the long run by shining light on the issue of abuse in our society. 

As for my part, I am now aware of the roots of my California prejudice.  Recognizing the basis of that fear of mine has liberated me.  I hope to travel to California in the next few years, and I've actually opened my mind to the possibility of even moving to northern California once my kids are grown!  

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In recent months, my kids and I have been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I watched a bunch of the episodes back in the 1990s in reruns, but this is the first time around for my kids.  It’s been fun seeing their reactions to the series, especially to “‘80s hair” which they love to ridicule.  For me, I’m seeing totally different things this time around than I saw twenty years ago.

In season six, many of the episodes at the beginning of the season were appealing to me for how insightful they actually are.  One episode in particular, “Realm of Fear,” deals with psychological phobias.  As a clear parody to fear of flying in our time, Lieutenant Barclay has a severe fear of transporting.  Ship’s counselor and empath Deanna Troi teaches Barclay a Betazoid relaxation technique known as plexing.  To engage in plexing, the person who is experiencing fear taps on a point on the neck behind the ear.  This point corresponds with gallbladder 12 in Chinese acupuncture; one of its uses is actually for regulating and calming the spirit.

As I watched this episode and as Troi began teaching Barclay about flexing, I immediately thought, “That’s basically EFT!”  EFT is short for Emotional Freedom Technique, and it’s an increasingly popular method of conquering psychological, emotional, and physical issues.   I've known people who have used it for releasing stored trauma, for controlling stress and anxiety, and for weight loss among many other issues.  While it is always great to learn a method like this from an experienced practitioner who is also able to assist with issues that might arise along the way, there are videos on the internet to teach it to oneself.

In EFT, which is sometimes just called “tapping,” an individual taps on a series of acupuncture points while reciting a formulaic mantra that s/he/ze adapts to the specific situation at hand.  So, for example, if I were dealing with stage fright, I would tap on the designated series of points while reciting to myself, “I deeply love and accept myself, and I am an amazing actress who feels completely comfortable on the stage.”  I would recite this mantra as I worked my way through all of the EFT tapping points.

I was first introduced to EFT about eight years ago.  To be honest, I absolutely hated it when I was introduced to it.  It made me feel awkward.  The formulaic mantra did not work for me.  Nothing about it felt right.  However, I was open to trying it because I had several friends who absolutely loved it.  Despite my efforts, it just didn’t seem like the right approach to me, so I gave up on it.  

A couple of years later, I began working with a group of chiropractors who use a different set of tapping points across the entire body without a mantra as they help process stored trauma.  They tap on the patients using the points that show up during an applied kinesiology chiropractic session.  This set of points actually rings far more true for me, and I will often notice that some of those points are the ones that hurt when I am in emotional distress.

As I developed my intuitive abilities, I began pulling up emotional traumas from this life and past lives that I needed to work through.  As the deep painful emotions came to the surface, I began tapping on my own.  I listened to my intuition, and I tapped where I was being told.  Most of the points are the ones that the chiropractors I see use, some are EFT points, but others are acupuncture points that aren't commonly used for processing emotional pain.  They are ones that I need to use, though.  I then formulate my own mantra that works for me for that particular situation.  For example, sometimes the mantra is, “The past is the past; I am safe now.”  Other times it might be, “I am alive and healthy.”  Whatever the necessary mantra is, it quickly comes to mind for me and I am certain it is what I need to work through that issue.  On my own, I have used tapping to help clear various stored traumas.  I couldn’t imagine not having that skill to help me in my healing.

As I began talking to my youngest child after we watched the show, I told him that plexing was a version of a technique that therapists use to help people with stress.  His response was, “That’s real?”  It was a surprise to him that there a similar successful method for handling stress; he had assumed it was totally science fiction.  Plexing may be a science fiction, but EFT is definitely not.  It helps many people to release stored emotions in their bodies and to find a greater peace than talk therapy alone can provide.  If you are searching for a new therapist or life coach, I highly recommend working with one who uses EFT or one of the many other techniques out there for processing the traumas that might be holding you back.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I was given a free advance copy of this book in return for an honest review by the publisher via NetGalley.  The opinions in this review are mine and mine alone.)

If I were a character in a novel, undoubtedly my fatal flaw would be anger.  For me, the struggle is in finding ways to healthily release my anger.  Thus, I take a great deal of interest in exploring new books on anger as I’m always happy to learn more about working with one of my greater challenges in life.

It’s an amusing paradox that a book about anger could create a level of frustration, almost anger, in its readers, yet that was my experience while reading Freedom from Anger: Understanding It, Overcoming It, and Finding Joy by Venerable Alubomulle Sumanasara.  While I read the first 15% of the work, I assumed this was a self-published book by a young twenty-something atheist Buddhist who was certain he foolishly knew all the answers to the world’s problems. His condescending and omniscient tone was a huge turn off for me.  Imagine my surprise upon Googling the author and finding his Japanese Wikipedia page.  He’s a 70 year old Buddhist monk whose works have sold over 100 million copies if the awkward translation is correct.  To say I was surprised is an understatement.

I had to quickly come to terms with the fact that Sumanasara and I have very different belief systems around anger.  He presents his system with a moral certitude of being right, yet certainty about being right is something he addresses within the work as an underlying cause of anger.  As I continued reading, I was able to think of countless examples where his belief system did not hold up to real world challenges.  For example, the author contends that anger and love are opposing emotions.  He strongly argues that anger is a choice and that we can refrain from it.  However, I have found that love is not a choice.  We can fall in love unintentionally (also known as unrequited love), sometimes even in situations where we don’t want to such as with an unavailable person.  If love and anger are opposites, then it would stand to reason that anger is not a choice.  Just as love is an emotion that we can choose to deal with in different ways, some appropriate and healthy and others far less so, anger is also an emotion that can be both used and misused.

The author seems as though he lives in a world of moral absolutes. He believes that everything is worth being happy about in life, and therefore there is no justification for anger.  However, I can very easily think of evidence to the contrary. For example, a young child killed in a drive by shooting while innocently walking down the street is not something to be happy about.  In Sumanasara’s system, the only other emotion is anger.  Is this not a situation when anger instead of happiness is justified?  In my belief system and those of many others, anger is not wrong, especially when it brings about positive change. Anger is a natural human emotion that we are meant to feel.  In this case, if the anger about the child’s death brings about gun control legislation or increased mental health support in the community, then the anger has served a purpose to motivate and bring positive change. However, if the anger served to fuel revenge and more violence, it would not have created that positive change and the anger would have been problematic.

Despite his graduate studies in Buddhism, Sumanasara seems to be lacking in knowledge of basic psychology regarding anger. Sumanasara gives an example about a person getting extremely angry after experiencing failure when making a new recipe.  Most American therapists would take that example and offer the suggestion that the anger about the recipe was actually misplaced.  When many of us get overly upset about something rather trivial such as a new recipe that is a failure, it’s usually a sign of other repressed emotional issues underneath which we are manifesting in anger when we can no longer repress our frustration.  Such an idea seems foreign to Sumanasara.  

The author also contends that we get angry because we believe we are right.  While there are times when this is true, I believe that overall, this concept oversimplifies anger far too much.  I believe many of us become angry because we've been raised in a society that models anger and angry behavior.  We simply don’t know how to work through our frustrations in other ways.  Not all examples of anger can be traced back to a desire to be right.
 
As I read the book, I began thinking of it as Vulcan Buddhism.  Perhaps I have been watching too much Star Trek with my kids lately, but Sumanasara seems to function under a belief system where emotions are illogical:  He believes that anger can be controlled by logic.  However, we are humans, and we are not fully logical.   We are also emotional.  Our emotions, both positive and negative, are an integral part of our being.  Sumanasara thinks that if one takes the position of not having emotions, then one won’t have anger.  Yet I read through this work, I kept wondering how many unresolved psychological traumas Sumanasara must be repressing in order to live what he is preaching.  Repressing anger only creates toxicity in the body. Even if we don’t want to, oftentimes we need to feel our feelings so that we can process them.

Sumanasara also harps on the idea that other people’s anger destroys our happiness.  Using his arguments, however, if we were strong individuals who had control of our emotions, then this wouldn't be an issue.  We would not let anyone else's anger create anger in us.  From my viewpoint, this is statement from someone making himself a victim because he states that he can't be happy when someone else around him is angry.  This is not a statement of someone who feels responsible for his own emotions or has them under control as he asserts is fully possible.  Once again, I believe the beliefs that Sumanasara is functioning under are contradictory and unhealthy.

While translation issues could be at work, I also felt much of the book contained demeaning insults against those whose behavior displeases Sumanasara.  He throws out covert attacks as well such as  when he proclaims that wise people have no desire to govern.  Sumanasara's views come across as blindly fundamentalist beliefs at times.

When Sumanasara began discussing using the silent treatment as punishment, he lost my respect completely.  First of all, most therapists and life coaches would argue that people need discipline, not punishment.  While we all make mistakes, we need to be taught how to change those behaviors or actions that cause ourselves or others harm.  Discipline conveys teaching whereas punishment conveys an attitude of humans being inherently evil.  Given the negative self-judgment that Samanasara encourages throughout the book with people labeling themselves stupid or failures, this attitude should not be a surprise to me.  However, I believe this is far from a healthy system for working with emotions.  Second, the silent treatment in itself is an awful way of trying to teach someone.  What that person will learn from being given the silent treatment is that the silencing person doesn't care enough about him/her/hir to work together to make a change.  The silent treatment is not a good way to make positive change in the world.  Once again, Sumanasara is taking a position of ignoring those things which cause him emotional discomfort rather than actually confronting the issues and working through them.

Some books that one does not agree with can still teach important lessons; they may contain small bits of useful wisdom. While I tried to view Freedom from Anger as an opportunity to learn from someone with a different viewpoint, I was less than successful.  The most positive thing I can say about this book is that it helped me to understand many of the young, arrogant, self-centered atheist Buddhists whom I have encountered on dating websites.  I have often questioned how they can hold the views they do while claiming to be Buddhists.  Sumanasara’s work gave me insight into the mental workings of these men.

After reading Sumanasara’s opinion on using the silent treatment as punishment 45% of the way through the text, I quit reading the book.  I was not learning anything useful from the book, and I was becoming more and more disheartened with each passing page.  If I hadn't been reviewing the book, I would have stopped long beforehand.  Freedom from Anger is definitely not a book that is in line with my healing philosophies nor would I recommend it to a client.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Update 10/25/2019: It's been brought to my attention that Gary Chapman is homophobic and sees LGBTQ+ people as living a "lifestyle" choice. Please know that I in no way endorse those views. I believe all genders and all sexes are natural manifestations of humanity. Despite these horrific views of Chapman, there is validity in his theory of love languages, and love languages can be used and applied in same-sex or other queer relationships.

​**

When my now ex-husband and I were in marriage counseling trying to save our relationship, one of the very useful concepts our therapist introduced us to was The 5 Love Languages:  The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman.  At that time, I did not read the book because one does not need to actually read the book to take advantage of the basic concepts of the five love languages.  However, because the concepts had been so important to understanding what had gone wrong in my former marriage, I felt as though I should read the book; I also wanted to use it for a spiritual singles group I am starting in a few months.

Through his years of work as a counselor, Chapman has devised a system of five "love languages" which he has found to be common to all humans regardless of culture.  While the dialects that individuals speak may vary within cultures, the five languages remain the same.  These five languages are (in the order presented in the book) words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.  Most of us speak one of these love languages as our primary love language, though occasionally some people are bilingual.  The love language we speak is the main way in which we feel loved, or in Chapman's words, it is how we fill our "love tank."  Unless we are getting our basic needs for love met, we will not be happy in a relationship.  To facilitate the process of discovering our love languages, Chapman provides surveys and other means for readers to determine both their own love languages and the love languages of their partners.

For those whose language is words of affirmation, they have a need to hear their partner verbally express praise, love, and desire.  Those who desire quality time want their partners to spend free time together talking or doing activities of mutual interest.  They want their partners to be truly there for them, disposing of digital devices while they are together in order to focus on each other.  Those who speak the language of receiving gifts want their partners to demonstrate love through presents: They may be expensive gifts or homemade cards depending on the individual and the financial situation.  For those who desire acts of service, doing chores such as sewing buttons on shirts or vacuuming the house are ways to communicate love.  And finally, for those who desire physical touch, they want to feel their partners' hands and bodies touching their own.  How they want to be touched will vary widely by each person's individual dialect.

With regards to my own relationship, we quickly realized that my then-husband was an acts of service person.  He felt that because he was doing the dishes and taking out the trash, he was telling me that he loved me.  I had never remotely viewed those acts as ones of love.  Instead, I viewed them as getting necessary chores done.  For my part, I speak the languages of physical touch and words of affirmation.  I felt that by telling my then-husband how I felt about him and by touching him I was showing him love.  He did not see it that way.  Thus, in the case of my marriage, since I was all but bedbound and no longer able to do acts of service for my husband, he had taken this to mean that I no longer loved him.  Since my husband was rarely touching me or talking to me, I had decided he no longer wanted to be near me or love me.  Clearly our linguistic differences created a huge hiccup in our relationship. 

Chapman correctly points out that we often try to meet our lovers' needs through the language we speak and not the language they speak.  This is where most relationships falter in his opinion.  Instead, what we need to be doing is making a conscious effort to do things for our partners that are spoken in their love languages.  In many relationships, rectifying the differences and working to meet our partners' needs in their languages can resolve the problems the couples are facing.  However, in the case of my ex-husband and me, there were too many other issues outside of the five love languages also contributing to the issues in our relationship.  Just speaking each other’s love languages was not going to solve our issues despite Chapman's belief that solving this crucial issue would help unravel many other problems a couple faces.

One of the largest problems with Chapman's theory is that it will not work for relationships involving narcissists.  Narcissists are individuals whose own needs far outweigh those of their partners (or so they think).  Narcissists only want to make their partners happy if their partners can be happy in ways that primarily meet the narcissists' needs and desires. For example, narcissistic individuals might be willing to take romantic partners to the movie if they express interest in doing so, but the narcissists will only be willing to see movies that they enjoy.  The concept of seeing a movie that their partners enjoy and would make their partners happy is incomprehensible to narcissists.  This extends far beyond seemingly minor things like movie viewing habits:  Narcissists will dictate meal choices, sexual activities, employment decisions, lifestyles, and more. 

Thus, Chapman's idea that if you give more to your partner, then your partner will then get his/her/hir love tank filled and give more in return is ultimately flawed when it comes to narcissists.  In narcissists' worlds, their views and needs are the only ones that matter.  The more that a non-narcissistic partner gives to a narcissist, the more the narcissist will demand.  Narcissists will make their partners' wishes and desires seem unimportant.  In the long run, the only one who will benefit from a system of giving is the narcissist since the narcissist will suck a partner dry long before ever contemplating truly meeting the partner's needs. 

I also felt a great deal of concern in the chapter towards the end of the book where Chapman helps a devout Christian woman to stay in an abusive relationship (quite possibly with a narcissist) using Biblical injunctions since he felt that was the only way to reach this particular woman.  Chapman believes this chapter proves that even an abusive situation can be turned around if the abuser's love tank is full.  I feel that it likely demonstrated that an abused person can be brainwashed into believing that having certain needs met justifies the abuse.

Despite these major holes in Chapman's book and theory, I still feel that The 5 Love Languages is an excellent book that should be recommended premarital reading for all couples; perhaps its contents should even be taught in high schools so that we begin learning from our earliest romantic relationships that it is important to get our own needs met in a relationship while simultaneously meeting the needs of our partners.  Learning the five love languages certainly has changed my view of how I understand relationships, and I believe it can do the same for many others as well.

(I've attached a very detailed list of questions I developed from this book that are meant to be used for a group discussion or for personal journaling.  Feel free to adapt them for your group's needs.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When my health and marriage both were very bad many years ago, I began dissociating, or more technically, I began “depersonalizing.”  What this feels like is one’s energy or spirit or soul flying out of one’s body and being able to look down on it from above.  When this happens, I have no memories for the time when my soul is outside my body.  The first time it happened to me as an adult, it really scared me.  Ironically, I had no memories of it ever happening before.  However, in that moment when I dissociated, something had happened which traumatized me, and so my instinctive response was for my soul to leave my body. After a short while, my soul re-integrated, but I was very freaked out by it each time it happened. Whenever I dissociated, my then-husband's approach was to walk out of the room and leave me alone.  That was exactly the wrong thing to do.  I was terrified and wanted help, not to be abandoned.  After some training, he learned not to run, but being with me during those times was not his instinct.

I began talking to my chiropractor about this when it first started happening.  He told me that he completely believed me that it was happening, but he also did not think that dissociation was something new for me.  That was a strange idea to me since I didn't think I had memories of it happening before.  However, because I trusted him, I then went to the marriage therapist my then-husband and I were seeing and asked for some advice because I didn't have an individual therapist to help me at that point.  The marriage therapist confirmed what my chiropractor had said:  That it was very unlikely that dissociation was something new for me.  The marriage therapist stated that not a lot was known about dissociation, but what is known is that dissociation starts at a very young age as a coping technique to deal with trauma.  He said it also is more likely to occur among very intelligent people.

At that point, I began researching.  I found what these men had said to me was true, plus I found a few more helpful bits of information.  Suddenly, lights went off in my head.  In all my traumatic experiences as a child, I could remember the first part of the trauma, but after that, it was like someone pushed stop on the recorder in my mind.  After a certain point, my memories around that event would just black out to nothingness.  They’d start back up a while later, sometimes minutes and sometimes hours. Technically, this is known as dissociative amnesia.  Dissociating was definitely not something new for me as an adult:  It was just something rediscovered in a time when my body and soul were under great stress.

When I began seeing my favorite individual therapist a few years ago, I mentioned that I can dissociate to her.   I explained that when it happens, it feels like my soul leaves my body.  She responded by saying, “It does. It leaves through the crown of your head and stops about 'here' (indicating a place about eighteen inches above her head).”  When she showed me that, my instinctive thought was, “Holy shit.  She really gets this.”  That was the first time anyone I’d spoken to had truly understood what happens during dissociation.

Since that time, I've learned how to stop the dissociation.  This was a multi-layered process of change.  The first and most important part of stopping the process was recognizing the signs of it starting.  Once I realized the sensations I feel in my body when I'm about to dissociate, I was able to keep myself grounded in my body.  Staying grounded usually begins with firmly planting my feet on the ground and trying to draw on the earth’s energy to stabilize me.  I then begin a mantra in my head: “I am safe.  My children are safe.”  Until I added on the sentence about my children, I wasn't able to make the mantra work for me.  Their safety was a huge part of my fear and I had to acknowledge them no matter what the details of the situation were that I was facing.

One of the other larger methods of controlling the dissociation was a much deeper and more difficult challenge.  This involved learning how to keep myself more grounded all of the time, not just when I was in panic mode.  To this end, I wore the same obsidian pendant (shown above) for nine months straight.  By the end of those nine months, my energy had shifted completely.  I was no longer so flighty feeling, and my skin was more comfortable for me to be in.  I was so glad when I no longer needed to wear that necklace all the time, though I occasionally put it on in situations that I know will be stressful because I know the obsidian’s energy is strong and powerful for me.  However, the same necklace might not help others who dissociate because we all have different energetic needs when it comes to using crystals.

I know many who explore metaphysics intentionally try to have out of body experiences, also known as OBEs.  For me, that is a strange idea since I've been able to force my soul out of my body since I was a child, even though it was something I only did in times of trauma.  I've had to work hard to stop this terrifying process from happening, yet others seek it out.  I've also unintentionally experienced astral projection, though I've had to put a stop to that as well.  Leaving my body is not something that serves my soul’s higher purpose at this time.  Instead, my challenge in this life has been to stay grounded and to work through the issues I must face on this planet.

Because of the work I have done, dissociation is no longer a common issue for me, and I am grateful for that.  The only time the instinct might arise for me is when I am processing deep and traumatic wounds that I have stored in my body.  However, any time that I do feel fear rising in me, I know how to ground myself and find peace.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Amazon offers daily Kindle Deals which greatly discount digital books.  One recent deal was Lake News by Barbara Delinsky.  The book blurb describes a scandal involving the Catholic Church in Boston, and because of my past history as a Catholic, my time spent in graduate school in Boston, and my academic research on Catholicism, I was intrigued.  I decided for $1.99, I didn’t have too much to lose, so I bought the book.  I am glad I did as I thoroughly enjoyed the book for reasons I didn’t expect, in part because it dealt intimately with narcissism, a psychological issue that has been very relevant to my life experiences.

Lily Blake, the book’s heroine, is a teacher and a night club singer.  She is also friends with the man who is named as the new Cardinal of Boston.  A scandal erupts as a malicious journalist concocts a story linking Lily sexually to “Father Fran.”  Lily finds herself the object of media fascination as reporters camp outside her building and stalk her movements around town.  In the first quarter of the book, I felt my own adrenaline rising and tension building in my body.  Delinsky does an amazing job of portraying the stress that the blatant violation of privacy causes to the innocent Lily.

With the help of a good friend, Lily escapes to the small New Hampshire town (Lake Henry) where she was raised.  There, she begins a personal and professional relationship with John Kipling, a man whose family has an unhealthy connection to Lily’s past.  Likewise, Lily must renew her relationships with her toxic mother and her sisters.  As she spends time in Lake Henry, the challenges of these relationships and the ongoing battle to regain her dignity and her reputation fill her time.

Within the first few pages of the book, I knew that I was going to enjoy this book a lot.  Delinsky’s word choices are captivating.  She describes the loons that live on Lake Henry in great detail, and while that could be a very dull scenario, Delinsky succeeds in making it a beautiful plot line.  The characters she creates are also fleshed out quite well.  I had a very clear vision in my head of what all the characters should look like thanks to her descriptive language.

The intrigue of the book also kept me turning pages, ever curious to see how events would resolve.  However, the book weakened for me toward the end because Delinsky seemed to need “happily ever after” scenarios for most of the various subplot lines.  In particular, Delinsky had developed three different characters who are strong narcissists.  Their biting emotional abuse was painful for me to read because it was all too familiar, but that pain also spoke to the accuracy of the portrayal.  However, unlike in Delinsky’s fictional world, most narcissists do not change radically in a short period of time.  Most never change at all.  Narcissists view their position as the only correct one, and they are not able to see outside of it.  Thus, when two of Delinsky’s three narcissists were able to recognize and admit their mistakes, I wanted to cry “foul.”  That’s just not how I felt things would have happened.

Aside from my issues around her fantasy resolutions at the end of the book, Delinsky created an enjoyable book in Lake News.  It kept me distracted during a day of high pain, and that is a true gift.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(As a reminder, I am not a medical doctor or a licensed psychologist.  The opinions below are just that:  My personal opinions.  They do not and should not be construed as official diagnoses.)

As noted in a previous post, for many years now, I have watched The Bachelor(ette).  This season (Chris Soules, “Prince Farming”) has included several incidents that have left me frustrated by how they were handled on the show.  In particular, I feel as though this season has had two participants who may suffer from mental illness which was handled poorly over the course of show.

The first participant was Ashley S., age 24, who was eliminated in week four.  From the very first episode, Ashley demonstrated signs of possibly having schizophrenia, though her mental challenges were never talked about as such.  Instead, the other participants labeled Ashley as scary, crazy, dangerous, and more.  Ashley’s behavior on the zombie hunting date and in her final episode on the show also illustrated her patterns of distracted thinking which was difficult for those outside of her head to understand.

In the “Chris [Soules] Tells All” special (and its second part) shown part way through the season, Chris Harrison, the host, showed a small amount of Ashley’s application video where she seems far more stable (or in Chris H.’s awkward words, “incredibly normal.”)  Perhaps this was due to editing of her audition tape.  Perhaps her behavior changed drastically on the show because the stress of the schedule and the cameras was more than she could handle.  Perhaps she chose to stop medications that she’d been on during the audition tape because she didn’t want her housemates (and the rest of the nation) to find out that she took psychiatric medications.  Perhaps she was on medications but the amount of alcohol she was consuming interfered with the medications’ ability to function.  Perhaps she is someone who can function without medications normally but not when under the influence of alcohol, limited sleep, and high pressure.  There are so many potential explanations for why her behavior might have changed between the audition tape and the actual show.

Regardless of what the reasons are, Ashley S. was used to boost ratings.  Her probable mental illness was ridiculed.  Instead of compassion, she faced a lack of understanding and a great deal of judgment.  I would hope that ABC was truly unaware of her mental health issues when casting her on the show.  However, after the fact, I am disappointed that ABC edited the show in such a way to put an emphasis on how “crazy” she is rather than offering education and explanation for what happened with her.  I’m disappointed that so few of the participants vocalized genuine concern for making sure that Ashley got the psychiatric assistance she needed, or if more did, that their concerns were edited out of the final episodes.

And then there was Kelsey.  As a 28 year old guidance counselor living in Austin, she was the local woman that I was hoping I would get to cheer on.  Very quickly, it became evident to me that she would not be one of my favorites.  ABC definitely emphasized the traumatically widowed aspect of her history throughout the show.  In this first introductory video, Kelsey is unable to talk about the death of her husband, 16 months prior, without tearing up.  Any therapist or life coach as well as many non-professionals will say that a person is probably not ready to move on in the dating world if they can’t relate their story of loss without breaking down.  (The same could also be said for the other widow this season, Juelia, whose late husband committed suicide when their daughter was seven weeks old.)

As the show progressed, Kelsey’s personality became stranger and stranger.  The final straw for most people came in the week when she talked about how she “loved her story.”  What I’m guessing that Kelsey wanted to convey was that she is a strong woman, and while she deeply misses her late husband, she’s grateful for the growth she’s undergone since his death.  She likely wanted to vocalize some version of the popular saying that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  However, what came out had a completely different meaning.  Kelsey has widely claimed, including on her Facebook page, that she was misinterpreted and that ABC framed her to look like a villain.  I completely believe that there is editing done on this show (and many others) that leaves out important information and which can make contestants look far worse than they actually are.  However, Kelsey’s words were obviously not spliced together when she claimed to love her story.  She was quite clear about what she was saying in her monologues. 

As one begins to explore more about Kelsey through the amazing powers of the internet, her story becomes even more bizarre.  In particular, her late husband’s obituary is more about her than him at various points.  While one can certainly understand celebrating their love and loss, discussing her graduation after his death seems completely out of place.  The repetitious and awkward mentions of their relationship also seem improper for an obituary.  While one can argue this was something written during a time of grief, the obituary still seems inappropriate in many ways.

In my estimation, I suspect Kelsey has narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a condition in which the individual is very self-centered and very self-focused.  As she demonstrated, her late husband’s death wasn’t about him:  It was about her.  A narcissistic perspective is not a healthy one, and in its extreme, NPD is a mental illness.  I have dealt with many narcissists in my life.  They are very difficult people to live and work with.  Many others have come to Kelsey’s public defense, but not all narcissists are without friends and family.  Some of those around her may truly believe her words of how amazing she is and how wonderful her story is.  One local radio announcer, even after all that has come out about Kelsey, still declared that he wanted to date her when she was eliminated from the show right before Valentine’s Day.

From my perspective, however, Kelsey is another woman who likely has a mental illness and whose narcissism was used to generate ratings.  She even merited her own special segment (and part 2) in the “Chris Tells All” special where her surprise about being controversial (at 1:33) may or may not have been genuine.  More likely, she’s a woman who loves being the center of attention and loves the extra time in the spotlight this controversy gave her.  She often talks around her issues and has perfect explanations for her actions, even using her famous “big words” to specifically deny her narcissism.  Kelsey's dramatic panic attack, whether true or fake, could also be interpreted as a narcissist’s attempt to gain more attention.

If Kelsey does have narcissistic personality disorder, then I don’t’ believe ABC should have been using her mental illness to boost ratings.  While I often find it hard to sympathize with people who have NPD because of their self-centeredness and their incredible ability to see themselves as innocent victims, NPD is still a mental illness.  Those who have it deserve compassion and understanding, not ridicule. 

Furthermore, mental illness is not being “bonkers” as one bachelorette poorly described one of her mentally ill housemates this season.  ABC and The Bachelor’s lack of respect for mental illness this season has been disturbing, especially when it was used as part of the sensationalism for a reality tv show.  To me, it not only demonstrates a lack of compassion, but it feels inappropriate and even unethical.  I wish that ABC and The Bachelor were doing more to help change our society’s negative views to mental illness rather than compounding the problems.  I’m nervous for tonight’s “Women Tell All” special.  I hope that Ashely S. in particular is treated with the respect she deserves as a human being facing some difficult challenges. 

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I received a complimentary copy of this work from Hay House via NetGalley.  The opinions here are my own and are not influenced by anyone.)

I’m a fan of many of the Hay House authors, so seeing that publishing house associated with a new book induces me to try an author I might not have read otherwise.  In most cases, I’m pleased with the selections I read from Hay House.  This was not one of those cases.

In Love Never Dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased, Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., explores her newfound connection to the spirit world after the death of her husband, former Jesuit priest Emile Jean Pin.  As a former atheist, this new world of spirituality is an adventure for Turndorf, one she approaches with the blind enthusiasm of a young child after she conquers her initial misgivings.  After her husband’s unexpected death from a reaction to a bee string, Turndorf is surprised to discover her connection to her beloved Jean continues through their deep spiritual love for each other.  She writes that together they have a ministry to help others in processing death and connecting to those in the afterlife so that all involved may continue to grow and heal.

Love Never Dies does have a few good qualities.  It is simply written making it accessible to the popular masses.  The book also has the potential to comfort many in the first and last sections where Turndorf describes her experiences and the experiences of her clients as they reconnect with their deceased love ones.  The book brings up an incredibly large number of questions for a book group to discuss around life, love, healing and death.

From there, however, the book simply falls apart.  It’s repetitive and poorly edited starting with the weak rhyming poetry at the beginning of each chapter.  Turndorf proudly declares that she hadn’t checked out the “competition” before writing her book making it an all original work.  While there are merits to an untainted narrative, those merits are outweighed by the negatives in this book.  Turndorf’s lack of vocabulary to discuss concepts such as synchronicity weakens her arguments and presentation immensely.  The result is a book that feels like an amateur falsely pretending to be a professional.

Turndorf also is blinded by her own narrow experiences regarding the metaphysical world.  She only sees what she wants to see and doesn’t consider that there are possibilities beyond the definitive answers she purports to reach.  For example, Turndorf declares that demons or negative spirit entities might exist though she’s doubtful about it.  She thinks that if negative spiritual beings do exist, Jean protects her from them always.  Any experienced psychic, intuitive or medium who has worked extensively with the metaphysical will cringe at this naïve view:  In his Hay House publication Infinite Quest: Develop Your Psychic Intuition to Take Charge of Your Life, John Edward speaks extensively on the importance of spiritual protection when one is working with the other side.  Turndorf’s inexperience becomes dangerous as she guides readers into murky waters without life jackets.

Furthermore, Turndorf blindly believes that all the departed are willing to work on their faults and help their living loved ones heal.  This, too, is a declaration of an inexperienced practitioner who is, in my words, blinded by the white light.  Other gifted mediums such as me are able to encounter spirits in all their essence, seeing their soul level faults which do not miraculously heal upon entry to the afterlife.  Many souls choose not to work on their own healing in the afterlife, no differently than their course here on earth.  In those cases, Turndorf’s advice risks connecting hurting individuals with souls who will continue to emotionally and spiritual abuse them from the other side.  This is not only ignorant, but it’s dangerous and is the last thing a psychologist should want for clients.

Even on a much simpler and less dangerous level, Turndoff offers bad advice to those wanting to begin meditation as a means to connecting with departed souls.  Setting up beginners with the task of meditating for many hours is going to defeat many people before they even get out of the starting gate.  It’s far better for beginners to slowly introduce themselves to meditation to reduce the risk of perceived failure and to encourage successful future experiences which may eventually be longer.

Turndorf’s faulty logic is so convoluted at times that it is difficult to follow.  Throughout Love Never Dies, she contradicts herself on larger philosophical issues.  Turndorf presents the concept that things that happen more than three times are a scientifically valid result. Unfortunately, she fails to recognize that even if something occurs three times, it’s still possible to misinterpret information about those results.  Throughout the book, I feel she often misinterprets her experiences because of her lack of experience and narrow-minded views.  For example, Turndorf declares many times that we avoid loving fully because losing a loved one is so painful.  However, there are other possibilities for why we might restrain our love that she never even considers.  It’s possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t know how to.  It’s also possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t believe we deserve love.

This narrow perspective continues as Turndorf obsesses over her theories that she is metaphysically gifted because of her premature birth and three month NICU stay away from her mother.  She writes about high fevers and illness predisposing people to being able to being open to spiritual contact, yet she fails to examine the role of her own experiences with Lyme Disease in regards to her metaphysical experiences.  As a practitioner who has had Lyme and who works with many others who have Lyme, I would argue that the vast majority of people who deal with chronic or late disseminated Lyme Disease are those who are metaphysically gifted.  A little research outside of her own bubble would help Turndorf to see these other possibilities. 

As the book progresses, I found Turndorf’s words to her clients and to her readers to be cruel and potentially damaging.  I cringed as Turndorf relates how she said to a newly bereaved parent that “she could view this recent loss as a gift from the spirit.”  While this lesson is true on some levels, the way she phrased this to a parent who has recently lost a baby is heartless at best. 

Furthermore, comparing our pain to others’ is not beneficial.  Telling ourselves “it could be worse” demeans the pain we are experiencing.  Turndorf writes, “When we see someone in pain, we’re being invited to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and give thanks for the problems we have that pale in comparison.  Another person’s difficulty reminds us that we could have it so much worse.”  What she fails to contemplate is that some of her readers (including me in my not so distant past) will fall into that category of having things “so much worse.”  Having been told many times by others that they could look at my life and realize how good they actually have it, I can speak from experience that such an attitude does not help the person undergoing the trials.  The heartless response simply makes their pain increase.

If all of these issues aren’t enough, I found Turndorf’s basic psychological advice to be weak at best.  After 30 years’ experience in practice, she is not a novice.  She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from California Coast University in 1994.  She is a nationally known psychologist using the pseudonym “Dr. Love.”  However, her personal relationship with Jean raised many flags for me as a reader and life coach, beginning with the fact that she was 21 and he was 58 when it began.  Turndorf claims that she and Jean had a perfect spiritual love, yet the aspects of their relationship she shares demonstrate a couple that struggled to love each other in their earthly forms.  She asserts that Jean was “one of the world’s true mystics” but he didn’t know he could be so close to her in spirit form.  This doesn’t build his credibility or hers.  Even Googling her late husband (who died in 2006, after the advent of the internet) does not turn up the abundance of hits one would expect from a man whom she claims was a one of the 50 most holy people to have lived in the eyes of the Dalai Lama.  As she describes their relationship after he “left his body,” Turndorf sees her late husband’s love as fulfilling her and becoming her own love.  Almost all psychologists would argue that seeking to use another’s love as a replacement for self-love is not a healthy approach in the long term.

Finally, in one of the experiences at the end of the book, she details of a client named “Mo.”  Turndorf uses guilt to trick Mo into working with her deceased husband.  This woman clearly has spent a lifetime being manipulated by others who prey on her overactive sense of guilt.  A healthier treatment option might have been to work with Mo to recognize her issues around guilt until she regained the self-esteem necessary to work on herself out of self-love.  The ends did not justify the means in this treatment.

Turndorf seems to think grieving is the only reason people need to connect to Spirit and those on the other side.  As she presents the issues in Love Never Dies, she fails to see how other tragedies can be more devastating and more impactful that grief.  Her narrow-minded and uneducated views result in a book that will help facilitate discussion about important topics but which ultimately may give some very bad advice to vulnerable readers.

(Attached below is a PDF of questions that could be used for book group discussions.  Feel free to alter or edit these questions for your own personal use in a group discussion or journaling.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a regular reader of The New Yorker.  I’m usually a few issues behind, and I don’t always read them in order, but I do eventually read about 80-90% of the articles in each issue. 

In the February 9, 2015 edition, there’s a great article entitled, “R U There?” by Alice Gregory.  The article explores the founding and function of the Crisis Text Line, a non-profit established in 2013 by Nancy Lublin and Stephanie Shih.  Through their work with DoSomething.org, the two discovered in 2011 that there was a great need for crisis help by texting especially for teenagers.

Reading this article was eye-opening for me as I felt my age declaring itself not so subtly.  I’m a dinosaur when it comes to phones:  I don’t have a smartphone (though that will be changing soon), and I only text a handful of people.  For the most part, I’m of the e-mail generation.  That’s my preferred method of communication if I’m not talking to someone in person.  Yet I immediately realized the truth in what the article related:  Today’s teens communicate through texting.  There’s no doubt that if you have a teen and you give them a phone, they need an unlimited texting plan lest you end up with an inordinate mobile bill.  While I may not like the way our society constantly has their eyes aimed downward at their phones, it is the reality in our world at this point, especially among younger generations. 

Clearly the Crisis Text Line is an amazing organization in what it does to help individuals who need emotional support.  I have no doubt other organizations will eventually see the Crisis Text Line as a role model for further advances in helping clients.  It truly is a victory for the vastly undersupported and underfinanced mental health services in the U.S.

However, there was a moment in the article when all I could do was cringe.  Gregory writes, “[The Save-A-Life League] also raised summer-camp tuition for the children of suicides.”  Here, in an article in a liberal intellectual publication that is extolling the wonders of emotional support for those in crisis, was an unconscionable error that continues to devalue the lives of those who live and die with mental illness.  While it is technically accurate to call someone who has committed suicide a “suicide,” the ethics and political correctness in doing so are questionable.

When people commit suicide, it’s their final act.  It’s a major choice, one that irreparably impacts their lives and the lives of those around them.   However, that action does not negate the rest of their lives.  They were sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, lovers, leaders, students, teachers.… They did so much more than just their final act of committing suicide.  Is it right that they should be identified as their final act? 

People first language is important.  It helps remind us that we are more than the things that might restrict us in this world.  When people commit suicide, they do not become their action.  While most would not condone that action, suicide is an action taken in a time of great pain and desperation.  It’s not the only way people should be remembered.  The New Yorker could have so easily edited that sentence to read, “[The Save-A-Life League] also raised summer-camp tuition for the children of those who committed suicide.”  The sentence doesn’t become bulky; in my reading, it actually becomes clearer in many ways.  Moreover, the revised sentence refrains from demeaning individuals who were dealing with mental health issues.

We have a long way to go in our nation to help those who deal with mental illness.  It’s still a taboo topic.  Therapy is still not accepted by many.  Few mainstream alternatives besides drugs and exercise are promoted to help those fighting even the most minor mental health issues.  I look forward to a day when our culture has a better understanding of mental health struggles and is able to offer more holistic treatments that are affordable and readily available.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians.  ~Alexander the Great

Over almost 12 years of dealing with chronic illness plus another 28 years of living, I’ve worked with many health practitioners.  One of the harder things for me to face is when I have to fire a practitioner.  In the case of general practitioners whom I only saw a few times a year, it wasn’t as big of a deal.  I doubt they even noticed when I switched to another doctor.  But when one is working with practitioners on a weekly basis, if not more frequently, intimate relationships develop that are harder to walk away from.  Still, it’s important to move on if one’s health care providers are not meeting one’s needs.

In the past, I often felt guilt when I have left a practitioner, especially when it is someone who has a great reputation in the healing community.  The guilt was because I felt like a failure because I couldn’t make the relationship with that practitioner work; that was an issue I had to work through to understand that there was no need for guilt. The truly best practitioners will not hold anger against you for moving on.  They will know that you are now meant to work with someone else.  Not every practitioner is right for every client or patient, and even if one practitioner is right for you at a certain point in your life, he/she/ze may not be right for you after a few years.  We all grow and change.

Psychotherapists are one type of provider with whom it can be very hard to find the right person to work with.  Sometimes you know right away that the match is good or bad, and sometimes it’s not as easy to figure out whether you should move on.  When I was looking for a therapist in recent years, it took five therapists before I found the right one for me.  The first woman I was with for five weeks, but she would just let me babble and stare at me before asking me generic questions like, “How do you feel about that?”  I prefer my therapists to interact more with me and guide me in my healing.  The second therapist was a wonderful woman whom I think will develop into an amazing practitioner, but she simply didn’t have the experience to work with someone dealing with my issues.  Another therapist I saw lasted eight weeks, though I knew after four that I should leave.  I was at a very stressful juncture in my life when I thought any therapist was better than no therapist.  Unfortunately, that’s not true.  This therapist was very patronizing and too emotionally detached from her clients.  While she has a great reputation among other therapists in the area, she was not the right therapist for an intuitive empath for me.  The fourth therapist I was with for four months; she was fabulous, and I still recommend her to others.  However, we hit a juncture where her personal issues interfered with my treatment, and I knew it was time to move on because she was not going to be able to meet my needs.  The final therapist who didn’t work out was one who immediately began to dump her issues on me, wanting me to heal her rather than her assisting me in my healing.  It took only two weeks for me to see that she was far too toxic of a person for me to work with.  After such a long road, the therapist I finally ended up with is an amazing woman whom I’ve worked with for three years.  She’s helped me to grow and change in amazing ways.  I’m grateful for all she’s taught me.  The journey to find her was long, but it was worth it in the end.

One of the other lessons I’ve had to learn is that reputation not everything.  Just because a person is supposedly “the best” in your area, that person may not be the best for you.  When my twins were born, I saw a lactation consultant who is often considered the best (probably because she tells people she is).  Unfortunately, she gave me a great deal of bad advice which created further problems with breastfeeding.  It was actually the lactation consultants at Mom’s Place, a WIC center to support breastfeeding mothers, who helped repair and save my breastfeeding relationship with my twins. I will always be grateful for how much they helped me.  Likewise, I spent many years seeing a local bodyworker who has an amazing reputation in the Austin healing community.  However, she was just not the right person for me and my body.  I’ve found others who have been able to make more progress in less time using the same modalities that she did.

The more frustrating situations for me to leave are ones wherein the practitioners are really talented and amazing people whose work I love but whose personalities become unbearable for me.  I saw one bodyworker who did great work, but by the time I quit seeing her, I was leaving her office feeling judged and criticized every single time.  I was resenting the time I was spending with her rather than benefitting from it.  While she was well-meaning, it was time for me to set boundaries to protect my emotional self while still getting the physical care I needed. Likewise, another practitioner I saw was amazingly gifted but his ego began getting in the way of our work.  He was unable to wrap his mind around the realities of my life, including my gluten sensitivities, and was issuing too much judgment about my personal life for me to continue seeing him.  He’s someone whom I really miss seeing, but the emotional toxicity was just not supportive of healing for me.  A third bodyworker I previously saw has narcissist personality disorder; she was suffocating to work with.  After leaving all of these practitioners, I talked with other people who had the same experiences with them which helped me to understand it wasn’t my issues causing the difficulties in these situations.

I’ve also learned the hard way that when a practitioner physically hurts me, it’s absolutely time to leave. Second chances just end up causing me more trauma.  In one case, I left my first appointment at a chiropractor’s office feeling emotionally and physically drained.  By the time I got home, I was in awful physical pain.  I had to get a massage therapist to fix what the chiropractor had done to me.  So many others had sworn to me about this man’s healing ability, but I didn’t experience it.  Fortunately, I had enough sense not to go back to him again.  In other cases, it took me more than once to learn the lesson.  There’s a local holistic dentist whom I saw for many years.  I struggle with anesthetics not working properly for me which means dental work can be hellish at best if I don’t have a compassionate practitioner who is willing to listen to me and re-medicate frequently.  This dentist was not patient, and he didn’t care if I was in pain.  The first time when he was doing work, it hurt, but it wasn’t bad.  The second time landed me in a PTSD state because the pain was so horrendous but yet he wouldn’t stop working on me because he told me that I was fine.  Had I heeded the lesson the first time, I wouldn’t have put myself through the awful pain I endured the second.

Beyond physical and emotional pain, practitioners can also cause spiritual or metaphysical problems.  It is VERY important never to let someone who is in an unhealthy altered state due to drugs and/or alcohol do metaphysical work involving contact on your body.  I unfortunately learned this one the hard way as a practitioner I had been seeing for a while attempted to work on me while intoxicated by cold medicine.  The result created an energetic mess that left me in physical pain and required a visit to another practitioner to clean up the damage.

It’s important to remember that if a licensed practitioner hurts you, there is recourse for reporting them to state boards. Psychotherapists, dentists, doctors, medical assistants, and acupuncturists, massage therapists, licensed midwives, nurses, chiropractors, and other practitioners all can be investigated for malpractice.  Please remember that filing a complaint will have serious personal and professional impacts on the person whom you are reporting.  While you should never hesitate to report an unethical or dangerous practitioner, the complaint process is not a way to air vendettas or deal with personality differences.  I have never filed a complaint against a practitioner, though I regret not filing one against the dentist who harmed me four years ago.  I also would have filed a complaint against the doctor who sexually harassed me when I was in college if I’d known that I could.  However, at that time I was uneducated about such things, and those were the days before the internet was what it is today.

When I have left one practitioner, the new one whom I switch to usually ends up being far more talented than the previous one.  The transition to a new practitioner can be stressful, yet I have always ended up in very productive and beneficial healing relationships when I follow my gut about moving on.

© 2015 Green Heart Guidance

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is a very popular book in spiritual circles, so much so that I could list all of the four agreements long before I read the book.  However, I felt that I should actually read this seminal work so that I could truly understand its meaning.

Ruiz presents the Toltec belief system around suffering and happiness in the world.  It argues that from the moment we are born, we begin making agreements with other people whether we actually want to or not. Our language is one of the first agreements: We have to share belief in the definitions of words in order to communicate.  We have to agree on social behaviors in order for society to function.  However, not all of the agreements we sign up for are healthy.  These are the agreements we make that shatter our self-esteem and our happiness.  They are the ones that teach us to judge ourselves and others harshly.

In order to break away from those beliefs, Ruiz presents four agreements which he argues will change one’s life if one is able to follow them.  The four agreements are:

Following these four agreements, one is able to slowly change one’s visions and beliefs.  One can break away from judgment, hatred, lies, and fear.  Instead, one can be reborn into a life based in love.

By being impeccable with one’s word, Ruiz is not just asking us to be truthful or to avoid lies.  Instead, Ruiz believes that our words create our entire world.  They are how we manifest positivity and negativity.  By being impeccable with our word, one will be able to “take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself” (31).  Being impeccable means that we no longer call others derogatory terms because those words only reflect on who we are:  We will express ourselves in love instead of hate.  This is a challenge for most of us because the world we live in promotes both gossip against others and self-hatred. 

Not taking anything personally is a clear idea though one that is hard to put into practice for many.  When someone yells at us, we judge ourselves and believe we have done something wrong.  Instead, we should believe that they are yelling at us because of their issues and their upbringing.  The way they treat us reflects more on them than us.  Thus, we should not take their actions personally.  This agreement can help heal old wounds by helping us to rewrite history under a new lens.  By understand that people’s insults are based on their own insecurities, such as someone insecure in their own appearance attacking our appearance, then we can understand that the pain we took on actually belonged to someone else.  Enacting this agreement can eliminate a huge amount of suffering that we create for ourselves.

Assumptions are a part of our lives, and unfortunately, they undermine communication and relationships.  As Ruiz argues, if we have the confidence to stop making assumptions and to ask questions, our world will change.  Even if we are dealing with someone we have known for twenty years, we should never assume that they know what we want.  We need to be clear in our desires so that no one has a chance to make faulty assumptions.  Likewise, we need to ask others what they need so that we don’t make faulty assumptions either.  The saying “to assume just makes an ass out of u and me” holds true in this agreement.

Finally, Ruiz states that we should always do our best, though he is clear that our best will always be changing.  On the days we are sick or weak, our best won’t be as strong as it is on our healthy days.  That doesn’t mean that we should give anything less than our all, though.  However, it also does not mean that we should overdo it.  Furthermore, Ruiz believes that once we begin to do our best, we will be happier because we are no longer working for rewards.  We are working to do what makes us happy instead.

Ruiz states, “[The four agreements are] so simple and logical that even a child can understand them” (88).  He’s right, and that is one of my complaints about this book.  It is very simply written in many places.  It can also be unnecessarily repetitive.  The English teacher in me wanted to pull out a red pen to edit it down; this short pocket book of only 140 pages could have been far less than 100 and still been as successful. 

I also found Ruiz’s views a bit narrow at times.  His concepts about childhood presume that a child is not raised in an abusive home and that every child is loved and cared for properly.  That’s unfortunately not true.  Even by the tender age of two, some children have already taken on emotional, spiritual, and physical responsibilities in dysfunctional homes in order to protect themselves.  Furthermore, I think that Ruiz’s beliefs that positive visions can create anything are overly idealized.  While we can create our own happiness, we cannot visualize anything into being.  No matter how hard I try and how much I visualize it, I will never be a six foot tall runway model in this lifetime.  However, I can find happiness in my body as it is.  I just will have to find another career to enjoy. I also strongly disagree with Ruiz’s perspective on mental illness; I could fill an entire post just on that topic.

Despite the weak editing and its differences in view from my own beliefs, The Four Agreements is a book that has changed many lives and has the potential to change many more.  If you are looking to find a way to be happier in your life, especially if you are in a situation that seems impossible, this book could provide the foundation for you to work from.  I also think it could provide a great platform for couple’s counseling for partners who find that communication and compatibility have disappeared from their relationship.

© 2015 Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Lately I’ve seen a lot of inspirational memes that are along the lines of, “Never look back.  Your past is not your present.”  On one hand, I agree that the past is not the present.  We are not the people we were yesterday.  We are also not the people we will become tomorrow.  Our past is just that: Our past.  However, I disagree strongly with the “never look back” idea that seems to be thriving right now in inspirational thinking.  While it’s important not to dwell in the past, it is very important to examine the past in order not to repeat it and to improve ourselves. 

An example might be a young man named George who lost his mother as a child.  George certainly suffered a great deal of pain and loss at a young age, and that traumatic experience shaped who he became as a man.  As he continues dwelling in the past, George devotes a part of every day to his deceased mother.  He has built an elaborate shrine to her in his spare bedroom.  George continues to set an empty place for his dead mother at the table at every meal.  Furthermore, George makes it clear to everyone that the loss his mother at a young age was devastating and ruined his life.  This is a situation where George is dwelling quite unhealthily in the past, letting the past control the present, and failing to move forward into a healthy life.

In contrast, a healthy adult named Susan lost her father as a child, but she has not forgotten her father by any means.  Susan continues to cherish her father in her daily prayers and in her heart.  She has hung a picture collage of him in her family room along with pictures of other family members.  At her wedding, she offered a tribute to her father, wishing that he could have been with her on her wedding day walking her down the aisle.  However, Susan also understands that her father is gone, and that she is still living.  She has not stopped her life because her father is gone, and she does not let her father’s death hamper her personal growth.  She understands that death is a part of life, and she has let go of the bitterness that she once felt towards whatever higher power took her father away from her at such a young age.

When Susan became seriously involved with her fiancé, she found herself unintentionally doing things that were sabotaging the relationship.  She didn’t mean to cause the problems, but clearly something was askew.  Thus, she met with a therapist who was able to help her determine what was happening.  Susan had a deep-seated unconscious fear of her fiancé abandoning her just as her father had abandoned her (through death) when she was a child.  In this case, it becomes very necessary for Susan to look back to the past to understand her present behavior and to correct it so that she can have the wonderful future with the man she loves.  In this case, it’s not a matter of dwelling in the past but rather re-examining the past to bring about positive change.

For me, I have had to look back to issues across this life and into my past lives in order to bring about physical, emotional and spiritual healing.  I don’t dwell in the past, but I do recognize that those events shaped who I am today.  In studying and working with those past traumas, I have been able to release pain that was holding me back.  Without that pain, I am able to live life more fully in the present and move forward into a future that amazes me.  However, without looking back on those past events, none of it would be possible.  It’s hard and often painful work, but the results are amazing.

© 2015 Green Heart Guidance

I am an intellectually gifted individual.  That’s not meant to be an egotistical statement:  It’s a simple fact of who I am.   I’m definitely not the smartest person in the world (by a long shot!), but the more than ample intelligence I possess has created numerous challenges for me over the course of my life. 

I started reading before I was three years old.  From the time I was in kindergarten, I had special permission to check out the “big kid” chapter books in the school library because I was long past reading the picture books in the kindergarten section.  I also have many memories of my teachers using me as a teacher’s aide because I was so far ahead of my peers that having me do the same work as them was pointless.

I have a June birthday, and my parents had considered starting me early in half-day kindergarten at age four.   This is the course I would recommend for most gifted children if it is an option in their school district.  Our society is relatively accepting of starting a child young, especially if the child has a fall or winter birthday.  Also, if I had needed to spend a second year in kindergarten, it probably would not have been as big of deal as skipping a grade became in a later grade.  (One of my kindergarten friends did this due to his lack of emotional maturity.)   However, my parents decided to start me with the rest of my five year old peers.  This began an annual discussion between my parents and the school as to whether or not to have me “skip” a grade.  However, it never happened at that school.

In third grade, I was in a combination third/fourth class, so the teacher just had me do all the fourth grade work.  That meant I finished fourth grade instead of third, making it the perfect opportunity to have me skip a grade.  However, to complicate matters, my family was moving in October of that year.  My parents were concerned that the school in the new state would be more advanced.  It turns out the opposite was true.  I ended up in a fourth grade classroom in the new state doing work that I’d done several years previously, and I was bored silly.  The principal at that school refused to make any accommodations for me to get educational material that was appropriate for me.  He felt being bored was part of life and that I should learn to deal with it.

As a result, my parents moved me to a private school where I was finally skipped from fourth to sixth grade after extensive testing to make sure it was the right decision.  Academically, it was the right decision for me.  However, it created an initial year of social difficulties for me among  my classmates, many of whom were spoiled rich girls who were great at bullying.  I was the target of a lot of negativity that first year because classmates were jealous that I was a year younger than them.  The next year, our class size doubled, and I was once again able to blend in with the crowd.  I remained at the top of our class intellectually.  I hit puberty a little bit early which actually meant that I blended in more with my classmates than I would have if I’d been in my original grade.  By high school, my closest friends (including my future [ex-] husband) were a year ahead of me in school which meant they were two years older than me.  Emotional maturity was not an issue for my old soul self.

Because of the high school I attended, I eventually entered college with 56 college credit hours already on my transcript.  I graduated magna cum laude with 140 hours that included double majoring and secondary teaching certification at the age of 19 years, 2 months.  When I was doing my student teaching, my high school junior students were only a year or two younger than me, though they had no idea until the semester ended!

As an adult, all of this has faded into the background for the most part.  Many of my friends don't know this information (or didn't until this blog post!) unless they've known me since high school.  As adults, age differences become moot as we associate with people who are our emotional, intellectual, professional, spiritual and social peers rather than our classmates.  Because this has all become a part of my distant past, I debated whether or not to even write this post.  However, as there is information here that can help others who are dealing with gifted children, I decided it was important to share.

I definitely have a brain that works differently that a lot of people’s.  I remember a lot, especially if I’ve read it. My memory is not quite photographic, but I am definitely a visual learner.  In recent years, I’ve become more aware of how much people notice this about me.  One acquaintance who adopted boy-girl twins who were born addicted to crack asked me in a conversation what the statistics were about male versus female rates of subsequent problems resulting from the addiction.  When I told her I had no idea and asked her why she thought I would, her response was, “But Elizabeth, you know everything!”  That’s not at all true, but it made me laugh.  Another online friend paid me the great complement of saying that she wished there was a Google function for my brain.  Some days I wish that too, especially when I can’t find my car keys!

Being intellectually gifted seems like it should make life a slam dunk, but unfortunately, the opposite can be quite true.  The American education system as a whole has become more and more botched over the past decades with its emphasis on standardized testing especially through the “no child left behind” program.  As a result, the schools often teach to the test with teachers having no control over this part of the curriculum they are required to teach.  A lowest common denominator is set for achieving passing test scores on the standardized tests.  If gifted children are way beyond the levels of the testing, they are “held back” from their own individual learning while the rest of the class learns the information on the test.

Another issue surrounding being gifted is jealousy.  I experienced it as a student, and I’ve experienced it when dealing with other parents and teachers as an adult dealing with my own gifted children.  Many people want to believe their child is the most special child in the world.  They insist their children are gifted, too, and they don’t want another child to receive anything more advanced than their children.   These parents are right about one thing:  We are all special.  There’s no question about that.  We just have different abilities.  I sure can’t shoot a layup, and if you want to talk about post-modern theory, my brain goes numb.  I don’t really have the capacity to analyze quantum mechanics, either.  However, that doesn’t mean that I should stop others from doing those things out of my jealousy or inability. 

Each of us have a need to learn on the level that is appropriate.  That is why we have special education systems to help those who need additional assistance.  Our society doesn’t question this need nearly as much as it often refuses to provide advanced educational opportunities for those whose brains work differently in another direction.  Instead, our society often clams up, shuts down, and declares gifted programs to be discriminatory.   Popular articles and political leaders often bemoan that the United States ranks very poorly among other leading nations of the world when it comes to education.  There is a great desire for America to “catch up” with other nations.  Yet ironically, our national education system often doesn’t attempt to work with our best and brightest:  Instead, it holds them back from learning at their best capacity.

So how can our society work to change this?  The first thing to do would be to make appropriate placements for grade level.  Using calendar dates that are carved in stone isn’t it the way to do it.  A child who was born on September 2nd may be far more advanced than one who was born on August 25th, but in Texas, the September 1st birthdate for starting kindergarten is strictly enforced in most districts.  Not only should academic need be taken into account, but emotional readiness should be as well.  Many districts allow parents to “red shirt” their  kids and start them in kindergarten at age 6 rather than 5 for emotional reasons, but the opportunity for some kids to start at age 4 because of advanced emotional abilities doesn’t exist in most places.

The next step is getting rid of the cookie cutter educational system we currently have to focus more on learning that develops intellect rather than one that emphasizes rote memorization and test taking skills.  We’ve come a long way since the nineteenth century education system that focused solely on memorizing lessons, but we still have a long way to go.  Many online programs are also being developed for less expensive education that rely more on multiple choice testing rather than critical thinking skills.  Programs such as these discourage a learning process that engages students in classrooms or online with professors who actually grade essays and interact with their students.  This is a step backward in the intellectual development of our children and our nation.

Third, the development of true gifted and talented programs would help immensely.  The school district I live in has a wonderful GT program that pulls gifted kids out into separate classes for the areas in which they need advanced learning.  The neighboring school district, however, has a GT program that is no more than lip service.  It entitles kids to extra worksheets, but not much else.  At the root of part of this is the ever frustrating lack of adequate funding for public schools.  However, the charter school my children attended for most of grade school managed to meet the needs of kids on all levels of the educational spectrum with far less funding than public schools have.  It can be done: Where there is a will (and adequate curriculum support), there is a way.

It is really important that we support each other no matter what our gifts are.  Some people have intellectual gifts, and others have gifts in other areas.  Regardless of how each of our individual abilities manifests, we should all be given opportunities to develop those gifts without having to face resistance or bullying from others.  It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where each person was loved and supported for being their amazing selves.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Often we find ourselves repeating the same patterns in our lives.  We date a guy who reminds us of our father, but we don’t quite buy into the whole Freudian Oedipal theory.  We watch friends seemingly dating the same person over and over again even though each time they think they’ve picked someone totally different than their previous partners.  We switch jobs only to end up a similar awful situation as our previous positions.  Why?

In my personal belief system, we continue repeating patterns until we learn the life lesson we need to learn.  I believe we all came to this planet with specific goals set before us, although I don’t know if we are aware of those goals or not.  Regardless, challenges will continue to present themselves in our lives until we master the higher concept behind them.  Once we’ve learned that lesson, then we are free to move on to the next.  Of course, that’s an oversimplified description of it all as we are often learning many lessons at once.  Because I believe in reincarnation, I also believe that lessons can carry over from past lives if they weren’t completed in previous journeys.

In my own life, especially in earlier years, there was a repeating pattern of narcissists playing prominent roles.  For me, once I was old enough to manage my own decisions in life, the challenge was to figure out why I kept having narcissists appear in my life.  The first question anyone should ask themselves when examining a repeating pattern is, “Are they serving as mirrors of my own behavior?”  For me, narcissism is not a personal issue.  My instinct is to think of others and to care about their health and safety and feelings.  I’m empathic and that dominates my being.  So for me, narcissism is not something I struggle with on a personal level.

Then why so many narcissists in my world?  As I worked through my personal and spiritual issues, I finally was able to realize that I drew those types of people to me because I had low self-worth.  I believed that I didn’t deserve someone who would love me fully for who I am.  So instead, I accepted the abuse and neglect that narcissists would force on me.  As a child, I had no power in my life to stop the behaviors of those around me, but as an adult, I do.  I am able to walk out of a relationship when I am being used or mistreated or even abused. 

Now that I’ve recognized the pattern, I am able to stear clear of the manipulation of narcissists once they come into my life.  I may have to work with them, yet I keep my physical and emotional distance.  I no longer let their distorted views damage my perception.  I stay strong, believing in the amazing person I am.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

My dreams are generally not prophetic, though for some with metaphysical gifts, dreams can provide amazing insight about the future.  Visions during sleep can also be an incredibly powerful way of connecting with the other side.  I have had one sleeping contact with the other side that I know of in which two deceased relatives came to visit me, but that was an exception to my norm.  Generally my dreams are very clearly my unconscious trying to work out emotional issues and stresses from my past and present.  However, when I am fighting Lyme, Bartonella or have parasites dying, I tend to have awful nightmares.  In a recent round of die off, I was dealing with dreams about death.  Intuitive empath that I am, it doesn’t surprise me that when critters in me are dying, I would be dreaming about death, too.

In the first dream I had, I was dying of butt cheek cancer while in high school.  No, I doubt that’s a real cancer term, but it has to do with the fact that I was having a great deal of Lyme-induced IT band pain which was creating real life butt cheek pain.  My unconscious was dealing with that pain, too.  Despite the fact I had terminal cancer, I was headed to the mall with a high school friend to do research for our math homework by finding the prices we needed to complete word problems.  As disturbing as it was that I was doing my math homework while faced with imminent death, I can even understand where it came from:  My high school geometry teacher had commented on one of my Facebook blog posts earlier that day.

In the second death-related dream, a divorced friend of mine died from a sudden but expected death (such as a rapid onset/decline cancer).  In the dream, much of what I was observing was her ex-husband moving into the house she got in the divorce with his new girlfriend and how their two children were coping with it all.  In reality, this was my unconscious dealing with issues around my own ex-husband as much as her issues with her ex-husband.

In the third death-related dream in less than 24 hours, I was dreaming of Ebola.  We can all probably figure out how that was in my unconscious given the media bombardment about Ebola even if one is trying to avoid it for the most part.  In this dream, I was dying of Ebola which I had caught at my childhood elementary school where I was working as a nurse.  Even though I was happy about being a nurse, I was very emphatic to anyone who asked that I had been a teacher previously.  Here again my unconscious is still working through my change in life paths to become a healer rather than a teacher.  While I believe that much of what I do combines the two vocations, I do not ever see myself in a traditional classroom grading papers again.  I’m on a different journey now.

Dreams can be very revealing of your fears, your desires, and the areas you need to work on healing.  Keeping a dream journal where you record your dreams when you wake up can be quite illuminating. If you’ve never done it, you might want to put some kind of recording device (paper, pen, iPhone, laptop) on your nightstand and try it for a few weeks to see what you can learn about yourself.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Over the course of my life, I’ve lived with at least five narcissists and have worked with or encountered several others.  They have ranged from mildly impacted by narcissistic tendencies to those with full blown narcissistic personality disorder.   Narcissism is a spectrum like many other mental health issues such as depression, and it can be concurrent with other mental health issues as well.  Popular culture portrays narcissists as people who are obsessed with their good looks, much like Narcissus in the original Greek myth.  However, in real life, that’s pretty far from the reality of what most narcissists are like.  While some may be overly concerned with their physical appearances, most are much more obsessed with other parts of their psyches.

Narcissists are people who think of their own needs above and beyond anyone else’s.  Narcissists are so deluded and self-involved that they don’t even realize that they are ignoring others’ needs.  Bereft of a true sense of empathy, the narcissists just focus on what they need, and then they decide within their own heads that what is good for them is good for everyone.  Anyone who would dare to claim otherwise is wrong.  Narcissists blame others when things go wrong because narcissists can’t be responsible for their theoretically exemplary actions hurting others. Narcissists often can’t even accept responsibility for simple and common human mistakes such as knocking over a glass.  Someone else must have bumped the table and caused the narcissist’s elbow to hit the glass.  A simple apology for their accidental klutzy behavior is too much to expect.

Narcissists delude others into thinking they, the narcissists, are wonderful people.  The narcissists wear a mask that covers the devious and abusive actions they take against others.  Narcissists are able to manipulate their victims’ feelings and beliefs to the extent that the victims then believe that they are responsible for the narcissists’ self-absorbed behavior.  The victims twistedly accept the blame that narcissists assign to them and believe that things that couldn’t possibly be their fault are actually their fault.

Living with narcissists is exhausting.  Day in and day out, the housemates of a narcissist must constantly be on edge, using their energy to protect themselves against the psychological, energetic and sometimes physical attacks of narcissists.  You never know when or what the next attack may be.  The narcissists will always deny their responsibility or come up with excuses or ways to blame their victims.  Because narcissists are perfect in their deluded minds, there is no real recourse or hope for those who live with them except praying for a good day.

To escape a narcissistic relationship, there is only one real option:  To leave.  Narcissists will not change because they don’t think there is anything wrong with them to change.  People cannot continue to have a relationship with a narcissist and not expect to have serious emotional, spiritual and possibly physical and sexual damage done to them.  While the decision to quit associating with a narcissist whom one loves is traumatic and painful, the other side of the decision is a wonderful place to be.  Once one is no longer associating with the narcissist, one’s perspective becomes much clearer.  One realizes how twisted, demented and damaging the self-absorbed actions of the narcissist are.  At that point, the former victims can begin focusing on their own issues rather than just trying to meet the needs of the narcissists.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

One of the quickest turnoffs on a dating website is encountering a highly negative profile.  A guy who starts off his profile by saying, “I don’t date women who have blond hair.  I don't like women who are tall.  Fat women aren’t healthy, and I don’t like them.  Don’t live with your mother either if you message me,” is presenting a very negative vibration to prospective women.  Men aren’t alone in this negativity; many women do it, too.  While most of us do have preferences in what we are looking for in a potential partner, this negative presentation of ideals is likely to drive most candidates away.

There are many who believe that what we think is what we manifest.  If that is true, then it’s best to keep our thoughts as positive as possible.  Even if it’s not true, the expression of positive thoughts can shift our personal views of life by placing an emphasis on what is right rather than what is wrong.  It’s seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty.

An easy example is stating, “I don’t like broccoli.”  Instead, one could state, “I really prefer spinach to broccoli.”  It gives even more information and keeps the sentiment in a positive light.  Rather than saying, “I hate bicycling,” you could suggest, “How about we consider canoeing instead?”

Another school of thought argues that the Universe doesn’t hear the word “no” or “not.” So if you put on your dating profile, “I don’t want to be with anyone who has kids,” you’ll actually end up attracting a lot of people who have children.  Instead, try phrasing your request in a more positive light and without negatives:  “I’d prefer to date people who are childless.”  Instead of saying, “I don’t like conservatives,” you can state, “I find people with a liberal mindset incredibly attractive.”

While these seem like little things, all the little things add up when trying to make one’s life experience more positive.  This is something that is free to do, and it takes very little effort to do once you get in the swing of things. 

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

I tend to prefer movies that allow me to relax and escape yet which also leave me thinking.  I watched Neverwas (2005, PG-13) the other evening and was quite drawn to its plot and themes not to mention its stellar actors.  This film met my need to escape (albeit to a mental institution in the beautiful Hudson Valley), but it also broached a question which is one I've debated with myself many times over the past few years:  Which of us is delusional, and which of us is inspired?  I'm sure many might look at my intuitive messages and immediately deem me delusional.  So be it.  But how do I know that I'm not mentally ill?  How do I know that my metaphysical friends aren't all delusional, too?

I attended a social meeting for those with intuitive gifts a while back.  There were about 25 people in the room.  Two were clearly mentally ill.  One was suffering from narcissistic personality disorder and loneliness.  He actually didn't have any metaphysical gifts that he knew of.  He just came to check out the crowd and get some attention.  The other man in question was genuinely delusional.  His visions clearly crossed the line between sanity and insanity.  They had elements of obsessive compulsive disorder to them, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had a diagnosis of schizophrenia as well.

So how could I tell that this second guy wasn’t on the same page as the rest of us?  Part of it was instinct.  Part of it was listening to what he said and how he said it.  He engaged in activities that no one else in any metaphysical practice that I’m aware of also participates in.  His visions were delusions that were damaging his relationships with others and impeding on his ability to live his life.  They created activities for him that were outside the realm of acceptable human behavior, even for a metaphysician. 

To me, the bigger question comes down to whether anyone is being hurt or anyone is being helped by the visions.  If the visions are helpful, creating healing and peace, they probably are genuine.  If they are delusions rather than divinely inspired visions, someone is likely getting deeply hurt, whether that’s the person having the delusions or those around him.  Even within that distinction, sometimes delusions can be helpful things.  In Neverwas, a lead character’s imaginative delusions actually helped him to live a happy but solitary life that involved quite a bit of fantasy.  Those around him who were getting "hurt" were those who chose not to let him be happy in his own way.

All of us have different views and perceptions.  To me, it’s important to remember “reality” is very different for all of us.  Quite often, there is no one ultimate Truth. Since opening to my intuition and my metaphysical gifts, I have been happier than I have ever been previously in my life.  My spiritual visions help me and countless others, and to me, that is what matters. 

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance, LLC