Today’s podcast answers a question from someone who is trying to understand why their friendships and relationships don’t go very far and always seem to end broken. Despite doing years of talk therapy this pattern persists. To break out from trauma, there will be behaviors that need to be changed and new procedural memories to be learned.

Today’s podcast offers a brief reflection of how to incorporate our traumatic or painful experiences into our spiritual life. It also speaks to the negative beliefs of believing that somehow it means something bad about us or our relationship with God that we had these experiences. Our spiritual life is spent ascending the slopes of Mount Tabor. Having to do the healing work offers us unique gifts and tools to help us ascend more efficiently.

Today’s podcast discusses how what is stored in our implicit memory can often drive so much of our present life and cause us to live according to a past narrative that is obsolete, rather than our present life. Unlike behaviors, which are easier to target and isolate, because they have a beginning and an end; painful memories stored in implicit memory can dictate our present behavior and be much harder to detect because the narrative is so pervasive in our life. But there is hope, today’s podcast discusses how to identify and resolve this.

Today’s podcast speaks to someone who is seeking advice over how to get relief from their unceasing envy and the act of always comparing themselves to others. Today’s podcast explores how our envy is rooted in either resentment, yearning, or is fear based. Uncovering what we are really missing and yearning for, can bring quick relief to envy and comparing ourselves to others.

Today’s podcast answers a question from someone who finally overcame their fear of seeking a relationship and ended up getting rejected. When we’ve had a history of painful experiences or trauma, such rejections can make us feel like it’s happening all over again. However, the victory lies in that we did not practice avoidance, but had the courage to be vulnerable and to try. So long as our source of self-worth and self-esteem lies in ourselves and from God, then rejections don’t have to take so much out of us.

Today’s podcast answers a question from a husband and wife who are struggling with the toxic and abusive behavior of their in-laws. For many years, they thought that honoring one’s mother and father meant tolerating the abuse and striving to appease them. The husband and wife are now realizing that this is not sustainable and wanting to change, but are struggling with feelings of guilt that somehow they are not forgiving or honoring their parents. The truth is that the setting of boundaries and forgiveness go hand-in-hand.

Today’s podcast discusses various obstacles to practicing acceptance of our life and the present moment and how to resolve those obstacles. It’s very liberating and peaceful to come to the realization that it’s okay and safe to accept the present. It’s precisely then, that we have an open chapter before us, and to become quite deliberate with what we write in that empty space.

Today’s podcast speaks on the topic of age regressions. Some of our most profound moments of discomfort in our lives can occur when we are experiencing an age regression, in which we revert back to an earlier time in our life or developmental stage, as a result of stress, unmet needs, or life changes. Understanding this phenomenon, and how to resolve it, is the focal point of today’s topic.

Today’s podcast discusses an essential skill that is needed for the healing work. When in counseling, one of the roles of the counselor is to help us see the larger things that are going on in our lives or what is really behind our struggles. However, we can learn to do this with ourselves as well. It is critical for the healing work and it is critical for our spiritual life. We can learn to use our mind’s eye as a microscope, to know when to zoom in and zoom out, in order to see what we need to see.

Today’s podcast answers a question from someone who fears that their struggles with attachment and abandonment will disrupt any future marriage. The idea of future relationships seems murky and intimidating. Today’s podcast focuses on how to reduce that murkiness and create clarity, goals, and clear direction moving forward into the arena of relationships.