Being the Big One

Sometimes when we are little and things go wrong, we think we have to take charge and fix things. We feel it’s up to us to make it better. We think we have to be the big one and we’ll show the adults how to do it. Or we feel like no one else is seeing what a mess things are, or how unsafe things are, so we try to make it better. It might be that the parents aren’t loving, so we decide we’ll be the loving one. It might be that we have to protect someone (siblings, one…

Healing Trauma in War Torn Countries

Abstract: Women for Women International (WFWI) helps victims of war become self sufficient in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Sudan. WFWI conducts year-long programs for participants, providing financial aid, job training, rights awareness and leadership education. They also want to help participants deal with the often severe trauma they experience during war. I have adapted my Energy Psychology methodology called Clearing Limits Energetically with Acupressure Release (CLEAR™) so that it may be used in groups in short, one-hour sessions as a part of WFWI’s program. In July 2008, WFWI sent me…

Creating Dynamic, Adaptable Organizations

How do you make your organization highly adaptable and dynamic so you can adjust to the marketplace easily? Make sure your leaders are free of limiting beliefs and issues that prevent them from seeing necessary information clearly and acting effectively. Leader behavior is often governed by self-limiting beliefs originating from our history. A negative experience can create blocks in our system. For example, I may have been yelled at as a child, so I may fear taking risks or speaking my mind. The blocks take the form of blocking beliefs, such as, “If I speak up I’ll be humiliated,” or…

Accepting Feelings Leads to Inner Peace

Many of us were raised to resist our feelings (don’t be angry, don’t cry, don’t be so wild, etc). We do most anything to not feel: we eat, do drugs, drink, exercise, work, text, play computer games, and in doing all of this doing, we fight reality. When we resist feeling, we block reality, and this leads to a pattern of fighting that distances us from a sense of peace and contentment and ability to be present in the here and now. We live according to the belief that I have to resist or fight in order get what I…

Achieving Personal Power

This article discusses effective and ineffective ways of gaining personal power and how that search impacts those around us. Note: I suggest you read “The Victim Tyrant Cycle” as it includes important concepts used in this article (http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/negotiating-the-victim-tyrant-cycle). Children who had “secure attachment” naturally gain personal power—their needs were met as a child (they felt loved and secure), so as adults, they don’t worry about how to gain safety in the world. They feel comfortable about themselves; they are calm and centered. They are confident but not arrogant. Arrogance involves the ego and is a sign of insecurity—one is fighting…

The Integration of Family Constellation Work and Energy Psychology

I have been doing Family Constellation Work for over ten years, and when I started, I had been doing Energy Psychology work (specifically CLEAR) for over five years. Energy Psychology removes trauma and blocks by stimulating Delta waves (as in deep sleep), which discard emotions and dissolve the neural pathway associated with the negative experience; tapping (a form of energy psychology) sends electromagnetic signals to the amygdala that eases negatives charges. So when I saw people showing signs of trauma in constellations, it came naturally for me to have them use clearing techniques of energy psychology as the constellation progressed….

Creating Healthy Relationships

When you expect to get the love you didn’t get as a child from your partner, you are stuck in the pattern of hope and struggle that you cannot win. This is a pattern that is created in childhood that seeps into our relationships (as most patterns do). The pattern comes about because the love we experienced from our parents was conditional, not consistent or nonexistent. Usually we think we are to blame for not getting the love we need. We do lots of things to try to get this love (achieve, be kind, do for others, give up our…

Clearing Limiting Beliefs About Money

Many of us have limiting beliefs that impact our relationship with money. During these difficult times when we are tightening our belts, it would be helpful to rid ourselves of any negative beliefs that impact our ability to manifest money. These beliefs originate from our interactions, cultural traditions and experiences with money, and then influence how we attract money (or not). If I believe something, even at a subconscious level, that belief impacts my ability to manifest that thing in my life. For example, if I experienced as a child that money was difficult to come by and we never had enough, then at some level, I…

How Can I Be Happy?

Published by SelfGrowth.com I recently turned 55 and at my birthday celebration, a friend told me that I had changed more than anyone he knew. When I told this to another friend (with whom I have recently reconnected after 30 years) he said yes, that was true for him too, “you aren’t the same person in so many ways, and yet you haven’t changed at all in ways that are so fundamental to your nature.” What a great thing to hear after all these years—that my work on myself has paid off! I was an unhappy child and a depressed adult (off and on antidepressants…