What to Keep in Mind when Searching for a Therapist?

What to Keep in Mind when Searching for a Therapist?

I often get asked the question, if I am searching for a therapist, what is the most important thing to keep in mind? Here is my advice.

There is no ‘one most important thing.’ I could tell you that connection is the most important thing, but being deeply connected may turn into this person becoming your best friend, and your best friend is someone who typically doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.

Search for a therapist that will trigger you. Yes, you heard me correctly. Let the therapist bring out your trauma and the woundology you carry. This is just baggage that you need to drop.

So if your therapist is validating you constantly about why you get resentful, angry, or sad…this is not a good therapist.

As a client, you are allowed to talk about your feelings, and in fact, this is really why you are paying this person so that you can tell them all your feelings and know that you will not be forsaken, judged, and scrutinized for having those feelings, and it is confidential.

But a good therapist will tell you whether those feelings are true or false and when you need to do a reality check. You don’t know what you don’t know, and you can’t see what you can’t see.

A good therapist will call you on your bullshit, lies, and excuses and ask for results rather than reasons.

A good therapist will tell you when your ego is running your life and when to park it.

A good therapist will remind you of the important lessons you learned in kindergarten. Which are before you open your mouth, ask yourself, “ Is it important? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” and if it passes all three, only then are you allowed to speak.

A good therapist moves you towards curiosity and creativity for yourself rather than having your eyes and mouth focused on others. (PS – this is why social media is so dangerous.)

There is more, but this is what is coming up for me right now. I hope this helps.

Helping Women Regain Power

Helping Women Regain Power

I was inspired to write this post after reading an excerpt from the Bloomberg Report that stated just two women were among this year’s 14 Nobel prize winners.

This is yet another example of how women remain underrepresented in the world’s most prestigious science awards, noting the lack of diversity in achievement status.

Last Thanksgiving I has the opportunity to split the day between spending time with my mother and my mother-in-law, who despite their ages are still so active in mind and body. I have the utmost respect for these women.

Neither of them had the opportunity to climb the corporate ladder as we now have as women in our generation, but they certainly embraced their power through womanhood; that is, caring for their families with incredible dedication. They gave up their own passions just to be a mother to their children and supportive wife to their partners.

I can honestly say that when it came time for me to make a statement to the world at 18, I wanted to feel empowered differently. Possibly because I did not see my mother as being fulfilled or joyful. I had the yearning to do it more and placed much of my energy into my career.

Looking back now, I see how this was a constant struggle for me. I would get disappointed constantly.

I should be earning more at this stage in my career

I should be spending more time with my kids, friends, or family.

I should look or dress differently.

I should be happier in my marriage.

I should be all of these things, but I felt like I was failing at everything.

It is our time to ask ourselves the basic fundamental question:

What do we truly desire in life?

And then focus intently on that while being incredibly grateful for what we have at this moment in time.

Remember that being grateful for what you have means owning your actions and decisions. This requires having healthy boundaries with yourself and others so you own the action you decide to take instead of feeling pushed left and right to do things throughout the day based, on what others expect from you.

Find out what makes you feel powerful and stand out in the world and claim it now. It might be your womanhood as a mother, or it may be an entrepreneur or a CEO in your career and then coming home to your family at the end of the day happily and joyfully, without disappointment doing so.

You can have both in this world. As a woman, you can leave your legacy in any of these ways and still have the peace and fulfillment you crave while doing so.

Please connect with me if any of you have felt this.

What Losing Yourself as a Woman Means to Me

What Losing Yourself as a Woman Means to Me

I believe most women can relate to a time when they lost the essence of who they are or what they stand for due to their external situation.

We begin to struggle and doubt ourselves and allow for the separation to continue; the division within ourselves.

We move away from the feminine part of ourselves (feeling into the emotion) and step into ‘doing’ something about it. That may show up as working harder at your career, getting more ‘steps’ in the day and spending more time in the gym for the body transformation, or taking over more chores in the house and being more of a mom.

What we don’t realize in all our ‘doing’ is that we distract ourselves from our feelings. For women, feeling is the secret sauce that we can claim as our power. It is what makes us magical and the likeness of a sorceress. Do not shy away from your feelings. Embrace them, and allow your feelings to walk beside you momentarily until you are ready to leave them behind. They bubble up for a reason, do not suppress them by your ‘doing’.

Yes, it does mean that we tend to hurt on a deeper level but this also means we are allowed to claim the highs with such exhilarant joy.

So, honour the times when you are deeply hurt and realize that your body senses that for a reason. It was nudging you to get in touch with yourself. Who am I? What do I stand for? What are my values? Do not coalesce and accept what is happening right before your eyes. This might mean having hard conversations with your partner and tapping into your values. You are not only doing it for yourself, but for everyone around you, including your friends, family and your children.

If you feel it, it is for a reason. Trust in it. Have faith in it.

Emotional Affair

Emotional Affair

Many of us would love to call ourselves trustworthy, but are we? And do we trust our partners? Do we even trust ourselves?

What if we find ourselves one day discovering that we have stepped into the chasm of betrayal by our partner. Now what? Would it be a deal breaker for you? Was it a deal breaker for you?

In my experience as a coach, I have seen couples’ relationships dissipate quickly – because betrayal was a deal breaker for them. However, 90% of my couples remained together.

There is no proven coaching formula to follow because, to be honest, it really depends on the individual/couple. For some, it gave them permission to end an already terrible relationship, but for many others, it is devastating because it shattered their reality.

The big question asked is always “Why? How could you do this?”. And the common answer is “ I don’t know”. I hear this answer constantly, which just injects more frustration into the situation.

Being trained in the Gottman Method of Couple Counselling has definitely helped me in my coaching practice, as the couple is taken through a series of steps to repair and regain trust. However, to me, it simply reiterates the need for each person in any given relationship to own their worth and identify as an individual, not solely as a couple.

Your happiness does not rely on your partner. You must always remember this no matter what stage of your relationship.

Because of this, I feel the more mature the relationship, the stronger the staying power to work on the relationship. In the newer relationships (~8 years or less) the quicker the relationship ends. I understand the newer couples have ‘less skin in the game’, meaning they may or may not have children at this point, or the time to prove their love for one another.

I have coached many couples through these hard times and the ability to trust once again is extremely difficult, despite truly wanting the relationship to work and deeply loving their partner. As mentioned above, for some it is a deal breaker. They know themselves well enough to realize they will never be able to trust this person again. This is where the real work lies; reconnecting with yourself and engaging on a personal journey of emotional growth and evolution.

I particularly remember one couple I worked with; the woman had ‘trust issues’ prior to stepping into her current marriage. Because she hadn’t done the deep emotional work on herself to trust another person again, she found herself in a second marriage with a husband who had an emotional affair. Rather than me ‘fixing her husband”, I worked with her. I helped her build herself up to choose to make the right choice, mainly by ridding the old paradigms of what she once believed of herself, which is always done in pillar 1. I helped her to reconnect with herself on many different levels in a way that she eventually started to honour herself once again and discover her own values. When her husband began to see her strength, he was more connected and committed to her.

I hope that none of you ever had their hearts broken because of betrayal. However, if you have please let me know if I can help.

I Start to Spiral

I Start to Spiral

I hear the following often: ‘ and then I start to spiral’.

In summary, women are telling me that they find themselves in a helpless and uncontrollable position. They tell me their mind takes over and thus so do their behaviours. The behaviours that follow are not favoured. Examples may be texting a person you do not want to text, yelling at your children, or emotional eating – just to name a few.

The cause of this ‘lack of control’ is simple. They have created a thought loop that stems from the subconscious.

I am not going to go deep into the psychology of the minds (conscious, subconscious, and superconscious) but just know that there are many stored memories in the subconscious, likely from childhood.

In step 1 of my transformational program, we look at these stored thoughts that continually cycle through the mind, which then become beliefs. We must realize that the more awareness we place on the thought, the more we believe it is true and the more it manifests into our reality.

In step 2 of the program, we train our mind to focus our awareness on other areas of the mind that contain a higher frequency of happiness, peace, and joy. By focusing on these energies more often, we begin to rewire the mind and our behaviour changes.

I can think of a few women in my program who, while in a new relationship, spoke of how they ‘spiralled down’ quickly because of their partner’s behaviour and their patterned thoughts related to low self-worth. We used the power of awareness (being conscious of the thoughts and beliefs about themselves in the moment of hurt) and thus quickly shifted their awareness to the higher energies in their minds. After weeks and months of practising this, they realized that it is indeed possible to re-engineer their thought patterns. Soon they did not allow their energy to drop suddenly based on a simple comment or behaviour from someone near to them. They realize they can preserve and covet their happiness at any given moment IF they became aware in the moment.

Step 3 of the program is focused on repetition. When we notice that our awareness is shifting to old patterns of thoughts and emotions that carry low energies (frustration, guilt, shame, jealousy, or self-judgement) we shift our awareness to thoughts of higher frequency energy (joy, love, harmony, peace, divinity) and our energy and behaviours consequently shift. We essentially are rebirthed and transformed. This transformational process becomes life-changing for these women.

The next time you find yourself ‘spiralling’ please refer to this post. If I can help you to free yourself from unwanted behaviours or break free from an unhappy relationship into a relationship that celebrates you and your authenticity, feel free to contact me.