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CHILDREN AND YOUTH

1. Broadening Our Perspectives on Disorders of Children, Teens & Young Adults
2. Indigo Children
3. Indigo Children - Potential and Perils
4. How Not To Parent Indigo Kids
5. Unhealthy Family Patterns
6. Forthcoming: Healing for Troubled Youth Who Have a High Capacity

ADULTS

1. How We Can Help
2. Healing the Effects of Trauma
3. Working With Physical Pain and Illness
4. Healing Visualizations
5. Healing from Winter blues and SAD
   (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
6. Forthcoming: Healing for Troubled Adults Who Have a High Capacity
7. Forthcoming: Healing for “Hopeless Cases”

We recommend you read the articles in the Children and Youth section if you are an adult who is very intelligent, intuitive, sensitive and strong-minded. You might be an Indigo adult.

COUPLES

1. Forthcoming – Help for Relationships That Are on the Rocks
2. Spiritual and Healing Relationships
3. Divorce Related Articles

INDIGO CHILDREN - POTENTIAL AND PERILS

By: Rémi Thivierge, MSW, RSW RMFT

Indigo children are very special souls. They’re very intelligent, intuitive, sensitive, and powerful. As part of that, they’re aware of some things that others aren’t. And they’re prepared to speak their truth and stand up for themselves. With all this, these kids have incredible potential. On the other hand, they’re a handful and they can be very challenging to their parents and teachers, much more so than most kids. Some people go so far as to say they’re here to break down rigid old walls and systems.

Because Indigos won’t put up with much in terms of rigid rules, some adults react very negatively to them. Some of us become very rigid or downright mean whereas others simply withdraw or crumble. For example, a single parent with three Indigo children had become a nervous wreck and she could no longer stand up to her children. Emotionally, she had become smaller than them. Another mother threw her adolescent teen out because she was too much hassle to deal with. 

We can choose to blame the Indigos but the real issue is that they present us with an opportunity to see some of our own imperfections.  The higher road is to say, ‘OK, what have I got to learn here?’ In part, we need to learn to become more flexible in some areas and stronger and firmer in others. As far as I’ve seen, all parents of Indigos are old souls, and they, as well as their children have a lot of capacity for growth.


Another aspect of the Indigo kids issue is that many of these kids also have a sizeable dark side. They can be quite angry. And they can also be quite intolerant of others’ imperfections. Also, because of their sensitivity, they absorb negativity more easily than most people and they may act it out, without being aware of what’s causing their reaction. 

For example, some Indigos in the Southern Interior last year who became suicidal as a result of the negative energy resulting from the fires. Others pick up negative energy from home or from the school, or from their peers. Some are stuck as a result of difficulties at various times in their past, such as a difficult birth or feeling unwanted by a parent when they were born. These kids, rather than withdrawing, may likely to act out through aggression toward their family or in the community. As a result, some of these kids get labelled as having ADD or ADHD and then get put on medication. Others get involved with the child welfare system or with probation. Unfortunately, most professionals don’t know how to help these kids, and may unintentionally make things worse by trying to get them to fit in.

A variety of things are needed here. Some of these youths need to learn how to clear the negativity they pick up. Some parents need to deal with their own unresolved issues so they can treat their child in a different way. Others simply need to pick up more knowledge about Indigos and how to handle them, and go from there. The bottom line is that the idea that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is even more true regarding Indigos than about other kids. Because they’re here to rattle our cages - for our own good!!!

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HOW NOT TO PARENT INDIGO KIDS

Rémi Thivierge MSW RSW RMFT

As you may know, Indigo children are very special souls who are often a major handful for their parents. They’re very intelligent, intuitive, powerful, and sensitive. As a result of their sensitivity, they’re very reactive to their environment. So if you’re angry or depressed or if one of their peers is going through tough times, they pick up that negativity and react - not realizing that they’re reacting to someone else’s stuff. It’s very simple really - it’s like the dad who got dumped on by his boss, he passes it on to his wife, she to the child, the child kicks the dog, etc. 

In an article I wrote for Issues in October/November, 2004, I discussed the darker side of Indigos. Here, I’ll discuss some of the pitfalls that can occur in parenting Indigos. Our kids, and especially our Indigo kids, are very sensitive to our unresolved issues and to our negative style of parenting which we learned in childhood. Think of the negativity in your parenting relationship as being a great opportunity to see yourself more clearly and to grow.

Authoritarian - Indigo kids don’t do well with feeling controlled, especially if they don’t buy into the rules. Indigos’ reactions to authoritarian or bossy parenting is very strong. Some may react by leaving home early, especially if they also feel that they’re not loved. It’s not a question of whether you love them or not, but of how they interpret your behaviour.

Permissive For a variety of reasons, some parents don’t impose rules on their children very much. For example, a parent may think it’s ok for their youth to just hang out on the streets until three a.m. without being accountable to anyone, or the parent doesn’t check up on signs that their child gets drunk or stoned regularly. This tends to happen especially in single parent families, not because the parent doesn’t care, but because they don’t feel powerful enough to impose the rules in relation to their Indigos. 

Inconsistent Some parents go from being very firm to being too soft, either out of a feeling of guilt that they may have been inappropriate with their child. In other cases, the child simply wears their parent down, asking for the same thing over and over again. Other parents have a fear that their child will leave. Substance abuse on the part of a parent may be the cause of the inconsistency as well. Our Indigo kids are great at finding out buttons, such as guilt or fear, and making use of them to get more freedom or privileges.

Hierarchy and Boundaries In some families, the child is in charge of areas that the parent should be in charge of. In other families, there are no real boundaries. Nobody’s in charge, and the family may be chaotic. In other families, the style of parenting is too rigid. For example, the parents may continue to treat a fourteen year old like a ten year old. The Indigo is likely to rebel against that.

Triangles There are a number of types of triangles. As one example, one parent is more firm and the other has a softer approach. They may argue about their differences or undermine each other. Indigos know how to make use of these differences in parenting to their own advantage. 
Another style of triangle is cut offs and splits. This occurs, as an example, when one child is consistently very close to one parent and the other feels shut out on a regular basis.  This can occur especially easily when parents are separated, and one parent has relatively little contact with the child.

The goal is not to beat yourself or your partner up if you’ve fallen into one of those traps. The goal is to see it and resolve it. Good luck. A parenting course offered by someone with extensive experience with Indigos or a therapist / healer type with a great deal of experience with Indigos and their families might help. 

Rémi Thivierge MSW RSW RMFT
 

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BROADENING OUR PERSPECTIVE ON DISORDERS OF CHILDREN, TEENS and YOUNG ADULTS

Western methods of helping have been invaluable in helping to resolve a great many difficulties for children, teens and young adults. However, our results have been less than satisfactory in many cases. As research has shown, the success rate of counseling / therapy with clients in general is about 72%. That leaves 28% who are not helped. 

With some children, teens, and young adults, a great many methods of helping are attempted over a period of years and nothing seems to work. Parents and professionals then resort to putting psychiatric labels on them, medicating them, and some start there. 

Professionals have tried a great many types of methods for assisting these troubled youth. Interestingly, we haven’t heard much about methods relating to either the capacity or spirit of these troubled youths. 

Many of these youths are very intelligent, intuitive, sensitive and strong-minded. These types of youths have recently been labeled as indigos. Highly sensitive people are more negatively affected by negativity in their environment than most people.  Although most people are deeply affected by difficulties such as illnesses and divorce, these youth are often more deeply affected because they are so sensitive. 

Some of these issues include, among others:

• Their parents’ divorce 8 years before
• Their mother’s post-partum depression after this child was born
• Having been bullied in the past and still carrying that negativity
• Believing that they are unwanted, failures, or useless and acting accordingly
• Having no positive direction in which to channel their energies
• Trauma experienced by their parents, such as financial difficulties, having experienced civil war in another country, rejection by their clan, etc.

I want to be clear up front that, in some cases, nothing will work except medication, or behaviour management, or family therapy. Although I am certainly not always able to be helpful in these cases, I have experienced incredible successes in one or a few sessions working with many these unresolved issues in very troubled children, youth and young adults as well as with many adults who had been suffering for a very long time. 
 
I will focus here only on helping methods that relate to their spirit although I use a variety of traditional Western methods such as solution focused, cognitive behavioural, behavoural charts, focus on difficulties in bonding, focus on what they do well and on their abilities, and family therapy.

Holistic healing methods:

My intuition: I’ve developed my intuition a great deal over time and I now have the ability to pick up where they’re stuck. For example, if the client has a great deal of anger, I’m able to sense the times when they developed anger in the past and in relation to who. Sensitive and intuitive people have the capacity to develop this gift over time with training and practice.

Help them see their gifts: As with the rest of us, children, teens and young adults usually do not do well by being focused on negatively, being labeled, receiving frequent reprimands, etc. Helping them to see their gifts, such as strong spirit, intuition, music, etc. can greatly help to enhance their self-esteem and it can also help build their connection with you.

Protection: Many of these youth are greatly affected by negativity in their environment – at home, at school, etc. They need to learn how to protect themselves energetically. 

Clear their negativity: Many troubled youth pick up a great deal of negativity around them, and
some still carry it from when they were three years old, right after birth, and even before. In some cases, they were unwanted pregnancies and this affected them even before birth. The child can be impacted even if the parent, or someone else, did not want the pregnancy even for a short time. The clearing is done in a variety of ways, depending on what works for them. However, I’ve provided two powerful examples below in the exercises.

Ask their Higher Power for help: For some people, it’s very effective to surrender, ask for help, pray, etc. Think of the12 step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, that are so effective with many addictions – which are often untreatable using traditional methods of therapy. I have borrowed and developed a variety of ways that one can work with spirit, our Higher Power, God….

EXERCISES: 

1) Imagine that you’re carrying shame – we all carry some of that. Visualize light coming in through the crown or your head. Imagine it turns into a violet flame, goes around your body and burns away the shame. 

2) Imagine that you’re carrying some of your loved ones’ pain, or if you’re a professional helper, your clients’ / patients’ pain, from your work over the years. So many of us burn out, get sick, or just feel old as a result of an accumulation of this pain. Imagine light goes in through the crown of your head and clears away clients’ suffering, their anger, their fear, etc. Focus on one of these at a time. We have the ability not only to remain fresh over the years but also to grow and blossom more fully if we work at clearing negative energy and bringing in positive energy too.  

If you feel a shift of energy from doing these exercises for one of two minutes, this tells you that the type of work I am proposing here will work well for you. I suggest you keep at it and practice using it with your clients. If these exercises did not work for you, this type of work is not likely to be helpful for you, although it’s possible that you tried in a way that was not open minded. If so, consider trying again. 

DISCUSSION: Rather than think of a difficulty as being a hard and fast issue, such as anger or low self-esteem, it’s useful to think of it as stuck energy. The question then becomes how to help that energy move, as has been used in the East for thousands of years. The goal here is to focus on how to move chi or prajna, life force, that is stuck. We can do the same, with great results in many cases. This does not work for everyone however. 

As parents, professional helpers or others, all it takes is a brief attempt to help someone else in this way to determine whether it will help them feel better. Then, the more precise you are in sending the energy to the stuck area, the more you will be effective. In the same way, if you clean a room but miss the dark corner under the couch, you will not be successful in resolving the issue. 

Consider trying these ideas and methods with yourself and other sensitive clients who’ve gone through serious difficulties – such as people who are adult children of alcoholics or of other difficult families, such as violence, sexual abuse, or neglect. These people have great pain in their heart and in their soul and many will benefit from working with them at the very profound levels discussed here.

In case you get stuck, I do distance healing work over the phone and over the internet with webcams. I have been very successful in helping people to heal no matter how long they have been suffering and where they are on earth. 

THE WRITER: Rémi Thivierge MSW RSW RMFT is a clinical member and approved supervisor with the American and Canadian Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, the accrediting body in this field. He is a holistic psychotherapist and trainer. He has thirty years experience in the field. He now lives in Greater Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He is currently writing a book regarding helping troubled youths and their families.  He has also written a book on how to help reduce the negative impact of divorce. You can read excerpts of that book at www.intothefire.ca.  He is the Director of the Phoenix Vision “Integrative Counseling Training Program”. He is based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He can be reached at remi@dynamicharmony.com or (604) 662-7837. 

Rémi provides workshops and consultations regarding these issues. Please contact him if you’re interested in the issues discussed here.
 

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GOD’S GAME OF SNAKES AND LADDERS

So, you’re on a path of growth, are you? Good, that’s great. You know, there are a few challenges on this path, don’t you? You’re still willing to give it a go? Ok, let’s get to it. As you may know, you need to open your heart, become more sensitive, more intuitive, more powerful, and more gentle and to become non-attached. Serving your fellow humans would be great too. After all, it’s a higher goal to focus on becoming a bodhisattva than to simply become enlightenment by focusing only on yourself. As you may know, a bodhisattva is someone who focuses on growing in order to help others more fully.

By the way, you’ll become more and more sensitive as you grow, so you’ll pick up other people’s and the environment’s negative energy but I’ll let you discover that for yourself. As you already know by now, God’s game of snakes and ladders is full of surprises.

You also have to deal with karma from this and a great many past lives. Don’t believe in karma? That’s ok, you can choose to pay the debt very slowly over time rather than heal it quickly, but you’ll grow lots from the struggles. So don’t worry about it. 

Of course, the fact that you’ve chosen to grow lots this lifetime confirms that you’re an advanced soul, an old soul or an indigo, so you probably chose a tough path to walk this lifetime. Like a childhood of neglect or abuse or illness or divorce. Others choose to live in difficult locations, where there are hurricanes, a great deal of pollution, or a very difficult community.  However, some on the path have chosen a somewhat easier lifetime this time around but they still have challenges to resolve from their family of origin or other issues, such as divorce. 

I”ll give you lots of toys and trinkets to chase after. Chasing after security, comfort and toys are a wonderful distraction from the path. You could choose to go to the other extreme and do a vow of poverty, as you’ve done in other lifetimes. No monasteries in sight to take you in so you don’t have to worry about food and shelter? Ah too bad, I guess you’ll just have to struggle to get your basic needs met or find your way toward abundance. You choose - both approaches are fine!

As part of this, we’ll connect you with some of the members of your soul group, and they all have the same few lessons to learn as you do, from one angle or another. They’ll be wonderful to help you along, give you support, help you get lost, abandon you, provide you with a little treachery, and other things to help you grow. It doesn’t matter who it is - spouse, business partner, one of your kids. 

The goal is to choose whether to feel victimized by each other or to take responsibility and avoid blaming each other. To heal our wounds and to give love and compassion Will you bring out the best in each other or the worst? Or keep it down to a dull, boring roar where the relationship is mostly dead? You choose - all these paths are ok. However, if we don’t challenge ourselves and each other, it’s a bit like being on Prozac- Not much growth there - although a few people really need those meds. Part of the trick is for you to decide how to handle a sense of attachment, loyalty, and guilt in relation to your group. Will you all stay stuck together, help each other grow, or move on – together or separately.

Oh, you’re doing so well!!! Here, try a few tests. How about we throw a couple of curses your way to stop your life. Some are ritualized curses – like poking a voodoo doll with a pin but most are just that somebody was really angry at you and that put a dark cloud over your head. Don’t believe in curses? Oh well, that’s ok. Maybe you can learn to deal with that next time around. 

Oh, and by the way, if you resolve those, you’ve got a bunch of luggage from your childhood that you weren’t aware of, and some from your family of origin. Some of it is maps in terms of how we should behave in the world, some of it is emotional wounds and some is others’ negative energy. We have to go in and clear each one. 

If that isn’t enough, have you checked for negativity from your old relationships – friends and lovers. What about enemies – the way the Dalai Lama sees it, enemies are the most valuable people for us because they help us see some of our sides that we wouldn’t otherwise be aware of and they help us develop more patience and compassion.

By the way, you’re carrying a fair amount of stuff in your genetic code from your cultural background as well. You may want to clean some of that up. Don’t believe in some of that stuff? That’s fine - take all the time you need. How about entities? Care to try one or two? Don’t look now, but maybe you’ve got one already.

If you do really well, I’ll honour you with great success and power to see if they trip you up. And I”ll send you a few false gurus to play with. They’ll give you a wonderful run for your money. Speaking of money, I may have forgotten to mention it, but I’ve been gradually raising the bar so that what worked for you in manifesting in the past has been changing. You have to get it more and more right as time goes on - or you’ll go hungry.

And if you keep going, I might send you tons of spiritual energy and fry your nervous system. The physical pain will be great for you to focus on. Will you go into self-pity and hatred of life as a result of some of these tests, or will you keep going and grow lots and lots?

And I’ll show you lots of ways to grow. Most of them are useless but, hey, who said it was going to be easy!! But I’ll send you occasional signs and clues and mercy, especially if you ask me for help. And sometimes even a ladder. Just make sure you spot them - but I won’t tell you what they look like. Have fun!!! Just remember, the goal isn’t to irritate and destroy you, but to test you and help you become more pure. Please don’t get too mad at me - that’ll just mean you got lost.  Don’t forget, it’s just a game - Snakes and Ladders, remember?

By the way, how’s your resolve to keep growing now? Oh, I almost forgot to mention, once you’ve started on the game, you can’t really turn back. Don’t forget to call me for help if you need it. Who knows, I might respond if you ‘cry uncle’ loud enough. 

You’re doing great - so keep it up. There’s no place else to go anyway. Ah, good old Earth School – what a great idea that was to develop that. Such fun!!!

With unconditional Love,
god

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WORKING WITH PHYSICAL PAIN AND ILLNESS

WRITTEN BY: Rémi Thivierge, MSW RSW RMFT

“It is only in the past twenty years that Western physicians, biologists, and psychologists have begun to comprehend the interrelationship between emotional states and mental and physical well-being.”  

Daniel Goleman, Author of “Emotional Intelligence” 

Over the past decade or so, some exciting research has been published regarding the connection not only between mind and body, but also regarding how the mind can be used to cope more effectively with illness and, in many cases, even to heal the illness.

In summary, the weight of the scientific evidence shows that there is a strong connection between physical health and strong negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, and depression. These states, if strong and prolonged, can increase vulnerability to disease, worsen the symptoms, and hinder recovery. Although less research has been done regarding positive emotional states, it is also becoming more and more apparent that such factors as optimism, calmness, and laughter have a positive effect on health. 

Regarding the effect of relationships on health, Dr. Dean Ornish, who has written a couple of books on how to recover from heart attacks, summarizes the research as follows: “anything that promotes feelings of love and intimacy is healing; anything that promotes isolation, separation, loneliness, loss, hostility, anger, cynicism, depression, alienation, and related feelings often leads to suffering, disease, and premature death from all causes.” 

This generalization is appropriate to make regarding such issues as aging, heart conditions, cancer, chronic pain, stomach ulcers, and other conditions. However, although emotions can have a powerful impact on health, we cannot conclude that people make themselves sick - because there are a great many factors involved, such as genetic predisposition, illnesses in early childhood which can make us more vulnerable to illness later in life, trauma, environmental factors, and working in a dysfunctional environment. As one author in the mind/body field, Joan Borysenko, put it, who wanted to emphasize that people should not be blamed for their illnesses, some perverts live well into their eighties and are never sick. 

In the same way, it’s not appropriate to conclude that how we deal with our emotions and mental state will necessarily make us healthier, although it can in many cases. However, at the very least, people can learn to cope better with their illness.

In that context, there are some recent examples from the scientific literature on the connection between mind and body in cases of illness. The Heart and Stroke Foundation in Canada published some findings showing that, although we now know a great deal about how to prevent a recurrence of a heart attack, the recurrence rate has recently increased by 13%. They found that the reason for this is denial - only a third of Canadian heart attack survivors participate in cardiac rehabilitation programs despite the fact that they improve functional ability and quality of life.

Research by the same organization reported last year that ongoing tension of a distressed intimate relationship can raise blood pressure overall for people who already have mild high blood pressure (hypertension), and not just during an argument, as was previously believed. They also found that blood pressure among this population goes down when their relationship with their partner is supportive.

Also on the relationship front, research has found that couples who frequently argued had weakened immune systems as compared to other couples who did not argue as much. Women were more likely to show negative immunological changes than men. The immune system has also been found to get weaker in individuals after the loss of a partner.

More generally, the Institute of Stress in the United States has found that 80% of problems treated by family doctors are stress and psychosomatic cases.

The good news is that emotions can also play a part in making things better for people who are ill. As Dr. Daniel Brown, an author who practices in the new field of behavioural medicine stated, discoveries in psychology and biology have recently led to a synthesis of ideas about using the ability of the mind to produce healing changes in the body. This is in part due to borrowing ideas from both the East and West. 

Although 50% of the Canadian population now uses alternative forms of medicine, at least some of the time, fewer have discovered the capacity of the mind to heal.

Here are some examples of situations that have greatly improved with the right kind of assistance: Dr. Dean Ornish has found that people recover best from a heart attack if they improve their diet and reduce their level of stress through meditation, although he has found that dealing with one’s personal issues in therapy is perhaps the most important factor. His research found that people who follow such a program show positive physical results within a month. 

Another physician, Dr. David Spiegel, has found that women who suffered from breast cancer survived twice as long as a control group when they received a year of group therapy involving facing their fears and other negativity regarding their illness, as compared to a control group. The group who received therapy were found to be less anxious and depressed and considered themselves more active and satisfied - at the time of treatment and six months after termination.

A psychologist, Jon Kabbat-Zinn, has obtained positive results by teaching meditation and gentle yoga to many groups of people with chronic pain. His research found that this treatment reduced chronic pain at least moderately in 75% of participants.

The fields of psychotherapy and medicine have argued for some years whether depression should be treated through medication or therapy. Research reported recently showed that the mental state of two groups of depressed individuals improved as much, based on the findings of a PET scan of the brain, whether they took the antidepressant called Paxil or if they were in psychotherapy for twelve sessions. Based on these findings, the researchers recommended that a combination of psychotherapy and medication works best for people suffering from depression.

Research has also found that collaboration between physicians and therapists who work with mind-body issues is helpful for many patients suffering from a variety of illnesses. This is true whether the goal is to assist the patient to cope more effectively with the illness, to attempt to help the patient to heal the illness, or to help improve the relationship between the sick individual and loved ones.

In summarizing the research, Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the most important writers in the field of mind/body work, suggests that the power to heal is within you. He summarizes the following points regarding what patients can do to increase their chance of healing their illness or, at the very least, of coping more effectively:  

1- They take charge of getting information regarding their illness.

2 - They do not take no for an answer, even though this may result in their being irritating to the professionals involved in their case. 

3- They seek out people who had been healed of the same illness.

4- They form constructive partnerships with their physicians - doctors who can say “I support you, I’ll monitor you, you go and experiment”. 

5- They do not hesitate to make radical shifts in their lives, such as making major changes in their diet, ending negative relationships, quitting a bad job, etc. 

6 - They see their illness as a gift in that the illness forces them into a new way of living that brings them joy.

7 - They take steps to try to resolve their illness but still accept themselves if they do not succeed.

Other authors at the forefront of the mind-body field hold similar views, such as Dean Ornish, Caroline Myss, Rachel Naomi Remen, and Deepak Chopra. In summary, most of these authors would state that meditation is important, as is tuning into nature, and facing one’s darkness, and not being attached to a particular outcome. 

They would also add that loss and suffering resulting from illness can be very valuable in helping us to get more in touch with deeper meaning in life, with our spiritual side, to become more loving and compassionate, and to lead a life in which we have more joy and are more at peace with ourselves on a day to day basis. Psychotherapy with a holistic professional who is knowledgeable about these issues can be valuable to assist in reaching these goals. 

For more information or to set up a consultation, please contact Rémi Thivierge at info@dynamicharmony.com. Please contact us for upcoming workshops on this topic.

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HEALING THE EFFECTS OF TRAUMA

RÉMI THIVIERGE, MSW RSW RMFT

Many people who have been traumatized over the years never recover. Some have been in car accidents, and still have the physical or emotional impact affecting them years later. Others were traumatized as children through physical or sexual abuse, and may have tried all sorts of methods with little success. Others have been in a violent marriage and are now terrified of getting into a new relationship. The effect of the trauma can continue for decades as if the incident had occurred very recently.

A person who’s been traumatized experiences symptoms like avoidance of some of their thoughts or emotions, and they may withdraw from others and from regular activities. A traumatized person also experiences at least two of the following: difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritable or angry outbursts, difficulty concentrating, hypervigilance (very wary), or get startled very easily by a sound or other situations. If you or a loved ones have experienced some of these difficulties for a long time, think back to when the symptoms started and whether they followed a traumatic incident.

A person’s way of coping may also make things worse. Some abuse alcohol or drugs. Some withdraw from other people or from situations that are similar to the traumatic incident. Others take prescription medication for many years in order to try to suppress their symptoms. 

Most forms of psychotherapy are often not able to help with these types of difficulties. A clear example of this is that more soldiers who went to Vietnam died as a result of suicide after the war than actually died during the war even though a great deal of money was spent on their seeing a variety of helping professionals.

However, new forms of trauma therapy have been developed over the past decade or so that are proving to be very helpful in quickly resolving these very difficult concerns. Some of these include EMDR, the Tapas method, the Callaghan technique, and Waking the Tiger.

Please contact Rémi Thivierge for more information through his email at info@dynamicharmony.com. 

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HEALING VISUALIZATIONS

These are advanced methods which, although they appear simple on the surface, will not work for everyone.  They are to be varied according to the specific situation. They are based on Tibetan and yogic practices, and some are from other sources. Here are a few examples to experiment with.

• Send negativity from above to below. For example, send a negative emotion such as anger or pain, into the heart centre. Imagine it becoming resolved there. If you have a physical pain in your abdomen, for example, put one hand on that area and the other at your heart centre, which is in the centre of your chest. Send the negative energy to your heart centre to be healed. 
• Send compassion and love from the heart centre to the area of pain, such as an area of illness or negative emotion.
• Put a hand on your heart centre. Feel the warmth there and imagine breathing in and out through that area. You are activating your heart centre. Feel your heart become more and more expansive each time you breathe in – more spacious. Do this for about a minute. Imagine the negativity you are dealing with going into this space. Imagine it dissipating as with fog in the morning sun.
• Have energy come from the universe through the crown of your head and have that energy go into your heart area or directly into an area with an unresolved issue - i.e., your mind, pancreas, etc. Imagine the light cleansing away the negative energy.
• Use grounding. Imagine a cord going from the base of your spine to the centre of the earth. Imagine energy coming up from the earth to the base of your spine. Energize that area. Imagine the energy as being healing and an earthy brown or green. Imagine that energy going up to your heart and throughout your body. This is a type of exercise which is excellent to do on a regular basis for people who have trouble accomplishing things and staying on track.
• Use the elements for healing - earth, fire, water, air. For example, imagine a light rain going right through you and soothing and clearing away anger.
• Imagine a violet flame going to the side of your body and burning away shame. Or imagine violet flame burning away sludge in your body – cholesterol or fat.
• Send caring and concern to an area you have struggled with, such as an illness. Ask it for information on what it needs from you, or what message it is trying to give you. It may work best if you ask before going to bed.
• Breathe through your cheeks. You are activating them. This will make you look more vibrant and alive.

Developed by Rémi Thivierge MSW RSW RMFT. Rémi can be reached at info@dynamicharmony.com . 

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SPIRITUAL & HEALING RELATIONSHIPS

Its now time for us to take our relationships to a higher level so we may grow to a higher level than we otherwise could . Many people are into personal growth in a broad variety of ways. But what about your relationship?

There are a number of types of spiritual relationships, and many types of healing relationships. Learn about them and decide which style of relationship fits for you. There are also a variety of choices in terms of methods of growth that best fit for your relationship.

Is being in a relationship mostly about security, companionship, sex and children? The reality is that many find thats not enough. Its time for more of us to look for a deeper and higher purpose to being in a relationship. Many are on a path of growth, but most people havent yet learned that our relationship with our partner is an opportunity for incredible growth. In fact, a relationship can help us grow in areas we dont otherwise have access to. 

Think of growth in the larger context. We can grow in the following broad areas:

• Physical level (healthy eating habits, yoga, exercise), etc.
• Mental level - university courses, playing chess, reading spiritual texts such as the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita, etc.
• Emotional level - psychotherapy, healing workshops, connection with supportive friends or a spiritual group, etc.
• Spiritual level - prayer, meditation, visualization, etc.

A relationship can encompass all of that. It can help us grow in all areas - mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. For example, research has shown that people in a healthy relationship are healthier, recover more quickly when they get sick, and live longer than other people.

But those are generalities. How can we actually develop a more spiritual and healing relationship? Following is a very brief overview of some maps that we can choose to follow:

• Partnership: Although this first one is not on its own a spiritual path, it provides some of the foundation for a healthy spiritual and healing relationship. Although each partner may be in charge of some areas, they both have a say on important decisions, and they negotiate what fits for both of them. With this path, we can support each other and help each other heal to some extent but were more focused on our personal needs. With this model, it takes two to tango. Both need to focus responsibly on communicating well and on keeping their commitments.
• The Path of Healing: This includes the path of partnership but goes beyond it. This relationship may or may not be spiritual but the goal is to assist each other grow from difficulties we’ve experienced in the past. The focus is on being a support for each other and we may use healing methods to help each other. Communicating our frustrations and pain is important in order to get closer and help each other heal.
• Trust in Love:  This path builds on the partnership model but we have lower expectations. Here, we practice acceptance and forgiveness regarding our partners and our own foibles, while at the same time working to reach and meet agreements and compromise. The goal here is to use the relationship in a way that we become a more and more loving and compassionate individual even if our partner is not always giving us what we want. Part of the goal here is to give up some of our selfishness and pettiness in a way that our ego gradually shrinks. To accomplish this, we will gradually go more fully into spirit and into healing. This is different than becoming a carpet - we can still set healthy communication and boundaries our partner.
• The Path of Surrender: With this path, we don’t focus on getting many of our needs met.  With this path, we focus on serving.. We work toward growing as an individual in terms of healing and the spiritual side. This is a very difficult path to do because its easy to become codependent and take our partners responsibilities rather than use it as a way of simply giving openly and not being attached to results. Although still very difficult, its easier to do this if its only one or a few needs that are not being met rather than all our needs. For example, someone might do this if that have an irresponsible spouse who is a regular alcoholic. Or a partner who is chronically ill or gradually dying.
• The Path of Personal Spirit: With this particular path, the individual focuses on what feels right for them, and everything else comes second. For example, agreements previously made with our partner can be broken if it feels right to do something else. On this path, the partners do not hash out difficulties with each other. Instead, they discuss their concerns and do their healing with other people. The goal is to be in a positive space when were with our partner, and not focus on the others or our own stuff.

All of these approaches can be valuable. The issue is not which path is right for you, but which path is right for you in the context of your relationship at this particular time. For example, the Path of Partnership may be more useful during the time when both partners are really busy with their careers or other paths which require a great deal of strength. On the other hand, the Path of Surrender, where one gives a great deal to the other and we require little or nothing in return would be valuable in the stages soon after the birth of a child, or when one of the partners is very ill or going through some other difficulty. The path of healing would be most valuable when one of the individuals is going through intense inner work or has just gone through major trauma.

Overall, developing a spiritual and healing relationship doesn’t involve just finding the right path, but adjusting to the needs of both partners as we change over time.

A variety of spiritual and healing methods can be used whichever of these paths were on, but there would be a greater focus on some than others depending of which path were focusing on at a particular time.

Here are some examples:

• prayer, meditation, or visualization together
• giving each other healing energy such as reiki, therapeutic touch, or sending our partner love to heal difficult areas
• giving our partner a long hug and reassurance when they’re in pain
• doing practices such as yoga, tai chi, or tantric sex together
• working on forgiveness of ourselves and our beloved when we slip and fall
• help each other achieve our higher goals
• talking openly about what the partner does that triggers our buttons and take ownership for our reactions
• using the relationship as mirror - to see ourselves more and more clearly
• help each other to achieve our personal vision
• gently point out, and sometimes put each other on the spot, when our egos pettiness intrudes in the relationship
• help each other to reclaim our projections - the stuff we put onto each other that belongs to us (i.e., I act in an untrustworthy manner, deny that Im doing so and accuse my partner of being untrustworthy)
• use applied kinesiology to help us determine our higher truth and let that guide us
• use the relationship to downsize our overly large expectations of ourselves or each other
• focus not on what your relationship can do for you but on what you can do for your relationship
• empowering vs disempowering each other
• feeding each other energetically vs feeding off each other
• holding the light for our partner when they get lost
• two wings on a bird

These are only some of the many ways we can grow together and heal in a relationship or help each other grow. An upcoming workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to clarify the path they would like to be on, and to try out various methods of healing and connecting at the spiritual level.

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UNHEALTHY FAMILY PATTERNS

The following are family patterns that help to create and to perpetuate problems in the individuals and between the family members. The reader should be aware that family patterns vary at different stages of the family life cycle – such as degree of involvement by a parent when a child is two years of age as opposed to eighteen. Also, cultures vary in terms of what they see as healthy family patterns.  

1. Myths: A family member is perceived negatively and the family acts accordingly.
2. Family Boundaries: 
1. Over-involvement: This means that one or both parents are overly involved with a problem and are less rational and less focused than they could be. They have become part of the problem.
2. Disengagement: Here, one or more family members are less involved than they need to be.
3. Undefined leadership: This is a situation I n which it is not clear who is in charge. This results in confusion.
4. Overly open or closed boundaries. There needs to be healthy boundaries between family groupings. For example, there needs to be some privacy in the relationship between mother and daughter in some instances. A boundary that’s unhealthy closes out the other family members or allows them in too much.  Overly open or closed can also occur between family members and others – the school system, the neighbours, etc.
3. Triads: This is a triangle within the family.
• Alliances and splits: These involve situations in which one or more individuals are involved against another family member. A potential result here is that the person seen negatively may be cut off – i.e., there’s no point communicating with him or her.
• Detouring by focusing on others: In these situations, rather than focusing on the family members problems, they may choose to blame a particular family member or other individual or group for its problems. 
• Cross-generational conflict: This occurs when one or both parents fight with their own parents over their kids. This can occur in a number of ways.
• Disengagement regarding the problem: Family members don’t all agree that there is a problem or they may in fact perceive very different problems. As a result, they either do not cooperate with each other or they work against each other.
4. Solutions: In some cases, the attempted solutions may be a large part of the problem and may in fact be the cause of the problem.
• Involving more and more individuals to solve a problem which may result in overwhelming the family.
• Putting the power where it does not belong – i.e., rather than taking charge when a problem occurs, the parents try to get a parental child (a child who is over-involved with one or both parents) or non-family member to take over.
• Using labels that engender chronicity – i.e., labels such as calling a youth delinquent, hyperactivity, etc. Such labels result in the family feeling powerless to change the problem. Families may be assigned labels as well.
• Useful solutions are discarded too quickly.
• All or nothing solution. For example, the parents may simply threaten for a while. When this doesn’t work, they either give up or act too severely toward their child.
• Taking over from each other. One parent takes over while another one is dealing with an issue. This results in disqualification of the parent’s power and the former becoming dependent on the latter’s power. As another example of this issue, the children are not given the chance to handle problems that are most appropriately handled by them.
• Linear blame: In this case, focus is placed on blaming a child or parent without exploring how each is playing a role or how it could be solved by a shared effort.

These patterns may also develop between family members and extended family, friend, helping systems and other organizations. 

There are a number of potential solutions for each of these family patterns.  There are also other types of family patterns, such as those I list in my article on parental alienation in my web site on divorce – www.intothefire.ca.

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HEALING FROM WINTER BLUES AND SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER
By Rémi Thivierge MSW RSW RMFT

Ah, winter! A wonderful time - ski downhill or cross-country, skidoo, curl..... Great stuff! However, for many people, winter's a gloomy time. A time to withdraw, watch TV, eat junk food, and not be merry. They end up feeling depressive. This is called SAD – seasonal affective disorder.

We can recognize SAD by the following symptoms (think through whether you or people who are close to you have a few of these during the late fall and winter months):

• Feeling sad or depressed - withdrawing from other people
• Lack of energy - reduced productivity
• Difficulty concentrating - difficulty waking in the morning
• Irritability - sleep disturbance (either oversleeping or sleeping less)
• Carbohydrate or sugar cravings (often accompanied by weight gain)

Although the winter blues are not as intense as SAD, having three or four of these symptoms, even if they are only moderately, is not a lot of fun. The symptoms are the same for both. Some research reports that up to 15% of the North American population suffers from the winter blues and 3% suffer from SAD.  This occurs especially in areas with little sunshine during the winter months.

This disorder has come to be recognized as a very serious issue by the medical profession in North America. It has been officially recognized as a disorder by the psychiatric profession since 1994 as a result of a great deal of research evidence compiled over the past couple of decades. 

The cause of the problem is that there is less light during fall and winter than during the rest of the year. This affects all of nature, so why not us humans too. For example, many mammals grow thicker fur, sleep longer, and are less active.

In humans, this slowing down affects people beginning when the days are shorter and less sunny, usually in late October or November, and it gets progressively more intense over the winter months. More individuals suffer the further north from the equator one goes, where there are fewer daylight hours the further north one goes.

What happens is that important brain chemicals, serotonin and melatonin, become imbalanced as a result of insufficient sunshine. This results in a change in our biological clock. When serotonin is not released in sufficient quantity, depressive symptoms may begin to develop. In the case of melatonin, the brain may release too much of this chemical at the wrong time, and this may result in disrupted sleep patterns or depressive symptoms. This chemical has widespread influence on brain activity and may affect an individual in a number of ways.

Research and treatment with thousands of individuals has found that keeping the body in "summer mode" or in "southern clime" with the assistance of light therapy gives affected people added energy and lighter spirits. It also eliminates the nighttime carbohydrate cravings which result in winter weight gain.

Although medication is rather frequently used for SAD, light therapy has now gone mainstream and has been found to be at least as effective as medication. For instance, a Journal of American Medical Association article in November, 1998 quoted a professor of psychiatry as saying regarding SAD: "Light is as effective as antidepressant medications are, perhaps more so".

Every university hospital in Canada now has an SAD clinic. Raymond Lam, chief of the Division of Mood Disorders at the University of B.C.'s Faculty of Medicine in Vancouver said at a meeting on light treatment in the year 2000 that a major educational initiative for physicians in British Columbia was to be launched this winter. It was to include an SAD treatment manual and patient info brochures, covering both light and pharmacological therapy.

Light therapy is exposure to rather intense light during half an hour to one hour per day. The light is preferably full spectrum, which is more like sunlight than lights that we find in our homes and offices. The distance one sits from the lights is also an important factor. Full spectrum lights on the kitchen ceiling will not work although reading by a full spectrum light will. It normally takes a week or less for people to begin benefitting from light therapy. It’s best to start the treatment before the fall gets really gloomy.

There is also some evidence that light therapy can remedy early rising syndrome by shifting sufferers to a normal nighttime sleeping schedule. Elderly people with fragmented sleeping patterns may also benefit from light therapy, which has been shown to reconsolidate their sleep back to a solid block at night. Light therapy can also help elderly people stay more alert during the daytime. Circadian rhythm sleep disorder may also be helped - research has found that individuals, especially teens, who do not fall asleep until 3 a.m. and trouble getting going before ten or eleven may also benefit from light therapy. There is also some evidence that light therapy may be of assistance to some people on shift work.

You can buy a full spectrum light at some health food stores and some hardware shops. Alternatively, you can set up your own. Use two light fixtures with the bulbs that are four feet long. Put full spectrum lights in them. Wire these fixtures so they can be plugged into the wall. I have two sets by my desk and I light them up whenever it’s gloomy out. It’s worked wonders for me.

This will not work for everyone. More and more people have been gravitating toward medication toward medication to fix everything. My recommendation is that you try the full spectrum lights if you’re gloomier in the winter months. Failing that, you may want to see a therapist or healer before you go on medication. Most of these mediations are addictive and you end up get hooked to be on them for years. This should only be a last ditch effort. Happy experimenting – and let me know if you need advice on this issue.

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HOW WE CAN HELP

We can assist you to heal and resolve the following issues, among others. 

You want to accomplish and manifest more:

Are you a salesperson and want to sell more? Or an athlete and want to be able to do better at your sport?  I don’t work with people to develop new ways of selling or improving their golf stroke. My specialty is in assisting you to remove blocks to your functioning at a higher level. Imagine being more comfortable and confident selling your wares, removing even the slightest blocks within yourself. Or imagine removing any tension when you’re playing your sport. Or a manager who has develop greater emotional intelligence, the capacity to interact with people more effectively. In some cases, I can also use techniques that can help you to heal unresolved physical damage from previous injuries. This is all done through mind-body work - using visualization, tapping meridian points, and so on. You know how Olympic athletes improve as a result of doing visualization of their going down the ski hill. I can help you do the same, although I can also help to remove your internal blocks to function more highly.

You can also improve your self image as well as the way you act. You can choose to improve not only how you see yourself, but become more compassionate, more caring, more powerful and so on.

Many people are focusing on manifesting these days, based on books like “The Law of Attraction” and the move called “The Secret”. That’s absolutely wonderful. However, many people have blocks to their accomplishing more that they can’t resolve and are unaware of. We can help you remove these blocks so you can then achieve your goals more easily.

Work-related concerns:

If you’re interested in improving your functioning at work, go to above, to the section entitled “You want to accomplish and manifest more”. Over-work and burn-out. Conflict with co-workers, your boss, your employees.  Career issues - what direction to go in. These are all issues we can assist you with.  

Other work-related approaches are as follows: (1) post-traumatic stress debriefings in the work place after a critical incident; (2) team building, and (3) assisting staff to function at a higher level –such as increased sales, (4) a dysfunctional employee, such as one with a drinking problem, or an employee who is disruptive at work.

This whole area is too complex to discuss at length here. Contact us if you have specific questions. We can assist you with your issues.

Anger, fear, anxiety, and depression:

Anger: People become quite angry for a number of reasons. Anger can give you power over the other person. Other people can get scared or upset or simply give you what you want in order to keep the peace.  For others, anger is a release of pent-up emotions. They stuff their emotions and then blow up like a volcano. Other people become angry when they feel overwhelmed – such as the male who gets into fight or flight mode when he feels nagged at by his wife. And yet another issue is that many males find it much easier to experience and express anger than other emotions, such as sadness or fear. You need to become aware of the source of your anger and deal with that directly.  Research has shown that venting anger is addictive – the more you vent, the more anger you’re likely to express.  It simply doesn’t help. And, in fact, it pushes people away from you not only while you’re angry but it erodes damages relationships permanently if anger occurs regularly. 

Fear: Fear is often a negative feeling that you carry from other sources. For example, mom taught you to be scared of black cats, and you respond accordingly. Almost everyone has a fear of one kind or another – fear of snakes, fear of public speaking, fear of dying. For some people, they’ve lost their backbone – they were oppressed in the past and are no longer in their power. Some people who’ve grown up in an unhealthy family never experienced a sense of power and control at all. Many of them don’t feel protected, whether by a human being or by God or Higher Power of some kind.  People who have a great deal of fear feel that they don’t have control over their own lives; they feel it’s the world that controls them.  Psychologists call that external locus of control as opposed to internal locus of control. Yet another reason for fear is learned helplessness – no matter what you do, it feels like it won’t help. Overall, you need to find the reason why you’re afraid and then take the appropriate steps to heal it.

Anxiety: Anxiety is a vague, amorphous fear. An example of that is agoraphobia – a fear of everything. This is a generalized anxiety that can leave you feeling paralyzed.  Although this issue feels tremendously difficult, it can be healed very easily with cutting methods of healing.  If you suffer from anxiety, I recommend you go down to the section regarding sensitive people. That may very well fit for you.

Depression: Depression is seen by most physicians as being a direct result of a chemical imbalance. The same applies to anxiety. Many people love that kind of label because they can then say: –“it’s not my fault, I’m not responsible, I just need to take a pill”. Interestingly, more and more people are taking mood altering medication. Unfortunately, a great many doctors are all too happy to prescribe medication. The medication makes you feel better – until the side effects are too severe, or until you become addicted, or the pill stops being effective. When you try to get off the pills, you have to deal with the addiction as well as with the feelings you’ve been trying to suppress. Many people decide – “ah what the heck, better to stay numb even If I’m addicted for the rest of my life”. There’s a hopelessness and a powerlessness in that attitude, no matter what you try to make yourself believe. I propose it’s better to deal with your stuff, even if you’ve been on meds for years. In my experience as a therapist and trainer with 30 years experience in the field, medication is essential in some situations in which the person is overwhelmed – fewer than 5% of the people currently taking medication. 

Depression is a result of suppressed anger in many cases – anger that you don’t want to express. You stuff it instead, but it ends up turning against you, in the form of negative self-talk – “stinkin’ thinkin’” as some people call it. Cognitive therapy is quite useful for this type of depression. 

In other cases, it’s not depression at all that you’re experiencing – it’s unresolved sadness, unresolved loss. In still other cases, it’s a result of relationship difficulties – situational depression. Depression that’s a result of your context – you’re overworked at your job and you blame yourself for not being able to meet impossible deadlines; or you’re in a relationship in which your partner ignores your needs and concerns. 

In other, cases, called endogenous depression, the person has been depressed most of their life. Regular forms of psychotherapy have a very low rate of effectiveness with this type of depression, as compared to the other types of depression, with which therapy has been proven to be as effective as medication. The reason for the low effectiveness of therapy with endogenous depression is that the condition usually starts before the age of five. This is pre-cognitive – the memories can’t be accessed through our regular memory before the age of five.  The depressiveness is at the cellular or energetic level, and can’t be accessed through our memories. For example, a person became depressed from the very beginning as a result of having been an unwanted pregnancy, or their mom had post-partum depression and the baby absorbed those negative emotions, or the parents went through a separation when the child was two, and so on. In other cases, the depressed person is saying – “I really don’t want to be here. Life on earth sucks and I don’t want anything to do with it.” 

All of these issues can be healed if the right methods are used. As an example of this, I struggled with my issues for years, going from one helper to another. None of this helped until I found the sources of my difficulties. I was then able to heal them very easily using the right methods. 

Low self-esteem and negative thoughts:

Troubling thoughts can come in a number of forms. You can have the thought that you’re a loser.  You can think somebody else is bad, that you’re their victim, that it’s impossible to be happy or to do well because of them, etc. We are what we believe. We focus on what confirms our beliefs and we ignore what doesn’t, and act accordingly. Also, based on the Law of Attraction, we now know that we attract what we believe.  If you think life is great, you attract positive things, if you think life is dark, you attract negativity to yourself.

Negative thoughts relate directly to low self-esteem. Unfortunately, traditional forms of psychology, psychiatry and counseling are not particularly helpful for many people who want to heal their issues, although it can be quite effective in changing perceptions or behaviour.  We recommend that, if a helper has not helped you within three sessions, that you move on to someone else rather than assume that it’ll take a long time to improve. Far too often, people think there’s something terribly wrong with them and they see the same counselor forever, even if they don’t improve. That’s a terrible mistake. The way we work, you can expect to feel at least somewhat better after your first session with us.

Very Sensitive People: 

Being very sensitive is a complex issue – you can be very sensitive to one or more of the following: emotionally, or to other people’s feelings and easily affected by them, or be sensitive to toxins in your environment, and so on. 

People who see themselves as too sensitive do so in relation to negative emotions. Nobody complains about being too happy or joyful. Some people tend to focus too much on one colour of the rainbow – such as focusing too much on what scares them, or on what makes them sad. All of that can be healed very quickly with the right approach. 

Some people are very sensitive to energy, including to negativity from other people. They need to learn how to protect themselves from those energies as well as how to clear the negativity. However, most sensitive people are not aware that they’re negatively affected by other people’s energy. Just be aware of what happens to you around other people. This is one of the issues I work with, helping people clear negativity they’ve picked up from others.  Most professional helpers and healers don’t know how to do that. An example of this is that many people burn out as a result of picking up others’ negative energy over time – physicians, nurses, psychologists, counselors, and so on.

Some very sensitive people are indigos. They’re very intelligent, sensitive, intuitive, and strong-minded. If you fit that description, go to the section on youth in the articles section on this web site and read my articles about indigos youth. Much of the information there will apply to you.

Work with sensitive people is one of my specialties.

Meeting Needs:  Giving and Receiving:

Grossly overweight, grossly underweight, eating disorders, disconnected from your needs, giving too much resulting in burn-out, selfishness, focused on yourself and ignoring the needs and suffering of others, such as selfish husbands who ignore their wives’ complaints, until the divorce papers come. These are all lives out of balance.

These are issues related to giving and receiving. There are a vast number of issues here. For example, girls with anorexia and bulimia are partly rebelling against their parents’ control while also suffering from an unhealthy body image. Many grossly overweight people have been sexually abused and use the weight as a form of protection. People who are not connected with their higher wiser side may be angry toward God, or feel unworthy. Many simply see higher purpose as being irrelevant. Others simply hate life and turn away from it. These issues are too complex to be generalized but we could say that they’re all related to a spiritual issue – imbalance either in terms of being overly selfish or giving too much in an attempt to receive love. All have misperceptions and a hole in them that needs to be healed.

Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families:

Some people joke that everyone comes from a dysfunctional family. This label, however, usually focuses on the following: “adult children of alcoholics”, as well as adult children of physically and abusive families. In addition, it includes adult children of neglect and multi-and problem families. There’s a commonality to the children from these various family types although there are some important differences. I have spent a large part of my career working with these various types of families, as well as with adult children of dysfunctional families. Right after I obtained my Master’s degree, I spent ten years working as a family therapist with families involved with the child protection system. As with most therapists back then, as well as now, I had very little knowledge of how to assist these families, although, with training and experience, I became quite effective at helping to shift dysfunctional family patterns – to change negative relationships. 

Since then, I’ve also learned to be very effective as a healer of issues resulting from abuse and neglect, along with other forms of trauma. Contact us, no matter where you’re based. Most people who are open and sensitive can heal more from one of our sessions than from a year of regular counseling . I know that from my own experience. I spent years working with many psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and healers to help me with my issues – and made very little progress. I had to learn healing methods from afar and develop new methods to help myself, and then my clients. 

Some adult children of dysfunctional families block their own progress, often without being aware they are dong so. I’m in the process of writing a book on healing for “hopeless cases”, which will discuss ways you can get results where nothing else works. There’s no need to keep suffering for decades, with little hope of improvement.

Addictions:

There are many reasons why people become addicted. Many people call it a mental and physical illness. Some research suggests that there is an addictive tendency in some people’s genetic code. 

One of the core issues is that addiction is a form of entertainment for many. It’s a form of rebellion for others, self-nurturance for some, stress relief for others, and of self-hatred for others. Many do it as part of hanging out with people for example.   For others, booze is a confidence booster – you only speak your mind when you’re drunk. Others use it to avoid their depressiveness or other negative emotions. Whatever the reason, the addiction comes to be in charge of the person’s life and the person lies and makes excuses for it. 

To stop your addiction, you need to replace it with something else. Twelve step programs work very well for many but not for everyone. AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) believe that it’s partly a spiritual issue. I agree with that. I would take it a step further and say that addiction is a spiritual issue at its core. We try to fill a hole with alcohol, drugs, food, or gambling, when we actually need to learn to fill up through connection with spirit, however each individual defines that. Some ways of filling up work far better than others however. 

I discuss the relationship aspect of substance abuse in the section on relationships.  

Trauma:

Suffice it to say here that most professionals who work with trauma don’t really know how to help most of their clients because they are still using regular forms of counselling. The fact is that discussing old traumas through basic counselling can be retraumatizing. 

As a quick example of ineffective work with trauma, more soldiers died after the Vietnam war from suicide due to unresolved trauma than died on the battlefield. This occurred even though the American government put a great many millions of dollars into psychologists, psychiatrists and other helpers to assist the veterans. The methods of the helping field were simply ineffective at that time. Unfortunately, most therapists still use these methods for work with trauma. These helpers are not to blame – they simply don’t know any better.

Fortunately, wonderful mind-body healing methods have been developed in the past fifteen years or so that are very powerful in healing those issues. As an example, I can assist people to heal their trauma very quickly even if they’ve been struggling with their issues for years. Some of these methods include healing visualization, EFT (emotional freedom technique), the Tapas method, developed by Tapas Fleming, and methods related to EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).

 If you decide to contact us for assistance with trauma, you can expect to feel better within one session, although it may take somewhat longer to resolve the issue fully. A trauma resulting from a single incident, such as a car accident or rape can usually be healed very quickly. More complex trauma, such that resulting from sexual abuse, takes longer, although you can expect to feel better by the end of the first session.  

Illness:

This issue is very complex so I will only say a few words here. Some methods can be used to assist to heal chronic pain and illnesses very quickly. I have the ability to do some of that. If this is an issue for you or a loved one, check the literature on mind-body work. If that interests you, we can assist you and your loved ones to cope more effectively, and we may be able to assist you to heal your chronic pain or illness. Check my article on Healing Visualizations in the articles section of this web site. 

Relationship concerns – when you’re working on it on your own:

Please go to the adjoining section on relationships for additional thoughts on this issue. Please be aware that I’ve been in the field for 30 years and I’m certified as an expert and trainer in this field. I could say a great deal but I will only address a few points here. Please see my articles on relationships and families in the Articles section of this web site.

This section will focus on those who work on the relationship issues on their own, whether for your own personal growth or because the other person doesn’t want to be involved in trying to improve it. Please be advised that many people who see a helping professional on their own but are struggling with a relationship concern have a higher likelihood of separating. The work that needs to be done, but that most people don’t know how to do, is to focus on your healing as well as helping to improve the relationship at the same time. Most helping professionals have no training with helping to improve a relationship while working with only one of the partners.

When we have a concern about a relationship, it’s useful to see it as having to do with “me” rather than simply blaming the other guy. To simply feel victimized and blame them leaves you powerless.  Although it’s unpleasant, it’s useful to look at everything in our lives as being something we created, whether we’ve done so intentionally or not. It’s an opportunity for our personal growth.  Based on this perspective, if you don’t like what you’ve created, you need to look inside yourself for the reasons. That’s the spiritual approach to relationship. It helps us to work on such issues as giving ourselves and the other person compassion, becoming clear and assertive, learning to express our needs appropriately, asking for guidance from someone wiser than ourselves, or from our maker, to help us see the actual cause of the difficulties, and so on.

Another approach is to relationship work when the other person doesn’t want to work on it is called the solution focused approach. This involves you thinking about the following questions: When was the situation better? What was going on at that time that was different than now? Then you focus on doing what you were doing back then? If that doesn’t work, do something different.  For example, if you often nag, simply withdraw. Or if you withdraw, do something else.

Another approach involves using a link. With this approach, you can use another party to speak with the other person – someone that both you and the other person respect. As an example, you can help your partner to stop drinking if you work with a professional who can coach you and other loved ones to approach your partner differently.

Divorce and its after-effects:

I’ve written a book on this issue called “Out of Bed & Into the Fire: Damage Control During Relationship Breakdown”. For more info, go to my web site on this topic at www.intothefire.ca.

If you’re faced with relationship breakdown, you can do three types of work in this area:

• Psychotherapy and healing work with the individual, couple, or family. As an example of this, I do a great deal of work with people who are considering separating but aren’t sure whether to proceed and want to try to improve the relationship first. There is also an approach called divorce therapy, which involves helping the couple to say goodbye in a healthy manner. In addition, adults and children can receive counseling regarding issues of loss. 
• Divorce mediation
• Custody and access assessments, when the parents are in disagreement about where the children should live and how much time the child should spend with the non-custodial parent. Please go to my web site that focuses on divorce for more on this issue: www.intothefire.ca.
• Navigating the divorce process. This is a model that I’ve developed. Through this process, I assist people in a number of areas by doing an overview assessment of their situation, including the needs of the children, their working relationship with their lawyer, etc. In these cases, I work as consultant regarding these and other matters. This type of work can be done face to face or over the phone or webcam. You can find more on this issue on my website on divorce - www.intothefire.ca. 

Hopeless cases:

Some people are professional victims and don’t want to change, no matter what help they get.  Others feel they don’t deserve to heal, don’t have the right to have a good life, or simply carry too much shame and self-hatred. A term that is sometime used for these issues is reversed polarity. The more difficult cases are called neurological disorganization.  For many people, they sabotage their own happiness and well-being unconsciously – they don’t have the least awareness that they are doing so.

In other “hopeless” cases, a person carries other people’s negative energy. As a quick example of that, say your dad went to war and saw many terrible things, or your mom’s a social worker. They brought that negativity home unintentionally. Very sensitive people pick it up, and are affected by it until it’s healed. It makes no difference how much you work on your own issue – you can’t heal this stuff until you address it directly. For example, let’s assume that you get upset easily. You can work on anger management and other issues but your concern will not be healed if it’s a result of somebody else’s negativity that you’re carrying. You have to heal that directly. Very few helpers know how to assist with that. A term that covers some of that is vicarious trauma, although picking up others’ energy is much broader than that. This is part of why we get “older” – we simply end up carrying more and more negativity from various sources.

Other people carry curses, in which somebody was very angry toward them and it still blocks their life. Other people carry negativity from further back in their past. Others carry what is called negative implants, which block them from moving forward. And so on. You must work with someone who has a holistic perspective and is very intuitive to be able to help you heal those types of issues. 

These various blocks have to be healed before any treatment can be effective.  Mind-body healing methods such as EFT (emotional freedom technique), TFT (thought field therapy), EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), healing visualization that focuses on cleansing negative energy, and related methods can be very useful for this. We can help you resolve these various concerns. As you may have noticed at the top of this web site, we specialize in results when nothing else works.  

I’m currently writing a book regarding “hopeless cases”. It’s one of my specialties. Please feel free to send ideas on topics you think I should cover in that book.