I can’t tell you how many times clients have said to me, “This may be TMI [too much information], but…” and then they share something they feel is mortifying or shameful or just very intimate about their bodies. Almost none of the time is it TMI.

Quite often the details that clients are worried about discussing involve bodily functions. Please know there is no way to give me TMI about your body. To start with, I’ve shared my home with dogs. Any pet lover can regale you with gross stories of the things their pets have eaten, vomited, pooped or disemboweled. It just goes with the territory of loving pets. They are furry, cute, wonderful, and sometimes downright disgusting.

Furthermore, I am a mother. Many parents who have had young children can tell you of a point where they were discussing diaper contents with peers and wondering, “Really? This is what my life is now?” Being a parent has infinite rewards, but it can get pretty darn challenging some days, too. Asides from all the fun with my kids as they grew up, I’ve gone through genital surgeries with two male partners. I’ve had a fully functional female body all my life. You aren’t going to gross me out by discussing what your body has decided to do in a fit of creativity or dysfunction (depending on how you want to frame it). Our society may teach us that talking about our bodies is improper, but that’s not true when you’re working with me. We need to talk about what your body is doing so we can heal it!

Outside of the realm of the human body, I have clients who are anywhere and everywhere on the gender and sexual spectrums. I have clients who are polyamorous. I have clients who are very kinky. I have clients who are having extra-marital affairs. I have clients who use illicit drugs. I have clients who are trying to break addictions and others who have succeeded. All of these clients are special to me, and none of what they tell me about their identities or their life choices makes me think less of them.

Unfortunately, I also have clients who have suffered a great deal of trauma. At least 75% of my clients have been sexually abused at some point in their lives. Many have been physically and emotionally abused. Others also have experienced medical trauma. I definitely fall into all of those categories myself. While the victim feels a great deal shame around the abuse they endured, I don’t view my clients with pity or shame. I see them as humans who need to be accepted, heard, loved, and helped to heal. Whatever they need to share is part of the healing process, and it's not TMI.

I recently told a client at the end of a session, “I don’t think I’ve ever said the word ‘vagina’ so much in one session.” It wasn’t a problem at all for me to be talking about her vagina as we worked on healing the issues at hand. I just had said the word far more than I have before in such short a period of time. And that’s ok! Sometimes we just have to step back and laugh at the absurdity of things when we’re working on healing deep and painful issues.

​Know that it is really hard to present me with TMI, and no matter what you share with me, I won’t judge you for it. Instead, I’ll help you come to terms with that “TMI” and heal it as best I can.

©2021 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Almost all of us will label 2020 as a year that really sucked when we look back at our lives. COVID-19 made a real mess of things. On top of that, there were economic and political issues that greatly impacted many. On a personal level, quite a few of us faced deep challenges we hadn’t expected to face last year.
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In one of my personal challenges, I briefly encountered a man who did something to me that can be considered a felony depending on the state one lives in. Fortunately for me, the situation was a best-case scenario of the possible horrible outcomes that could have resulted. Given the other traumas I have faced, this one was a small one. However, it still had an impact on me that caused a wound which I had to work on healing. 

​​Many months after this man traumatized me and with no further contact between us, he had the unabashed gall to send me a Christmas card which arrived on January 2, 2021 thanks to the post office delays over the holiday season. I was speechless when I opened it. It was a pretty card, and the message he wrote inside was generic but genuine. Still, him sending me a card was totally inappropriate given what had occurred. When I later shared the arrival of the Christmas card with others who knew the whole story, their universal response was, “He sent you what?!?”

I brought the card in and threw it on my family room coffee table next to the couch where I often sit. After a few hours, I had to throw the card on the back porch. The negative energy coming off of it was awful, and I couldn’t stand to be around it. When I told my mentor and my rolfer this, both of them said what I already knew and had done: “Burn it!”
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Someone on my Buy Nothing list had offered up some coffee cans which I claimed with the intent of burning the card. After photographing the card for this post, I tore it into pieces, said a prayer that its symbolic destruction would represent the departure of all the “bad” things that had happened in 2020 and would usher in a purified new year of 2021. And then I lit it on fire. (Please note the garden hose was immediately adjacent to the coffee can and I was burning it on a concrete patio many feet away from anything flammable.) As I watched it burn, I shifted my position with the wind to stay upwind of the smoke, continuing to pray for the healing of the damage that man caused me. A great deal of peace came over me during this ritual as I let go of some of the pain and moved toward the future.

After the fire burned itself out, I wet down the ashes and then threw the remainder in the trash which is what felt appropriate in this situation; sometimes scattering or burying the ashes in the better resolution. With the departure of those ashes, I said goodbye to 2020 with the hopes that 2021 will bring abundant blessings not just for me and my family, but for all.

©2021 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

video of the card on fire in the coffee can

As I’ve mentioned before, the best healers are those who have been wounded and who have worked to heal their past. These healers continue to work on healing on deeper levels throughout their lives as they grow as individuals. If you find a healer who claims to be perfect and to have resolved all their issues, run in the opposite direction. They are deluded. We’re all human, and we’re all in need of healing our entire lives. Almost none of us reach enlightenment on this plane of existence. 

I am continuing my own healing because I practice what I preach to my clients. Lately, I have been working on some very core issues in my life. Like many people, I had a miserable childhood which included a lot of abuse (physical, emotional and sexual) and neglect. I was very different than many of my peers as a child, and as a result, I endured bullying, especially in the late grade school years. When I look back on my childhood, it’s not with fondness. It’s with painful memories and gratitude that I somehow managed to survive. 

Recently, a new issue surfaced during therapy. I’ve got a list of core issues which I have been working on healing in different ways over the years. However, as we approached one of my core issues, a new underlying issue suddenly popped its malicious head out of the woodwork for me to heal. Both my therapist and I were taken back by its appearance, yet it made sense to us in light of my other issues. 

When I came home from that therapy session, I created a flower essence blend for myself just as I do for my clients by using my intuitive guidance and my stock of 600+ flower essences. I then labeled the blend, “I Deserve to Exist.” I’ve learned that The Universe doesn’t observe subtlety when it comes to healing. We need to clearly state exactly what it is we’re working on and what we want to achieve.

​I had known previously that I was an unplanned and undesired pregnancy. Even though I was born in the post-Roe v. Wade era, my somewhat Catholic mother chose to continue the pregnancy. However, on top of not wanting a child, she also did not want a girl. The firstborn child was supposed to be a male, one who could carry on the family name. I grew up knowing that I was not wanted nor was I the right sex. On a subconscious level, I quickly learned that others fundamentally did not want me to exist.

Throughout my childhood, many people tried to make me disappear. They put masks on me, trying to transform me into the kind of person they felt I should be. In order to survive as a child, I conformed as best I could to their demands. At the time, I assumed their judgments meant I was imperfect or wrong. I tried to be perfect. As a teen, I started realizing I wasn’t being true to myself. As an adult, I've had to shed all of those prior expectations in order to find my true self. In retrospect, I have learned that others were not allowing me to be me because of their own emotional issues, not my imperfections.

Lately as I have been clearing out emotional baggage, I’ve simultaneously been clearing out physical baggage, too. I’ve been purging many of my childhood items that I still had packed away in boxes by giving them away on my local Buy Nothing Project list. I’ve experienced great joy in giving these items to others who can enjoy them. Some are getting to reclaim items identical to those which brought them happiness in their childhoods. Others are passing them on to children who can happily play with the toys rather than the toys sitting unused in boxes. 

This morning I had a healing session with one of my practitioners who uses NET. Unprompted by me, she used the term “mask” with me, and I began to laugh. I told her that my afternoon plans included smashing a mask I had created as a child; I had set the mask in my garage before I left home for the appointment. My healer got goosebumps as we talked about it.
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So when I got home, I smashed that mask. I was utterly surprised how easy it was to break the ceramic with a hammer; it was like using a knife on warm butter. Symbolically, that’s probably true of many of our masks. While they appear to be sturdy and strong, hiding us from the world, the reality is that once we choose to remove them and be ourselves, they crumble quickly. ​

​The only piece of the mask that refused to smash was the nose. When I am doing psychic readings for clients, I see noses symbolically to represent wisdom. To me, that was a reminder to keep the wisdom of my childhood. I learned a lot through the pain I endured, plus I do have some happy memories. Those are the things that I should retain. The rest can be broken and discarded.

​I attract engineers. It’s just a fact of my life that I have come to accept. For 40 of my 43 years, I have lived with engineers or future engineers. I’m the daughter, ex-wife and mother of engineers. Over half of the men I have dated have been engineers. I don’t go looking for them, but yet somehow engineers find me or I find them unintentionally. When I mentioned to a friend that a man I was newly dating was an engineer, she replied, “Of course he is. What else would he be?” I suspect that it might be quicker when talking to men about their careers if I just asked them what type of engineer they are rather than inquiring them what they do for a living. Chances are that they are an engineer.

Engineers are a unique group of people with brains that function in a way that is somewhat different from many others in society. While comics like Dilbert make fun of this engineer’s mindset, I am so accustomed to it that I find men who aren’t engineers to be the ones who are different thinking. Perhaps this is why I attract engineers: I know how to be at peace with their general mindset.

Thus, when a local intimacy coach mentioned that she was reading and absolutely loving Heart in Gear: An Engineer’s Erotic Journey to Freedom by Christopher Hoffman, I immediately purchased the book. I quickly read through it, fascinated by Hoffman’s story and amazed by his deep insights and his life growth. The book was far more than I had expected or hoped for.

Like many people, Hoffman found himself in a completely unsatisfying marriage after 20 years. Having been unable to improve the relationship through counseling, Hoffman reached a crossroads. With the encouragement of friends, he left his dysfunctional marriage, began rebuilding his life and found his deepest self. Heart in Gear details how Hoffman’s life evolves professionally, psychologically, and sexually as he worked to become a happier person.

Hoffman’s journey is filled with many fun and very sexy moments that he details explicitly, but he also encounters pain along the way. As he notes, “I learned not to be afraid of big emotions. Feeling pain was just a sign that what I was encountering mattered” (146). Through exploring that pain, Hoffman finds some of the deeper truths about himself and life. One of his first steps in the journey was discovering, “There are people trying to reach us, but they can’t penetrate into our hearts—not because we aren’t listening to them, but because we aren’t listening to ourselves” (53).

Once Hoffman realizes that he has to be accountable for his own emotions, desires, and behaviors rather than depending on others to shape him, he is able to enter relationships that are more soul-empowering. Rather than trying to fix everything and everyone around him (a very male and very engineer approach to life), Hoffman discovered that the healthier approach is to accept others as they are and to appreciate them for their genuine selves. Through this full acceptance of others, Hoffman found that his sexual connection with others became far more intimate and powerful than ever before. In his words, “I unplugged my cock from my ego and plugged it into my heart” (108).

I recommend Heart in Gear for any man (but especially engineers and their partners) who is wanting to learn more about himself, to heal his wounds and to be a better romantic partner. For a short and very easy to read book, Heart in Gear is filled with some very deep and powerful insights that have the potential to open up new worlds to its readers.
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©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Over a year ago, I managed to get my heart bruised, not for the first time in recent years. In fact, it felt like the 142nd time, though in reality, it hasn’t been quite that many. However, the pain of a bruised heart always seems to be magnified in the moment. As I was going through the pain of this deep hurt, I said to the other person involved that I would just add it to my long list of recent screwups. Yet the other person didn’t see me as having failed; rather, he saw me as having been brave.

For me, being called brave is a trigger to anger and frustration. It’s not much different to me than “you’re so strong,” another catchphrase that I find utterly exasperating. When people use these phrases with me, I always ask or tell them, “What other choice do I have? I can either surrender to the pain and misery of my life, or I can keep fighting.” To me, there really is no choice between those options.

As I began reading Brené Brown’s Rising Strong for a book group, her words began to help me pinpoint why I find being called brave so frustrating. She writes,

For me, the frustration comes from those who only want to see the sanitized version of my life. They aren’t interested in seeing the struggle and pain. By calling me brave, I fear that people are denying and demeaning the very real challenges I endure every single day. That fear may not be grounded in reality every time, but it's what the situations feel like to me based on past experiences.

Brown’s exploration of what it means to be brave in the face of what she calls “falls” (but what most would call failure) builds on the themes of her previous works on shame and vulnerability. It is a call for readers to live genuine lives that by definition must experience falls in order to move forward and grow.  Brown states, “To pretend that we can get to helping, generous, and brave without navigating through tough emotions like desperation, shame, and panic is a profoundly dangerous and misguided assumption.” Yet most people want life to be that easy. They want to believe that being strong and brave is uncomplicated. It's not. Strength and bravery often encompass a great deal of hidden pain.

Reading Brown’s Rising Strong helped me come to terms with what others see as brave in my behavior; before reading it, I truly didn’t understand what others were seeing in me. However, for me, this is simply how I live my life. I would rather fall flat on my face from having tried and failed than to have regrets about the things I might have done. To me, it doesn’t feel brave at all. It just feels like being me. It also feels horribly painful at times. 

For those who want to live their lives in a "braver" way, I highly recommend Brown's Rising Strong. It offers great insight about learning to face one's own stories that we tell ourselves to deceive ourselves and keep ourselves from living a more truthful life. The book details ways to be open and genuine with others. And most importantly, the book acknowledges the pain of falling flat on one's face when things don't go as planned. Brown truly understands all that it takes to live a genuine life, something few people in our society are strong enough to do.

​©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

​(I received a free copy of Unstrung from Netgalley in return for an honest review.)

On a whim, I previously purchased Laura Spinella’s Ghost Gifts because of its subject matter. I quickly became engrossed in a novel that embodied romance, mystery, and the metaphysical. Not only was the story of Ghost Gifts addictive to me, but Spinella’s words themselves rapidly became captivating. She is one of those authors whose prose is like poetry, flowing smoothly across the page and roping the readers in so that they stay up all night reading her work. Ghost Gifts is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years.

Upon finishing Ghost Gifts, I quickly turned to the internet and was delighted to find that Spinella had a new novel, Unstrung, about to release. As I began the story, the main character Livy (Olivia Klein) is reading and ridiculing Ghost Gifts as being a preposterous book. I love when an author (or anyone, really) can laugh at herself.

As I progressed into Unstrung, I found myself enjoying a much more intense read than I expected. I actually had to take break from reading the novel because it touched on some very deep topics that are close to my heart. The plot seemed simple and somewhat superficial at first: Livy, a first chair violinist, is having major marital problems with her second husband. Her best friend and lawyer helps her through legal troubles, and Livy is serving out community service time at a local school for students with life challenges.

However, once one gets into Unstrung, the powerful theme of loss appears as the overarching tie between the characters of the book. The theme of loss applies to so many parts of the characters’ lives: illness, death, miscarriage, money, love, adoption, abuse, addiction, tragedy, broken relationships, divorce, and dreams. As Livy and those around her struggle with these painful issues, their lives come together in unexpected ways.

As much as I loved the majority of the work and as much as it challenged me to examine issues around loss in my own life, the improbable ending was a let-down. These were not the directions I could have seen for the characters, and they were not ones that felt realistic to me. I would have chosen a very different ending had I written Unstrung. However, despite the ending, Unstrung is a fabulous novel. I look forward to reading more by Spinella.

©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Full Disclosure: I received a free digital copy in exchange for an honest review by NetGalley. However, I also bought a paperback copy to share with the many friends whom I’d lent my copy of How Not to Fall.

We’ve all heard the saying, “The sequel is never as good as the original.” More often than not, it’s unfortunately true. We build up our hopes for something even more amazing than the story or movie which stole our heart. Unfortunately, our fantasies are often too great, and the eventual reality is disappointing. For me, this phenomenon happened with How Not to Let Go by Emily Foster. While I adored its predecessor, How Not to Fall, I was nowhere near as enthralled with the sequel. That’s not to say that How Not to Let Go wasn’t a good book: It just wasn’t as amazing as the first in the series.

How Not to Let Go continues the story of Annabelle and Charles, two lovers who met while she was a student and he was her supervisor. After her graduation, they began a torrid one month affair, ending it when she left for medical school in Massachusetts and he stayed on at his position as a post-doctoral researcher in Indiana. In the sequel, we witness the two trying to cope with their breakup, and after a year has passed, we get to join their journey as they work toward reuniting.

The story jumps back and forth between the US and England where Charles’ family of origin lives. While attending a conference, Annabelle and Charles meet for coffee but choose not to give into sexual temptation. However, when an overly convenient plot device of potential terrorist activity leads to Charles’ brother shutting down the London airports for security reasons, the two lovers spend several days at Charles’ brother’s home having abundant sex once again. Eventually, the two both end up in Massachusetts, and they continue to work through the relationship, its issues, and their individual problems.

I struggled to figure out why this sequel wasn’t as exciting for me as the first book. The process of falling in love is a powerful and wonderful one, and that first love part of Annabelle and Charles’ relationship happened in the first book. There’s no way to recreate that initial passion and romance as a relationship continues. Reunions are hot, and the sex that follows them is also quite intense, but it’s never quite the same as the beginning of a relationship. However, the sex scenes between Annabelle and Charles were still very arousing.

The means that Foster uses to push along the plot of the novel were often a bit too over the top for me. Rich geniuses (more than one in a family!), a trust fund, a potential terrorist attack, a conveniently located gorgeous home… it all just felt less real than the first novel. The more honest parts of the novel, the ones that involved family dynamics or relationship growth, were too few and far between. While often difficult to read because of how toxic the relationships were, the family scenes were the ones that kept my attention and made me want to keep reading. Unfortunately, the great family scenes were surrounded by extensive and detailed rock climbing adventures which became tedious for me.

Foster definitely writes for sapiosexuals, readers who are turned on by intelligence. In How Not to Let Go, though, the use of imagery to describe Charles’ psychological struggles becomes burdensom. Perhaps it is the kind of language and conversation that would happen between two psychiatrists, but for most of us, we don’t create such elaborate illustrations for our personal struggles.

The hardest part for me about the book was probably not due to the author or the book itself but was due to my own life. In the novel, Charles struggles with having an avoidant attachment style due to the dysfunctional family he grew up in. He’s the kind of guy who is commitment phobic as a result of having been hurt too much in the past by those he loved. However, unlike any man I’ve ever known who has an avoidant attachment style, Charles enters intensive psychotherapy to work on healing his wounds. He regularly flies across states to continue seeing the same therapist in person. He is determined to break through the psychological struggles that hold him back from having a healthy and secure attachment to Annabelle. Perhaps I was jealous of Annabelle having found a man who was willing to do this healing work for both himself and for her, but another part of me found it very unrealistic. That left me wondering how one finds a partner who have successfully done this powerful and deep healing work, because the people who have are very rare. Thus, another part of the book felt unrealistic to me, just in a way that made me feel jealous rather than bemused.

I definitely enjoyed reading How Not to Let Go, but it was a less passionate enjoyment than I felt for its predecessor. I have already recommended How Not to Let Go to a friend with an avoidant attachment style, but I probably won’t recommend it to others whom I shared the first book with. That said, I hope Foster plans to continue writing other novels which cater to sapiosexuals, which teach healthy sexual relationships, and which portray realistic sex scenes. The world of romance definitely needs books that fit this niche!
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Last week I received a message through Meetup from a (now former) member of the group I lead there. It was titled, “too expensive.” She wrote in the body of the message, “I thought that this meet up was free. Asking for 10.00 every time healers, myself included come together to do work for the planet is a little much to as of people. Too bad money trumps light workers from coming together and doing there work together as a community.” (All errors are from the original author.)

This person was one who had been a member of the group for about four weeks but who had not attended any of the actual meetings. She’s an owner of a local retail store in a non-spiritual field but is not a professional lightworker from what I can find on the internet. I have never advertised the group as totally free, so that was her error for which she was holding me accountable. I have advertised meetings as costing between free and $25 with most being $10. Clearly she read what she wanted to in that sentence.

As I mentioned this to my kids, they asked, “Don’t you have to pay for the space you are meeting in?” Correct! My high school aged children were able to do the basic math of running a meetup group in a way that this business-owning woman could not. Meetup currently charges $180 per year for the first group one runs (and two “free” ones after that). One then has to find space to meet in. Many of the “free” spaces around town require a minimum member of attendees and/or a minimum purchase of food that is often unhealthy and/or filled with gluten. Since 75% of my group has issues around food (including me with gluten and egg sensitivities), that type of option doesn’t work well for us. Many public places also don’t allow for privacy which is necessary for the type of group I lead. Hence, we meet in private spaces to create an atmosphere that is appropriate to the healing work we do. Finally, I do a lot of reading and prep work for the group and give out handouts. All of that creates expenses as well. Even the federal government recognizes that business expenses exist and allows them to be deducted!

If this woman had actually attended my group, she would realize that it isn't actually a group of lightworkers coming together to heal the planet. It's a personal growth group as one might expect from the name, "Your Personal Healing Journey of Austin." People are getting my guidance in a group format for a hugely discounted rate. Instead of paying $100 per hour, they are paying $5 per hour to learn from all I can teach them. That’s a pretty hefty discount and makes my resources and guidance very affordable to those who can’t afford to work with me on a private basis. Most similar groups in Austin charge anywhere from $10 to $25 per session with the majority being in the $10 to $15 range. I am definitely not pricing outside of the market value. Furthermore, if one stops and thinks about it, $10 for two hours of guidance that leads to extensive personal growth is a bargain compared to spending $10+ for two hours to see a movie which one may or may not benefit from at all.

I have encountered others like this woman before on other healers’ sites and discussion groups, so I was prepared for this to happen to me. They subscribe to a false ideology that believes that energy workers don’t deserve to be paid for the work they do. If they do deserve to be paid, then it should be an absolute minimum, and the healers should be struggling to get by. Only unholy people should be comfortable in life. Those who are truly sent from God will live on miraculous multiplication of fish and loaves just like Jesus did. These judgmental people somehow think that energy workers’ electric bills and rents also can be paid with holiness (and not money) as well.

All of that is simply not true. Everyone deserves to be paid a living wage. I am a huge believer that the minimum wage needs to be $15 or greater in metropolitan areas where $15 an hour isn’t enough to support a family. That’s $600 per week or a little over $2400 per month. In Austin, finding a two to three bedroom apartment or home for a family is hard to do for less than $1200 per month in the suburbs; closer in it’s impossible. Clearly a single parent won’t be able to take care of a family on that amount without public assistance even if s/he/ze is working full-time.

The same is true of an energy worker who, when it all boils down, is a worker trying to pay bills just like the rest of society. We all work in different ways as we’ve been gifted. Some of us are teachers. Some of us are engineers. Some of us are salespeople. And some of us work with healing and energy. If the healer is a doctor, s/he/ze will bill starting at $300 per hour. Psychologists in Austin charge anywhere from $75 to $150 per hour. While people may grumble about these rates, no one doubts that these healers deserve to be paid for their work. So too, do energy workers deserve to be paid for their time, energy and skills.

As I have discussed this incident with other healers I know and respect, we’ve all come to the same conclusions. Those who truly need sliding scale and reduced fees approach us with very different attitudes and behaviors than those who are just not willing to pay for the healing work we do. Every one of us has stories of people who have pleaded for sliding scale or free work and then have shown up in a brand new car or had stories of exotic vacations taken weeks before or made exorbitant purchases that are clearly beyond the means of someone who actually can’t afford but desperately needs healing work. The bottom line is that they don’t want to budget their funds in such a way as to pay for what they need. Hence, they want their healers to earn less so that they can live a more luxurious life, not realizing that by not paying their healers the full price of their services, many of those same healers then have to make cuts to their own budgets to accommodate the person asking for financial help. It is completely different than people who are truly low income and in desperate need of help but who cannot possibly stretch their budget any further.

When healers don’t charge for their work, they create an energy imbalance in the universe. All of our transactions with others in life involve an energy exchange. You massage my back, and I rub your feet. You give me groceries, and I give you money. I help you solve problems with your health, and you give me money. In the olden days, you might have given me two chickens and a gallon of milk instead. In other societies, it was a handful of sea shells. However, in our society, we use money as a currency of exchange, and it has come to represent our energy exchange. Every healer I know and respect agrees that there must be an exchange of energy in every single transaction in order to keep things balanced. When interactions occur without an exchange, one part of the equation becomes imbalanced. Hence, as healers, we do charge for our work as we feel is appropriate to the situation in order to keep balance in our lives. In some cases, $5 is the appropriate amount. In other cases, it’s more. All of us do need to charge something for every exchange, though.

I hope one day this misguided woman will understand her value and will start charging for her services to others just as she does for the objects she sells in her storefront. I hope she will also come to understand what kind of imbalance she creates in her life by asking others to give to her for free when she offers nothing but a verbal barrage in return.

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

I was recently talking to a friend who is in her early thirties about marriage. She stated that she thought she had waited long enough to “do it right the first time.” On one hand, I agreed that she is old enough and mature enough to have figured out who the right man for her might be. On the other hand, I have issues around the phrase “getting it right the first time.”

In today’s modern American society, it’s rare that someone actually meets their true love on their first date ever. Most people date many individuals before they find a person whom they want to marry. It’s also rare for people to wait until marriage to have sex: Ninety-five percent of Americans shed their virginity before saying "I do." In addition, approximately 75% of women have cohabitated with a man before marriage. The majority of couples are engaging in serious relationships without a legal marriage bond whereas previous generations of Americans did not do so. Technically, the majority of people aren’t getting it right the first time: They are simply not making a legal bond until they feel extra comfortable that they have found their forever person. 

For thousands of years, the Catholic Church and most Christian churches have frowned upon divorce. While it has been under the guise of a religious dictate from God, I actually believe this was a control and stability based decision. Most churches continue to publically denounce divorce while the majority of the members of the same churches divorce and remarry, sometimes more than once. The churches uphold the mythological belief that we should find one “forever” person and marry that person for the rest of our lives.

However, I don’t know that “doing it right the first time” is actually what the goal of marriage should be. I believe that marriage is a sacred union, but I also believe that it is temporary: Our marriage vows end with death (though many Mormons do not agree with that), and we are free to remarry once widowed even in the most conservative of the mainstream churches. While we are alive, I believe that marriages should exist to help individuals grow. That might mean having children with a partner so that we can experience parental growth and the challenges that come with taking care of other beings who are utterly dependent upon us. It might mean learning how to live with someone who has different beliefs, actions, hobbies, or habits than us. It may mean spiritual growth as we challenge each other to find the Divine in our marriages. Whatever it means to each couple, I believe that they have been brought together to learn some life lessons that they could not learn without the other. When those lessons have been learned, then it is time for the couple to move on to new relationships where they can continue their growth.

Thus, I don’t believe that “getting it right the first time” should be the primary goal of marriage. Instead, I think we should be choosing the right partner to help us grow and change through the next stage of our lives. If we are able to stay well-matched with our partner as our lives take us through many joys and challenges, then by all means, “‘til death do us part” makes a great deal of sense. However for the large percentage of people who find that their individual growth takes them in a different direction than their spouses, divorce should be an acceptable and supported practice in our society. Divorce should not be viewed as failure, but rather a change or even a graduation. Two people who were once well-matched have learned the lessons they need to learn from each other and are now ready to go in different directions. While divorce will still be emotionally difficult as most major endings in our lives are, there’s no reason it needs to be made shameful. Rather, our goal should be finding the right person for this point in our lives and accepting that some day we may move in a different direction from that partner, whether it is because of divorce or death. If we enter into relationships that help our souls grow, then each one will be "doing it right" even if it is not our first relationship or marriage ever.

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

According to one theory of life, the universe, and everything, all of our actions are based in either fear or love. When we make decisions about all of the details in our life, our choices come from a place of fear or love. If we choose to come from a place of fear, then our lives will be fearful and we will see the world as a dark scary place. If we choose to come from a place of love, then we will see the world as being filled with an abundance of love that is available for all who open themselves to it.

I have seen this recently in my life with regards to Craigslist of all things. I use Craigslist quite often to get rid of things I no longer need; I occasionally sell things on there as well. I often have boxes available, so I will post on the free section for someone to come pick them up off my front porch. When someone I knew said he was having the trash company come pick up moving boxes from his house, I suggested that there would be many people on Craigslist who would love to have them to free. At that point, he informed me that Craigslist is a dangerous place and that there are now safe exchange places at police stations in his area for Craigslist users. I didn’t even try to counter this discussion because it was clear he was in a place of fear. I agree that one needs to use common sense when selling high value items on Craigslist. I was contemplating selling a camera lens at one point, and had I done that, I would have required the sale to be a cash or money order transaction which we would have exchanged in the lobby of my bank so I could verify the deposit and so we would have cameras watching the exchange. However, when it comes to boxes, I am not reselling them. No one is going to short change or harm me. I leave them on the front porch, and I let people know to just take the boxes without ringing the bell. I’ve never had problems. I see this as sharing resources that help minimize the damage on the planet, and in a way, spreading love around. I come at it from a place of love.

One could also argue that those who carry concealed handguns are living in a place of fear. Every person I know who carries one lives and works in areas where a gun is unnecessary. They are operating from a place of fear, though, and they can’t feel safe in the world without a loaded sidearm. To me, that is a sad place to be. Even when I was a woman working in a low SES neighborhood and school or as a woman navigating the world alone, I never felt a need to have a handgun. If something suspicious is going on, I dial 911 and let those who are trained professionals deal with the issue. I realize not everyone feels they can safely call in the police, and that is a true problem in our society with fear at its roots, too. However, all of those whom I know who are concealed handgun holders are also Caucasian and not likely to experience negative racial profiling when working with the authorities.

One can also see people who live in fear when it comes to finances. Even if they make an upper class salary, they are certain that they will run out of money. As a result, they becoming stingy with donating their time, their money, and their energy to others. They do not want to run out of anything, so they hoard what they have. However, the Universe seems to function under a “you have to give to receive” type of premise. While I’m not advocating giving away all one’s possessions or even forcing one’s self to live in poverty, I do think we all need to be a bit generous in whatever way we can be in order to keep the good karma moving around. Operating from a place of love dictates sharing with others rather than greedily accumulating millions beyond what one needs for basic comfort and enjoyment.

So how does one go about shifting one’s world view from fear based to love based? For starters, turn off your television as much as possible. The news is by far the worst thing to watch as broadcasts are sensationalized and are designed to strike fear in the viewers’ hearts. Advertising on television and also is often fear based. If you don’t take this medication you won’t be able to function for your family. If you don’t use this highly toxic cleaning product, your family will die of a rare contagion or maybe just get the common cold. If you don’t use this insurance company, you’ll lose everything you own. All of these messages do add up and do begin to wear on your worldview even if you don’t realize it. If you turn off the television and other sources of advertising for several months and then come back to it, you’ll be surprised at how insidious the messages seem.

As you go forward, try to select love-based activities in your life. You could go to a bar and drink heavily on Friday night, or you could go to a yoga class. You could go to the beach to find a hookup for the weekend, or you could join in a service drive or charity event. I’m not suggesting that you never participate in solely recreational activities, but consider whether or not you can make your recreation time more constructively loving rather than self-serving or hedonistic. If you do whatever activity you have planned, ask yourself who will benefit from it. If the answer is more than one person, especially if those people are strangers, you’re on your way to changing to a love based process of decision making.

When you are faced with choices in your life, begin asking yourself not only what is the right thing to do but what the loving thing to do is as well. Try not to let fear rule your decisions. Even though you may be scared about making a loving decision, follow your intuition instead of your fears and see if you can make your life and the lives of those around you a bit happier.

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

When I first started reading Embrace the Unlovable: How to Eliminate Shame, Guilt, and Self-Judgments and Come Home to Yourself Using the Groundbreaking The Compassionate Self-Love Method by Amyra Mah, I was drawn in by her examples of herself as a young girl being emotionally abused by mother and sister while growing up. I recognized much of what she described including her experiences in a Catholic girls’ school that made her ashamed of her body and taught her that femininity is something to be hidden. Mah explains that shame is the wide-spread root of our self-hatred which conventional therapy is limited in its ability to heal. As a result, through channeling information from higher powers, Mah has developed what she dubs The Compassionate Self-Love Method which she presents as a way to heal shame and other deeply rooted issues.

Unfortunately, the book started going downhill after her introductory chapters. My “something is wrong” detectors started going off, so I went and Googled the author. While she calls herself a therapist, she could be prosecuted in the US for doing so because she is not officially licensed; however, Mah lives in Thailand where laws are likely different. Her website states, “I considered going back to school and being trained in psychotherapy, and enrolling in courses that would qualify me to work in the personal development field.  But at the back of my mind, there was a voice that said I didn’t need to go through the traditional route of learning.” In the US, the correct term for Mah would be a life coach. However, in a very telling section of her book, Mah shames life coaches and declares them to be people who don’t help with healing. As a holistic life coach who focuses almost solely on healing, I am certain this is completely wrong. Despite the work she has done on herself, Mah’s own inferiority complex still includes needing to put others down to make herself feel better.

Mah is not well read at all and it shows. The book contains no footnotes or endnotes and only cites one other author whose work is on eating disorders. Mah makes a lot of claims about other studies that aren't true based on what I've read, but she claims theses studies that I have read don’t even exist which merely reflects her lack of education. Mah wrote Embrace the Unlovable in 2014 and published it in 2015. However, Brene Brown has been researching and publishing a lot longer than that, just for starters. To write a book on shame without mentioning her works is puzzling at best. In addition, Shakti Gawain has been publishing on topics and healing related to Mah’s work for decades. There are many more as well. Mah is not familiar with their ideas, and if she's writing on shame from a holistic healing standpoint, she needs to acknowledge the big names.

Throughout the book, Mah puts a great deal of emphasis on how The Compassionate Self-Love Method is different and special, and as a result, Mah comes across as one of those people who think they've invented the wheel. Yet this is the same method, minus the fancy name, that so many therapists have used with me in the past decade as I worked on healing. I think that the Mah has assembled ideas that other authors/healers have used for decades and put them together in a novel way, but if the author was better read, she would know that her ideas are not as stunningly new as she thinks. I absolutely believe that she was channeling this information, and I agree it is being presented in a new format, but at their core, the ideas are not new. As Audre Lorde said, “There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.”

Instead of rushing to self-publish as Mah did, it would have been better for her to find an editor to help her correct lots of little errors throughout the text. Her writing is beautiful in terms of style, but the book is very repetitious and needs the help of an editor with a red pen with a lot of ink. As mentioned above, Mah needs to read and document other sources if she wants to bring her book up a notch. I understand that she was trying to function just as a channel, but the result is a weaker book. Many of the ideas she presents are not new, and if she’d done more research on the correct authors, she would have found this to be true. Mah also uses terms such as “projections” that actually have the accepted name of “mirrors” in holistic healing. Not having the vocabulary to communicate to her audience is problematic. I also strongly believe that Mah would benefit from a professional mentor, someone who has been practicing holistic healing for decades and who could point out to her where she is presenting old ideas in new ways so that appropriate credit is given.

So after all that criticism, did I find anything worthy in the book? Yes, though I will recommend the book with reservations. The Compassionate Self-Love Method (CSL) is in a way the opposite of the Law of Attraction which Mah indirectly but repeatedly bashes throughout the book. The goal of CSL is to embrace and love the parts of you that you don’t like rather than trying to wish them away through affirmations. To enact the CSL, one needs to:

• "Identify what that the problem/issue/judgment/shame is."
  
• "Connect with that aspect. Accept it as a real part of you."
  
• "Embrace and love the undesired aspect without trying to change it at all. Send love until you feel a shift in your perception of that aspect."

As Mah writes, you know that healing has happened “When you recall the event that triggered the shameful feelings in you,[and] you feel neutral about it.”

On the surface, this is a perfectly legitimate way to heal deeply buried wounds. As Mah argues, our culture tends to run from our pain rather than facing it. I have healed many stored pains in my body by working with them rather than denying them. However, part of the approach Mah advocates perpetuates judgment and blame. For example, she writes, “Send love to the aspect of you that is a bad mother.” Instead I would advocate people try a kinder, gentler way to facing our pain. In my words, people should “Send love to the aspect of you that doesn’t always live up to the ideals you strive for. None of us are perfect, and all of us make decisions and errors as parents that we wish we could change. Love this part of you that is trying its best but doesn’t always reach perfection. It is not a bad part of you. It is simply an area of you that is working on growth.” This way one is not re-injuring and/or harming oneself by continuing to place negative external labels on parts that are inherent to us.

I especially think that Mah missed the boat in terms of external labeling when she discusses terms like "whore" and "slut." Her female relatives called her by foreign equivalents of such names when she was eight years old. No eight year old child is a whore or a slut (and arguably no person should ever be called by those terms). If a child is sexually active at that age, it is likely rape, incest and/or sexual trauma. The child is not asking for sex because the child can not give consent. So as an adult, to go back and try to heal yourself by embracing the part of you that is a slut (Mah’s method) is very toxic. Instead, I would recommend embracing the part of you that loves sex and sexuality. That is a healthy aspect of all of us that society unfortunately shames in many instances. So when trying to rid oneself of that shame related to sexuality, embrace that you are sexual. You do love sex. But you are not the negative projection of sexuality that someone else forced upon you. That is their trouble, and you do not need to take it on or hold onto it. Love yourself for all your sexual decisions, even if you regret some of them, but don’t buy into other people’s judgments.

I believe Embrace the Unlovable is a step in the right direction towards healing deep wounds that mainstream psychology is not always able to heal. However, the book still needs a lot of editing and improving and the method needs some revising before it will be of true benefit to most people. I hope Mah is able to find the mentor and editor she needs to make this good book into an amazing one.

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

(This post is based on an Advance Reader Copy of Upside won through Goodreads’ First Reads program.)

As I read through Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth by Jim Rendon, I had plenty of thoughts that didn’t necessarily fit in my official review of the book. The book certainly prompted some thinking and questioning on my part; I always appreciate it when a book stimulates my brain cells. Some of these questions I’m asking probably haven’t been answered by studies yet, so I can’t fault the author for not including things that don’t yet exist! The following are some of those thoughts shared in a rather random order.

- It wasn’t until very late in Upside that a divorce was mentioned among the case studies of those who have undergone trauma. However, I suspect that this representation is not accurate. Chronic illness and PTSD were major contributions toward my divorce, and I know I’m not alone in that. I’d be curious as to what the actual divorce rate is among those who suffer from PTSD as well as what the divorce rate is among those who suffer from PTSD but have come to a place of positive growth. Further questioning would ask how many people saw their divorce as a part of their positive growth (as I definitely do).

- As I read the chapter on family support, I questioned, “What about those who didn’t have family support?” I would like to see a study of how support for patients with cancer compares to those with other illnesses. Because Rendon focused on cancer, he may not be aware that other diseases actually can cause families to abandon loved ones. This certainly was my situation with extended family, and again, it was a contribution to the end of my marriage. In my experience with late disseminated Lyme disease which is legally diagnosed as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, compassion and support was not overwhelming. In many cases, friends and extended family abandoned me and my family unit. One extended family member pointed out to me not so subtly that two other family members with type 1 diabetes and gallstones had REAL health problems (implying that mine were not significant, real and/or valid despite the fact that I was homebound and mostly bedbound at that point).

- While Rendon completely failed to discuss the problems surround childbirth and infant loss as they apply to women, he did devote a chapter to a group of dads who have lost children. This is a rare perspective that is often ignored in our culture, and I appreciate that he shared this reality with the world. Too often, men’s grief is poorly processed and disregarded contributing to the ongoing problem in our society of men who are out of touch with their emotions including grief.

- I felt like the chapter on religion and spirituality was one of the weakest. From what was written, I suspect that the author does not identify with religion or spirituality and may in fact be hostile towards them. I felt like he neglected the major differences between religion and spirituality, for they are two different things. It is very possible to be spiritual without being religious. I also wondered as I read the chapter how many people with PTSD experience a radical change in their beliefs or spirituality. In my life I went from being Catholic to being agnostic to experiencing PTSD and becoming highly spiritual without identifying with any religion (and in fact shunning most of them). I suspect I am not alone in this process of spiritual growth that is a part of personal growth with PTSD. This spiritual growth I experienced is a far different experience than someone becoming more vested in an established religion or turning to their pastor for counseling.

- Rendon argues that support groups are instrumental in the personal growth of individuals because they allow those with PTSD to be with those “who get it.” On one hand this is very true. However, I am curious about the reality of support groups for a wider population. I actually found that the pessimism and negativity of many support groups were pulling me down and were impeding my personal growth. They weren’t “better-informed optimists” as Rendon writes. Instead, they were people filled with unhealthy attitudes, bitterness, and often ignorance. I switched to digest for many online groups to avoid reading the posts of the worst offenders; some groups I left altogether. The two health related in-person groups I tried attending, one for those who had lost a baby and one for those who were chemically sensitive, I quickly left because the energy in them was awful. My better-informed optimism did not fit there. Thus, I would be curious about studies that showed that support groups actually have an ability to hamper personal growth rather than assist it. My experiences show that this is a potential reality.

- I cringed at the idea of 46 pills being a lot as Rendon dramatically presents when discussing a cancer patient. I currently take 14 Western medical pills per day plus 65 pill supplements, seven doses of liquid supplements, and a nebulizer treatment per day. At times my pill total has been well over 100 a day. This is what it has taken to get me functional and to continue to heal. I look forward to dropping back to “only” 46 pills and then the day when I need less than 20 per day to maintain my health. Again, if Rendon had talked to people with other health issues outside of cancer, his perspective would have been broadened and enlightened in many ways.

- Rendon has an implicit (and very valid in my opinion) judgment of how deficient psychological treatment is for soldiers and vets with PTSD. He also notes how others involved in other traumas also received very little or no psychotherapy as part of their recovery processes. It would be great to see what the studies show about why this happens other than the lack of funding for mental health care that is an endemic problem in our nation.

- I appreciated the way Rendon approached the topic of “gratitude as a way of life.” As I’ve noted in another blog post, gratitude is the only way I got through many days when my illness was at its worst. I think most people who have not undergone a major trauma understand what gratitude really is and what it can do for us.

- The chapter on activity and exercise as healing was very frustrating to me. I think this is a concept that is fairly well understood in our society as almost all less-than-informed healthcare practitioners I have worked with over the years have pushed exercise as one of the main solutions to healing. However, there is an important distinction between using exercise during a time of hellish illness and using it after one has regained significant health. Rendon discusses women who have survived breast cancer and now row together; he mentions but does not dwell on the fact that they could not have done this kind of activity when they were in the worst phases of their treatment. That distinction is very important for those undergoing health trauma because the overwhelming pressure to exercise when they are too sick to do so can be very emotionally defeating. As someone whose Lyme disease has caused chronic fatigue syndrome, I have had to deal with the conflict that exercise can actually cause more damage than good a great deal of the time, and our society does not seem to understand that because it is so pro-exercise as the cure to all that ails you.

- I really loved that Rendon stressed the importance of not pushing post-traumatic growth on those with PTSD. This book would have been devastating to read in the worst years of my illness; I was not ready to hear its message. I definitely would not give the book to someone who was at a point when they were at rock bottom. The lesson of “bitter blessings” is one that each person has to come to individually on their own time.

- When discussing one person who has survived brain cancer, Rendon reveals the very unhealthy brave face platitudes that are a very problematic part of emotional health in our society. However, Rendon doesn't expand on the problem that "the brave face" ideology creates in relation to PTSD. Rendon writes, “[The patient with brain cancer] maintained a brave face, but beneath it all he was terrified. ‘He never once said, “This really sucks,”’ said [his best friend]. ‘But you could see it in his eyes, you could see him thinking, Holy heck what am I going to do?’” Society expects those with chronic illness to hide behind those brave faces. They’re expected not to show the pain they’re in or the suffering they’re enduring. If they do show that illness, that fear, that pain, that loss, then they risk losing those around them who are unwilling or unable to deal with the realities of health challenges including the possibility of death. This only contributes to the issues surrounding PTSD when one is expected to put on a brave face but is actually falling apart inside.

- I would be curious to see studies about those who manage to achieve positive post-traumatic growth without most of the key items that Rendon cites as contributory factors. I am someone who is lacking in extended family support. I was isolated and alone because of my chemical sensitivities. I was the person whom others looked at and said, “It doesn’t get much worse than that.” Yet somehow I have grown in ways I never would have believed possible. I wonder how other characteristics such as personality and intelligence factor in for those whom growth seemed to be unlikely to happen even according to the standards Rendon establishes.

- Finally, in the last paragraphs of Upside, Rendon writes, “And given that they came so close to death, that they lost so many things they once took for granted, they understand on a much deeper level, in a much more informed way, what it means to be alive.” This association of PTSD with facing death is a flawed one, and it’s something that contributes to a large portion of people enduring PTSD not seeking appropriate help in my opinion. Our society erroneously interprets PTSD to mean former soldiers or those whose lives were endangered. Yet as Rendon demonstrates throughout the book, for many people, PTSD does not result from a life threatening event. I would have added a clause to this sentence about how “some have come so close to death.”

(I do have another upcoming blog post motivated by Upside that I will link to once it publishes.)

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

(I am reviewing an Advance Reader Copy of this book won through Goodreads’ First Reads program.)

I came to Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth by Jim Rendon as a woman who has endured PTSD caused by multiple sources: abuse, childbirth, health trauma, and if you believe in past lives, World War II. I have been able to achieve major healing with most of my wounds through alternative therapies; conventional therapy was only serving to retraumatize me. Yet as someone with a Ph.D., I have a great deal of respect for science and the advances it can help bring. Rendon's work questions why so many people who have endured traumas and PTSD are able to come to a place of positive growth through examining the influence of personal narratives, community support, honest communication, optimistic thinking, religion, creative outlets, physical exercise, fellow sufferers, and therapy. The studies and examples Rendon cites demonstrate that these factors can all contribute to a lifelong positive change.

Rendon’s work is firmly grounded in scientific studies which demonstrate how trauma can lead to growth. The book is well-researched, fluently integrated and easy to read. Rendon’s writing style makes academia accessible to the general public. Despite the heavy topic, I breezed through Upside much quicker than I read most nonfiction books. The stories Rendon relates about others who have suffered traumas are painful to read, but only one was horrifying to me because of the explicit violence it contains. (For those who are highly sensitive like me, I recommend skipping the details in the last chapter on Jake Harriman's trauma, an event that occurred in the war in Iraq.)

Rendon was drawn to the topic of post-traumatic growth because his father was a Holocaust survivor; he makes no indication of having endured major trauma in his own life either explicitly or implicitly. There were times where I felt his text would have benefited from an extra reading and feedback before publication by those who have lived through trauma themselves because Rendon’s perspective sometimes doesn’t quite grasp the full reality. However, for the most part, Rendon does an excellent job of vividly relating the pain and the growth that his subjects experienced. He also gives one of the best summaries I’ve read about how PTSD creates a hypersensitive response in individuals whose “fight or flight” response is perpetually in overdrive. The first few chapters of the book could be incredibly helpful to someone trying to understand their loved one’s new reactions to the world.

If one were to survey the trauma-inducing events that Rendon discusses in detail, one would conclude that trauma is caused by cancer, accidents, warfare, and natural disasters. I realize that Rendon had limited space in his book, but he chose to relate cancer patient after cancer patient’s experience. This is typical of our culture which actually creates additional trauma for those who aren’t enduring cancer: they are second class citizens in the world of medical trauma. This blog post discusses how Lyme patients like me are abandoned by friends and medical practitioners in their search for health while simultaneously being told, “At least it isn’t cancer.” By not addressing other illnesses beyond cancer and accidents, Rendon contributes to the cultural mythologies of what illnesses “should” look like.

My largest complaint about Upside is that it contains a blatant disregard for women’s traumas. It was not until chapter five that Rendon discussed a female case study; from there on, women were mentioned fairly regularly in the book. However, Rendon does not discuss a single case of rape, sexual harassment, or abuse in detail. These are major causes of trauma, but they are barely mentioned in passing and there are no specific examples of them in the text. Most frustrating to me was how Rendon described trauma from childbirth: “People can be traumatized from the happiest of situations: childbirth.” While on one level this is a true statement, on another level it shows a total lack of understanding for the epidemic proportioned reality of what most women still endure during childbirth in our nation. There are two primary times when no doesn’t mean no: when a woman is being raped or when she is in labor. Had Rendon taken the time to talk with women who have experienced what is known as “birth rape” in some circles or tbose who have lost their babies, he would not have made such a flippant comment about the joy of childbirth, and the trauma around childbirth would likely have merited more than a few brief paragraphs in this work.

I will definitely recommend Upside to many clients, primarily the family members and friends of those enduring traumas around war, cancer, or accidents. I will also recommend it to individuals who, as Rendon notes in the text, have already come to the recognition on their own that their traumas can serve for positive growth. The book would serve well in a college classroom of psychology, medical, nursing or social work students trying to begin to understand trauma. However, for those who are dealing with childbirth trauma, rape, or abuse, Upside is not necessarily the best place to find information about healing.

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

"The cruelest kind of love, the one that almost kills its victims... it's called unrequited love."  ~The Holiday

For most of my life, I thought unrequited love was basically a crush felt by one person that was not returned by the recipient of his/her/hir affections. I believed it was a schoolgirl emotion, a foolish notion of an immature person who could not understand that the other person didn’t care in the same way. That was until unrequited love happened to me.

What I learned in a very painful way as a 30-something year old adult with a Ph.D. was that unrequited love is a merciless emotion, one that has nothing to do with logic or maturity. It didn’t matter how much my rational mind knew and understood that the object of my affection didn’t see me as a potential love interest. My heart would not relent.

In my case, the man whom I fell deeply in love with was someone whom I had shared a platonic relationship with for several years. We got along incredibly well. He made me laugh in a way that no one else has ever been able to. Because we were both married (until we both weren’t), I previously never thought of him as a potential romantic partner. At one point not long after I originally met him, I was playing a “how small is Austin” game with a friend who knew of him through a friend of hers. The friend asked if he was good looking based on the comments of her friend. I told her I hadn’t ever thought about it. That just wasn’t the way our relationship was.

I remember the day when everything shifted. Nothing particular happened that instigated the change. I just looked at him and realized, “Oh, crap. I’ve got a crush on him.” However, I knew that crushes come and go and are a normal part of the human experience. I figured if I ignored it, the crush would go away. Except it didn’t. The crush got stronger and stronger until it reached the point of being physically painful. This was nothing like any other crush I had experienced. Even after talking to the man in question and verifying that there was no chance of anything romantic ever happening between us, the unrequited love would not let go. My brain understood completely. My heart just stubbornly refused to give up.

Five months after talking to the object of my affection when I was still unable to shed my feelings for him, I went to a healer to help me with the crush I could not get over. The healer, who is also an empath, bluntly told me, “You’re in love with him.” It took me another 24 hours to accept what I had been told. I realized that the healer was quite right. It wasn’t just a crush. This horribly painful emotion I was feeling was unrequited love. All my previous ideas about unrequited love were shattered as I came to realize that unrequited love isn’t a misguided crush. It is truly love, and it is devastatingly miserable to experience. 

It took me almost two years to work through all of the pain of unrequited love using a large number of modalities to assist in the healing. I was not happy about having this experience; resentful is a far better description of my emotional state during a large part of it. I often questioned why I had to go through it all. When I originally Googled "unrequited love," I found almost nothing of use to help me understand why it was happening or how to heal it. What I eventually discovered was that this emotional difficulty paralleled many other traumas I had experienced in this life and past lives. There was a pattern my soul has experienced, and this one experience helped open the doors to all of the other traumas and allowed me to slowly and painfully work through them all. I had not previously found healing in any of those areas, so in retrospect, my experience with unrequited love gave me a great opportunity for growth and change. I wish it had not been so emotionally tortuous, but in retrospect, I am grateful for all I learned and healed through this experience of unrequited love.

As often happens in life, the man I loved so deeply and I went in different ways. The other day I ran into him for the first time in ages. It was odd to see him again after so much time has passed, yet I was grateful for how much has changed within me since we last met. As with any other trauma, I wished I hadn’t had to experience such deep pain through unrequited love, but I am grateful for all the growth the undesired emotion brought to my life.

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

In Texas, The University of Texas-Austin and Texas A&M University are the two major state universities with a deep century old rivalry. If you live in Austin, you’ll often hear Aggie jokes, and Aggies are known for telling “t.u.” jokes. The jokes are generally meant to insult the abilities and intelligence of the students and alumni of the opposing school. While I found them amusing when I was in college, I have long since stopped finding them funny. I’ve known many Aggies over the years, and I see no reason to insult them. Those friends are great people. They may have chosen a college I would never have gone to, but we can still be friends.

In a similar way, my ex-husband’s family used to tell jokes that put down liberal arts majors. When it wasn’t a formal joke, it was a slam or insult towards those who were liberal arts majors. That is because the parents and all of the children were science or math majors. They had developed an attitude, one that was clearly ego based, that anyone could get a liberal arts degree but it took a clearly superior mind to major in the hard sciences.

This attitude even carried over into casual conversation. I quickly learned that my opinion would never be respected even if it was on a topic pertinent to my academic studies. I was someone who knew nothing, and I was treated that way on many occasions. In one of the most painful, two of my ex-brothers-in-law were having a conversation while we were sitting around the kitchen table talking one holiday. They were discussing a topic I have a degree in, so I stated a sentence of relevance to the conversation. They looked at each other, and then they completely ignored me and my comment. It was like I wasn’t even in the room. That was the day I gave up trying. I knew I was always going to be labeled ignorant (at best) by them. In their eyes, I didn’t know anything.

Even when my ex-husband and I were alone, he carried over this tradition of insulting liberal arts majors to my face. Finally, one day I grew tired of it and I confronted him quite angrily. I asked him if he remembered that I had many degrees in the liberal arts. He did. When I asked why he would insult me like that by making fun of liberal arts majors, he had no answer. He’d been so trained by his family that it was ok to insult liberal arts majors that he didn’t even think twice about doing it with his wife who was an extension of his family in his mind. That was the last time he explicitly insulted the liberal arts to my face, but certainly not the last time my intelligence or abilities were questioned.

As a result of all this conditioning, I internalized the idea that my degrees were useless. Instead of being proud of my doctorate, I saw it as shameful. I hid it carefully away, not wanting to declare my accomplishment of being a Ph.D since it was “only” in liberal arts.

That all changed one day when I was eating lunch at a local restaurant that I frequent. The staff there recognizes me, especially the one woman who was usually head cook on the day I normally came in. However, due to a schedule change, I showed up on a different day than my usual. The woman said hi to me and asked why I was there that day instead of my usual. I let her know that I had some appointments change that week. She asked if I was a doctor, and I said, “No, well, yes, but I’m just a Ph.D.” She looked at me with a very expressive face and said “Just a Ph.D.?”

I realized in that instant how deeply I was undermining myself. I’m not the only one who uses the word “just” to denigrate themselves; an article by a former Google executive suggests that women use “just” far too often and undermine their power in doing so. In my case, I realized that I needed to shed my shame about “only” having a liberal arts Ph.D. My degree is just as well-earned as any other. I went to a highly reputed school, and my dissertation led to me being invited to apply for a tenure track position by another major university (though I unfortunately could not follow through due to my health). The opinions of my ex-in-laws are not healthy ones, and they are ones I chose to deprogram from my mind. I’ve learned to proudly embrace the initials “Ph.D.” after my name, so much so that I think my name looks odd without them now!

As more of the grandchildren are entering liberal arts fields and more of the brothers have married women with liberal arts degrees, I’m hoping my ex-in-laws have learned to curb their denigrating comments about those who aren’t scientists or mathematicians. In my house at least, my kids are growing up knowing that all academic paths are worthy of pursuing. No one is better than another. The world needs all kinds of people in it in order to function, not just scientists or mathematicians.

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

I peruse the recommendations Netflix gives me for new films; I’ve ranked enough movies from my years of being homebound and bedbound that Netflix generally has my tastes pegged. It’s rare that Netflix will recommend a film I can’t enjoy. One of the recent highly recommended films for me was Hector and the Search for Happiness, a movie I’m grateful I took the time to watch.

Hector is a British psychiatrist, a doctor who treats patients with mental challenges. He divides himself between private practice, meeting the needs of the rich whose problems he finds to be quite superficial, and a mental health hospital where his patients are faced with more dire issues. Hector lives with his girlfriend Clara who works at a job creating names for new drugs. Like many of us living the modern life, Hector reaches a breaking point where he begins to question whether it is actually possible to be truly happy. He sets out on a global quest in search of the answer, purportedly to better help his patients find happiness yet knowing on another level that it’s his own happiness he is pursuing. Despite being a psychiatrist, Hector has yet to learn that he needs to help himself first and that happiness comes from within. These become some of the lessons he learns along the way.

The movie is a bit slow in the beginning, but once Hector begins his travels, the pace picks up. This is a movie whose point is solely character development. There is no strong plot. For some, this is a deathblow for a movie, as indicated by the very mixed reviews Hector and the Search for Happiness received, but for me, it’s often the sign of a movie that will captivate my mind. I was intrigued by Hector’s discoveries along his journeys, and I enjoyed most of his pursuit of happiness.

As he travels the world, Hector meets many people and asks them what they think happiness is. He learns both from their words and the experiences he shares with them. Some of these statements are easily summarized such as “Avoiding unhappiness is not the road to happiness.” Others aren’t as easy to encompass in words. The deep soul level beauty of many of the people that Hector meets comes through loud and clear in his journey, and Hector is astute enough to learn from all they teach him.

I would rate this a five star film except for the ending. Without spoiling it completely, I can only say that I felt the film took the cop-out Hollywood "happily ever after" solution rather than pursuing what reality would have dictated. People who go on a transformation journey in life, whether literal or symbolic, and experience radical changes in their worldview can’t usually return to the lives they were living before. Most often these people change jobs, romantic partners, living locations, and more as they realize what they had been pursuing in life is not what makes them truly happy. While I feel Hector did find some of the answers in his search for happiness, I felt the film’s creators failed to implement those changes in a realistic way. Despite the ending, the rest of the film is well-worth watching especially if one is on a quest for happiness in one’s own life.

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

I have written before on numerous occasions about how emotions can be stored in our bodies. This is a universal experience for all humans, though many of us are not aware of this reality. Once we are conscious of the fact we have stored emotions in our bodies that may be manifesting as physical pain or disease, then the question becomes how to release those stored emotions in order to find health. However, just as the traumas each of us suffer and store are all unique, so too are the solutions to release those emotions different for each person and situation involved. 

So where does one start? There are many different approaches to releasing stored emotions; I am only presenting some of the more common ones in alphabetical order. The goal of using all of these strategies is to find ways to bring stored emotions and traumas to the surface so that they can then be cleared. However, before you begin trying to remove any of these stored emotions, I strongly recommend you find a good, open-minded psychotherapist to work with. Bring difficult emotions to the surface can be very painful, but the work is incredibly rewarding once you are liberated from that stored emotion or trauma.

Acupuncture: Acupuncture is a healing modality which works directly with energy in the body. Because Traditional Chinese Medicine's fundamental understanding of how the body works is vastly different than the Western model, it can be difficult for many to understand what acupuncture actually does. The best explanation that I can give is that acupuncture moves energy through the body to clear blockages. These blockages can be literal, such as a clogged duct causing mastitis, or emotional, such as fear preventing one's kidneys from working properly. 

Breathwork: One of the easiest and cheapest approaches is breathwork; this is something that can be used in conjunction with many of the other modalities listed but it can also be used on its own. The most powerful experience I had with relieving my stored traumas from my daughter's death involved only breathwork, intent and maybe a crystal or two (but I can't remember for certain). The release that happened was something I would never have thought possibly happen just from breathing and focusing on the area where I had stored the pain of her death. This is an approach that I am able to teach clients how to use, but again, as you start out, I would recommend only using it with supervision because of how powerful it can be.

Craniosacral Therapy: Craniosacral therapy is a system of very light touch that helps release energy blockages in the body. I have had some powerful releases with it. This is one of those modalities where the first impression might be that the practioner is not really doing anything, but once the energy gets moving, amazing change and relief can happen. It's been effective for physical, emotional, and spiritual pain for me. It's also very relaxing and enjoyable most of the time!

Crystals: When I was younger, I did not understand what all those hippies were doing with their crystals. A former therapist encouraged me to buy a few, and once I did, I was hooked. I love crystals of all sorts, and I've had countless powerful experiences with crystals helping change my energy and release stored trauma as a result. Crystals can take anywhere from hours to months to be effective depending on the size, the number used, the location, and the problem. However, they too can cause all kinds of powerful results. They work based on the principle that everything and everyone on earth has a vibration. The crystals help raise human vibrations to a more positive level, and in the process, stored negative emotions and entities will depart the body because it is no longer a hospitable host for them.

EFT: Emotional Freedom Technique is a process of tapping on a series of acupressure points while reciting an affirmation. The goal of EFT is to release anxiety, trauma, and negative programming while replacing it with more positive thoughts and aspirations. Many use EFT for weight loss and issues around PTSD. EFT has soared in popularity in recent years, and many other similar tapping programs have been designed. I do not use EFT personally because it is not the right approach for me, but I have had success with a self-created, intuition-based tapping process based off of the "Beginning and Ending Technique" described by David S. Walther. I use this tapping when difficult emotions are surfacing so that I can keep from entering an overly anxious and unproductive state of being.

EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is another body-mind modality that should be learned and initially practiced with a trained professional. I have never used this technique, but I know of many who have been able to use it to successfully help with severe PTSD.

Essential Oils: Our society tends to enjoy essential oils for fragrance reasons; many undereducated salespeople also falsely promise miracle cures from their use. This is not the way in which I use essential oils. All essential oils also have spiritual properties, and some are very effective in helping act as a lubricant to release stored traumas and entities. Like crystals, they can help change a person's vibrational level. I work with essential oils using intuitive guidance finding the best oil for each person and then confirming possible contraindications with Robert Tisserand's amazing tome,Essential Oil Safety.

Flower Essences: Flower essences are a purely energetic form of healing which is part of why they along with homeopathy are not very well understood by our society. In using a direct method, flower essences are created by placing the flower in a bowl of water and leaving it sun and/or moonlight to absorb the energy of the flower. Crystals can also be added. The flower is then removed, the water is combined with a preservative such as alcohol, and the essence is complete. While this sounds like something that would be powerless, the energy in these essences can be palpable just holding the bottles. I've used many, many, many flower essences over the years for me and with my clients that have made both minor and major shifts in lives. They help change energy in the body so that the emotions can release.

Hands on Energy Work: This is not a do-it-yourself practice for beginners. A skilled practitioner is able to do manual manipulation on others' bodies to help release stored energy. I've experienced this with work by BodyTalk practioners, chiropractors, naturopaths, and massage therapists. I'd recommend finding a very grounded, very wise, very experienced person to do this as if it's done wrong, it can cause harm. I do not yet offer this service but expect to within a few years.

Homeopathy: Like flower essences, homeopathy is an energy based means of releasing emotions. Homeopathics are created from energetic vibrations of often toxic substances. Because they are energy based, they are safe to use (unless you are sensitive to lactose, though there are some lactose free ones on the market) and can cause major shifts in one's emotions and physical symptoms. I recommend working with someone who can assist and dose you properly with these substances as if you don't have the right remedy, you will be wasting your time, money and effort.

Light and Color: There are various programs and machines that work with colors and light to help shift internal energy. A more mainstream version of this are Seasonal Affective Disorder lamps. I have never used any kind of machine to do this, but I do find that I tend to pick clothes that strengthen my chakra that needs the most assistance that day.

Massage: Most massage therapists will tell tales of people emotionally falling apart for absolutely no reason while being on the massage table. This comes from the massage relaxing the body and releasing the tension and emotions we are holding. For me, I have experienced this most often with past life issues: I've seen many of my past life experiences while under the hands of a skilled massage therapist. Most massage therapists are not trying to make this happen, but it does occur. Going in with an intention of making it happen and treating your massage like a meditation time will help for the possibility to arise.

Meditation: If you aren't an experienced meditator, this isn't an approach I'd recommend as your introduction to meditation. However, once a person has become skilled at meditation, it is entirely possibly to enter a meditative state and work internally with the energy in one's body to release emotions that are stored. It is usually combined with breathwork. When I do it, I often am using crystals, flower essences, essential oils, and sound in addition. It's a very difficult process to explain, but once one knows how to manipulate energy, then one can essentially use one's mind like a shovel to loosen and scoop out the negative stored energy that one doesn't want to retain any longer.

Sound: The use of sound therapy to help clear chakras and other emotional issues is widespread; there are many practitioners who only focus on this. There are Meetup groups for it. I have playlists on Spotify which address it. One of my favorite CDs for sound therapy is by Jonathan Goldman. I can feel my energy vibrating when I play it. Most of the time, this does not create a major release for me, but there are times when it has been very effective. This is an easy way for many people to start changing their energy in a subtle way.

Tai Chi: I have never practiced Tai Chi, but like yoga, the practice is one that creates a great deal of healthy movement of energy in the body. I recommend it as a way for people who don't want to try yoga to find a physical way to get their bodies, minds and spirits working together to release negativity.

Writing:  I often recommend journaling with old fashioned pen and paper as a way of starting to bring up issues that have been submerged in our subconscious and bodies. For some song composition, poetry, or other forms of creation are more appropriate. While writing often does not usually remove the block by itself, it can bring things to the surface so that other means can be more efficacious. 

Yoga: Last but not least, yoga is a time honored way of releasing emotions. There are several groups in the Austin area that do yoga for trauma release; there are also numerous therapist who combine yoga with talk therapy. While American culture tends to see yoga as exercise, it's also a deeply spiritual practice that can change lives through its impact. It's one of first ways I often recommend to people for learning to become more in tune with their bodies.

When a river is unintentionally dammed up, one can go about releasing the block in a few ways. One can remove a key piece of the block and then get the heck out of the way as the waters will be able to flood through. One can also add more water until the sheer pressure breaks the dam. Likewise, with our emotions, when something is blocked in our minds and bodies, we actually have to work to remove it. This is not the gut reaction for most humans who would prefer to turn away from the dam. The methods above can help remove a key piece of blockage; some are gentler than others. All can be effective in helping clear stored emotions and traumas from the body in order to create more health. 

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

It’s often posited that our souls travel in soul groups: We reincarnate repeatedly with the same people, often the ones we love the most. We change our roles with those people, though. Sometimes we might be a man, sometimes we might be a woman, sometimes we might be lovers, sometimes we might be parents or sometimes we might be children. My ex-husband in this life was a friend of one of my lovers in our most recent past lives; one of my sons was a lifelong friend in that life; my parents were the same souls as in this life. My mentor and I also suspect that I have been a mother to my ex-husband in a past life, but I have not yet seen details of that life. No matter what our relationships in past lives, our roles may change in current or future lives. We retain our soul level love but we change the dynamics of our relationship to meet the needs of a particular incarnation.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had some amazing past life experiences involving one particular platonic friend whom I’ll call Andy for anonymity purposes. When using atlantisite, I saw a Native American past life we had shared together many centuries ago in what is now known as Wyoming. In that life, Andy and I were young lovers of the same sexes we are now. We were engaged but were not formally bound to each other, and that became an issue for me after his death. We were out gathering berries or herbs or something on a hillside away from our tribe’s camp when he collapsed. I was left in a horrid quandary: Abandon my lover in pain as he lay dying to get help or stay with him and watch him die. I chose the latter, and he died in my arms within an hour.

When I shared this information with Andy in this life, he and I began a running joke of him cajoling me, “I can’t believe you let me die!” and me teasing him, “I can’t believe you wouldn’t go see the medicine man! Typical man!” Despite our joking about the situation, there were deep wounds from that past life which had stayed with our souls and which were playing out in this life. Andy follows the beliefs of a spiritual teacher who argues that we shouldn’t investigate our past lives but should instead deal with the issues in front of us in this life. On one hand, I see the logic in that. Past lives that come up in spiritual work usually do so because we have deep and powerful work to do regarding them. It’s not the fun experience that most people expect when they start looking for their past lives. However, I believe that if we are shown past lives, we are meant to work through the issues that they bring up. Thus, Andy even agreed that this past life issue was sitting before him in the present life in the form of me, and so we had to deal with the issues that seemed related to different health problems both of us were having.

The first thing that came up between us was a spiritual cord joining our gallbladders. Cords are connections that we make when we want to bind a person to us, usually not in a healthy way. They join us across time and space to others' souls. These cords can be means of draining energy from others; they can also cause emotions to be felt by the person on the other end of the cord. All of the cords which I have found on my spiritual body were ones placed by toxic abusers or for unhealthy reasons. They needed to be cut through energy work so that the burden they entailed could be removed. In this particular case, the spiritual cord was one that my soul had created when Andy’s former incarnation was dying. I didn’t want him to leave me, so out of desperation, I tried to bind us across the ages. The cord served no healthy purpose for us, and so we agreed it was time to remove it. Both Andy and I are healers in this life in different professions. Our varying skills and metaphysical gifts have complemented each other well as we worked to heal our past lives together. In the case of cutting the cord between our gallbladders, it was Andy who did most of the energetic work after I had seen the visions which helped us locate the cord. Subsequent to seeing the cord and its removal, I was shown that both Andy and I need to work with red poppy flower essence and with black opal. Both of us began using them, but not much happened.

Nine months later, I received more insight about Andy and me during meditation. I called him and told him that we both HAD to make using red poppy a priority so that we could heal whatever needed to heal. The time was now ripe to do so. Andy is used to my crazy visions and impulses, and he knows that I’m almost always right in what I see. As a result of what I’d seen during this message from higher powers, Andy and I booked a session with my mentor (who also happens to be a client of his) so that we would have a neutral third party to assist in the healing session that needed to happen between us. This turned out to be an excellent idea on Andy’s part as having a third person involved in the healing ceremony greatly facilitated our healing as individuals and as a past life couple. She was able to direct each of us when we needed to do individual work and weren’t in a place to devote attention to each other; this greatly assisted in the flow.

The result of our healing season was a powerful experience that showed the connections between Andy’s and my relationship in that particular past life with the various problems our former marriages (to others) in this life. As I worked through my resentment toward Andy for dying before we married in our past life and towards men in this life for failing to love me when and how I wanted, he worked through issues of feeling ensnared by various women in this life and that one. What ending up happening can best be described as therapy by proxy: We were able to state things to each other that we couldn’t state to others in our lives who had hurt us or whom we had hurt, especially our ex-spouses. Andy said the exact same words that my ex-husband had previously said to me, but this time I actually heard them because they were not tainted by the anger and pain of our current situations. The result was spectacular. It’s something I wish could easily be recreated for others, working with a more neutral stand-in who is in the opposite situation as them in order to find healing. I actually said at one point, "If only marriage therapy had been this easy!"

The healing that we both received during this session was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Andy experienced temporary remission from his physical pain during the session, something that never normally happened for him. There was another cord between us which we removed as we used crystals, essences and words to facilitate the process. It was still very difficult to approach some of the deep and emotionally painful issues that came up, but it helped us both to do it. Perhaps the most amazing thing I felt at one point during the session was being overwhelmed by a soul level love for Andy. If you’d asked me previously how I felt about him, I would have told you that he’s a good friend. I never would have used the word “love” to describe our relationship. However, the sensation of love was so powerful and consuming during that moment that it left me in awe. The experience gave me a much better understanding of the soul level love that we can carry for others between our lives.

I feel incredibly blessed that we were able to share this healing session in this life when we were friends and not romantic partners. The distance between us let us heal deep past wounds with each other and others. Andy’s current romantic partner is another close friend of mine; she is someone he has introduced to my soul family. While I haven’t had previous incarnations with her, I can definitely see having future ones with her. Because of her love for both of us and her desire for both of us to heal, she gave her blessing for us to engage in this healing session together. I could see another woman not being so willing to facilitate this kind of work with past-life partners and responding with jealousy or worse. Instead, she gifted us with the ability to work together as friends to find past life healing.

Since then, I’ve since seen two other past lives with Andy, neither of which required major healing. In one, a life in an Aztec community many centuries ago, he was physically and emotionally abusive to me; I was mentally ill and treated him terribly as well. We simply need to forgive each other so we could move forward with our healing in other ways. The other past life was one in Native American days in what we now know as Wisconsin in which we only played tangential roles in each other's life. When I first met Andy’s father in this life, I had that déjà vu feeling that I already knew him. When I checked with my guides, they confirmed that Andy's current father had been Andy’s and my child in another past life. However, the guides refused to give me any more information. I have found that unless we need information for healing, we don’t learn about past lives. If we knew all the details of all our lives, we’d likely be overwhelmed! However, when past lives surface in our healing work, moving through the issues they bring up can bring amazing healing in our present lives.

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

In a sixth season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Relics,” Commander Will Riker is speaking with Captain Montgomery Scott, a.k.a. Scotty from the original Star Trek television series. As they examined a small shuttle that was being given to Scotty, Riker says, “She’s not much to look at.” Scotty replies, “Laddie, every woman has her own charm. You just have to know where to look for it.” There’s a great deal of wisdom in that statement, and not just about women. All people are all beautiful in their own ways.

However, our society creates ideals of popularity and beauty that are based on conformity, not individuality. From the moment we start school, we are expected to fall in line and do as all of our classmates are doing. We buy the same school supplies, the same Trapper Keepers, the same styles of clothing (if we aren't wearing uniforms), the same lunch boxes, the same cell phones… the list goes on and on. While we might pick different colors or patterns, the overall items are the same. We conform to peer pressure and want to buy the products that will make us fit in well.

Likewise, our behavior and personalities are meant to conform to certain ideals. In my childhood, the teachers who embraced independent thinkers were rare. Most wanted students to behave according to certain standards and to think like the masses. Students who questioned authority or the “truth” that was being taught were not lauded. Instead, they are branded as trouble-makers. Most of the authority around me, including teachers and parents, wanted the next generation to be safely molded into the same form as they had been.

Despite these attempts of our society to enforce conformity, we are all individuals. We are all different. And while our outsides “might not look like much,” we all are filled with our own charm and beauty. Through embracing our differences, we actually find ways of being ourselves. If we all were truly alike, life would be really boring! As you go about your day today, offer gratitude for one of your qualities that makes you different from others. Likewise, find a way to appreciate the differences in the people around you, whether at home, school or work. Even if you find those differences to be challenging, try to accept that those differences are challenges can make you grow as an individual. Through trying to appreciate the strengths we all have in our differences, we will find the world is a much more beautiful place than we normally think.

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

Despite LinkedIn’s warnings, I accept connections from almost everyone on there who asks me to. In my mind, the purpose of networking is to meet new people. Most of the time, this philosophy works well. Occasionally someone connects with me to spam me with their services; at that point I disconnect from them. Today’s example was an email from a business coach who claims to be an intuitive focusing on the divine feminine. I had initially thought we might have something in common. However, the beginning of the message read:

Are You Ready to Break Free from Exhausting Hourly Sessions?
Are You Ready to Make More Money Working Less Hours? 

I was aghast as I read those words. To me, a great translation of the rhetorical questions being asked is, “Do you think you’re too good to actually help people who are paying for and need your help?” Individual work is at the core of what I and many other coaches and therapists offer. It’s not exhausting to me; it’s very uplifting most of the time. It’s a sacred call that I’ve received to assist others. If someone doesn’t like working with clients individually, then being a coach is not the right job for them. If they’re feeling drained by it all the time, they may need to examine their energetic boundaries to make sure they’re working in a protected space that keeps them from absorbing their patients’ problems. (That is something I help clients with if they desire it since it’s an issue for many empaths and intuitives.)

Spiritual arrogance is all too common in this world. People who think they’ve found the divine (or God or whatever word you prefer) let their newfound spiritual prowess go immediately to their head. They are certain that their intimate knowledge of Spirit has made them better than anyone else; for some of them, this is so much so that they can’t be bothered to interact with others learning to grow. Some of them just want to stand on a podium, shine in their greatness, and accept the awe-filled laurels that they believe they deserve from the masses. Of course, working from a warped interpretation of the law of attraction, they’re certain their spiritual nature and connection to the divine will allow them to attract millions of dollars by doing nothing more than just being their wonderful selves.

Here’s a hint, though: The more arrogant that someone is about their spiritual abilities and the more they need to display their divine connection overtly, the less connection they are likely to have. Most of the time, those who list a long heritage of gurus or teachers, especially those who connect them linearly to a divine teacher such as Jesus or a saint, are really very insecure in their own knowledge and abilities, so they rest on the laurels of others. In contrast, some of the holiest people we’ll ever meet are the ones who are examples of modesty and humility. They’re confident in their connection with the divine and their purpose here on earth. They go about their business, helping others as they do. They don’t seek fame and easy fortune. They just want to live in peace and want the same for others, too.

There’s an old adage that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. This doesn’t apply to just miracle medical cures and get rich quick schemes. People who promise you amazing divine knowledge from one easy course are likely speaking from a place of greed and arrogance, not holiness. They are likely involved in a pyramid scheme of confused people, and following their way is not likely to bring you the amazing things you are hoping for. The same is true of healers who promise that all of your problems can be solved in one workshop or with one supplement. It’s very rarely (if ever) true. The slow and steady path is often the best one to take for personal growth. Even if it’s prompted by a sudden tragic event, the growth from that single event will not happen overnight in most cases. Instead, change has to happen through honest and diligent work.

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

Many parents in our society have a twisted idea that they know what is best for their children at all times. This issue goes far beyond telling a child they have to wear a seatbelt in the car, a legitimate responsible requirement for any parent to make of a child. Rather, these overbearing parents make decisions for everything in their children’s lives. Many children are forced into schools, friendships, sports, jobs, and even relationships that are arranged by their parents rather than following their own hearts, dreams and desires.

I have recently been watching The Carrie Diaries, the prequel to Sex and the City, which follows the adventures of high schooler Carrie Bradshaw. The series has some of the same themes as Sex in the City such as female camaraderie and a love of fashion, but it’s a very different show about teenagers coming of age. As juniors in high school, the reality of “the real world” is just around the horizon. After one dismal Thanksgiving dinner, two of Carrie’s friends, Maggie and Walt, a mismatched couple, discuss the role of parents and their future.

By the time I got to high school, I realized that I didn't want to be a doctor at all. I knew I wanted to be a teacher. However, I knew that I couldn't share my dreams with my mother because her narcissistic self would never allowed my dreams to be considered. What she wanted for me was all that mattered regardless of how I actually felt about it. Instead of following her dreams for me, though, I made plans to attend a major state university where almost any degree was a possibility as an undergrad. Once I got to college, I declared myself a history and English double major pursuing secondary certification. By that time, my mother was no longer actively in my life, but the rest of my extended family responded with disapproval. I was told by more than one person, “But you’re too smart to become a teacher!” Um? First of all, don’t we want our children’s teachers to be smart? And second, didn't my desires matter at all? I decided that my family’s opinions were irrelevant since it was my life. I couldn't bear the thought of being a doctor or lawyer like they were encouraging, so I did what I wanted to do.

Did I stay in teaching for my entire life? No. Do I believe it was a mistake for me to have walked down that road? Not at all. It was what I was meant to do with the earlier part of my life. Teaching has been foundational in my subsequent careers. I still believe that I am a teacher, but I no longer teach traditional subjects in a traditional classroom. Instead, I am teaching individuals and groups in informal settings, hourly appointments and private classes. Most importantly, though, was that it was my decision to make. I needed to follow my own heart and desires.

Now, as my children are facing high school career paths (a recent, misguided, and developmental inappropriate idea in Texas schools courtesy of the state legislature) and the eventual graduation to college majors, I have to let them make their own decisions. That doesn't mean that I don’t want them to be realistic. My daughter voiced that she wanted to be a photography major, and I love that she loves photography as much as she does. Still, I explained to her the realities of a career in photography. In our modern world, it is very difficult to sustain oneself as a photographer. I encouraged her to pursue a degree in photography but to also double major in another field that she loves or to structure her degree in such a way that she can broaden her employment skills. She seemed to understand that reality and is taking design and Photoshop classes that are giving her practical but fun skills. Who knows what she’ll actually do in her life, but the final decision will be hers to make.

As Carrie Bradshaw’s father confronts her boss, Larissa Loughton, at the magazine where Carrie took the new internship unbenounced to him, the following conversation ensues: