Journey to Light Heartedness


	*The window of opportunity is always open to me!* *No matter how badly I’ve been hurt, or how much I’ve hurt others, it’s never too late to turn my life around!*

Hello again! Welcome back. Today we're going to talk a bit about the history of Psychology. Hopefully it will help you understand better why you are where you are today. Are you ready to get started? Great! I'm so excited for you!

For starters, I just want you to know that there is a very good reason why your life hasn't worked the way you wanted it to. Did you realize that psychology is still a new science? Freud, the father of psychology, only lived in the early 1900s. In the 1950s no one went to counseling and no one even thought about dysfunctional families.

It's only much more recently, since the 1980s that psychology has evolved to the point of actually having the information we need to resolve our emotional issues. As a culture, we didn't acknowledge the value and importance of early childhood nurturing until the 1990s. We didn't realize that how we were treated as a child often greatly determines our emotional and psychological health.

So even if you had two parents who loved you in the best way they knew, and even if your physical needs were met as a child; the information for how to raise happy, healthy children with good self esteem simply wasn't available at that time, even to the most well-meaning parents. And then when it became available, there was a huge controversy in our culture about whether it was really important or necessary, or whether the old ways of raising children were better than the new. Many parents got caught in the struggle of doing what society expected or approved of, even when their hearts told them differently.

It's only since the 1990s that our culture has begun to understand the psychological importance of how we raise our children. Unfortunately, we have just recently begun to put that information into action in the way we live. So it's highly unlikely that you were taught as a child that you were valuable as a person, that your feelings and needs were important, and that there was a healthy way to communicate and resolve conflict in your family.

Children think that the world revolves around them. If everything is happy and positive in their world, they think that they are special, wonderful little human beings. But if there is ugliness, or abuse or disharmony in their lives, they also think that the ugliness is because of them. Children think neglect or abuse means that they are bad, or they are not good enough in some way. So if your family was anything like the norm, where there was alcoholism, verbal, physical or sexual abuse, or simply stressful circumstances that were out of everyone's control, you probably grew up feeling like there was something wrong with you.

So, you see, the reality is that even if your parents felt incredible love for you as a child, they simply didn't have the information they needed to love you the way you needed to be loved. They probably didn't know how to help you understand your own value and worth as a human being, or how to help you express your feelings and your needs in healthy ways. If one or both of your parents were physically, verbally or sexually abusive, expressing your feelings and needs as a child was probably completely impossible.

It's sad, but normal for children who don't feel loved the way they need to be loved, and who aren't encouraged to express their emotional needs, to internalize those unexpressed feelings and unmet needs. Sometimes they become anxious or depressed, and sometimes they act out their unresolved feelings and unmet needs later in life in ways that are destructive to themselves or others.

I want to show you a process that will help you undo the emotional damage that was done to you, even if it was done in the name of love by the most well-intentioned parents. I want to help you really get it at a gut level that you are a beautiful, incredible human being, and that no matter how badly you have been hurt, or how severely you have hurt other people, it's never too late to change. You always have the opportunity, at any moment, to completely change the direction of your life.

I can't tell you that the Journey to Light-Heartedness will all be easy and effortless. Looking at yourself honestly and doing the work it takes to change your life is never just a piece of cake! It's difficult, and challenging, and scary at times. But the good news is that it's never more than you can handle. There are always ways to get what you need along the way, but you have to be willing to take the first step. No one can do that but you!

We're going to take a moment right now to focus in on your life. Please download the homework exercises and do them first and then we're going to do a guided visualization.

Pause and Reflect - Click here to download the questions below in a word document.

1.Please write a few paragraphs about what your family was like when you were a child. Did you feel loved and nurtured and protected in your family? Did you feel close and connected to your parents? What do you remember feeling? Were you happy or sad? Were you angry or scared? Were you encouraged to express your feelings? How many children were there in your family? What was your family's financial situation? Were your parents overwhelmed with surviving and taking care of the family? Did they have time to think of your emotional needs?

2. What was the world like psychologically when you were young? Did anyone talk about feelings or needs? Did anyone you know go to counseling?

3. What do you know about your parents' childhood and upbringing? Were they neglected or abused? Did they learn to talk about their feelings when they were young? Can you understand why your parents may not have known what you needed emotionally? Were their beliefs about child raising different than ours today?

Guided Visualization: "Learning to Love Yourself."

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