You've lost a friend or spouse, or you feel alienated from family

Isn't that like a rule of nature? Love must be stated or it gets doubted. I think Isaac Newton meant to include that in his laws. How often must it be stated? After all, I do tell you now and then. Another consequence of the belief I had downloaded from my father, that I must not have anything more in life than the barest minimum, was that it made me incredibly judgmental about people who were rich and allowed themselves to have whatever they wanted. In other words, I was strongly resonating with the morphic field of being a puritan. Was this my real nature? Was it making me happy? But, as a child, I deeply believed that this way of thinking and behaving was going to give me safety. Whether it actually worked as a strategy, or whether it changed anything at all, it made me feel like I had some control. With the small number of options I had available to me at the time, I was doing or believing something that I desperately hoped would make life better for me. As a result, I staunchly resisted taking holidays. And I buried myself in hard work. If I ever did rebel against the tyrannical beliefs inside of me by spending money on something non-essential, or if something really good happened in my life, I punished myself harshly by acts of crazy self-deprivation, or by getting ill. Father of Psychotherapy While Freud's work has been highly influential - he is often called the father of psychotherapy - his theories have fallen out of favor with academic psychologists and most clinical psychologists. According to a survey, members of the American Psychological Association who endorse Freud's ideas comprise less than ten percent of the membership. Nonetheless, his ideas are still popular with Freudian therapists known as psychoanalysts and psychodynamic therapists. While Freud's popularity has certainly waned among academic psychologists, he still has a fairly substantial following among practitioners.

There are currently at least 3,000 Freudian-based practitioners in the U. Some of Freud's Central Ideas Freud believed much of one's personality originates in childhood in that the emotional bonds children form with their earliest caregivers forms their enduring sense of identity. Furthermore, internal conflicts can be traced back to unresolved conflicts in early development. Accordingly, the therapist's job is to engender trust in the patient and help her access repressed memories, thoughts, feelings, and urges so that the patient can consciously confront and resolve them. My grandma was able to stay with her son, who was two years old at the time. And my grandpa was taken under the wing of a Russian soldier, who took him home and kept him safe as long as he worked for him doing chores around the house. Thanks to him, my grandpa was able to bring food to my grandma and uncle every other week. I grew up listening to these stories. My grandma didn't like to talk about this topic, but my mom would share the stories her late father shared with her. I never met my grandpa, but I know that thanks to him, they were all able to survive the camps. In 1947, the three of them hopped on a huge ship and traveled to Latin America along with thousands of other Jews who were also lucky enough, and strong enough, to survive the camps. I learned about the Holocaust early in life, not only from my family but also from my Jewish school and my friends' families. Basically, everybody I knew had a story of survival, the kind of stories you would only see in movie theaters or articles. Each one more incredible than next. Now and then is probably not optimal. Every ten minutes would be good. But I could settle for every day. I've fallen a bit short of that. Just a bit.

It's in your self-interest to do it, you know. That is, if you want those special favors you seem to so enjoy. Yes, I do enjoy them. And, I might add, you seem to enjoy them yourself. But I would never admit to such a thing! Years later, when I started unpacking all of this, it began to make sense. They say awareness is the beginning of healing, and I feel very fortunate now to have learned and to be able to teach others how to find and release unhelpful beliefs and programming from their subconscious minds. Mistake #2: We Try to Source Our Value Outside of Ourselves In this section we will look at the second type of unconscious and habitual strategies that many of us engage in that prevent us from living our own inner truth and values. These strategies are particularly prevalent among people who have been placed by society, or by life circumstances, into a caring role. Method One: The Prison of Over-Giving Many of us who feel obligated or compelled to follow highly commendable values find ourselves in a prison of over-giving. Although it may take years before we realize it at a conscious level, much of our kindness and attentiveness to others is actually carried out in an effort to assure our own safety and to assure ourselves that we are being valued. The cure to self-sacrifice and over-giving is to understand that our true value is inherent and does not need to be proved from outside ourselves. In practice, however, we don't tend to become aware of our dilemma until we have been through several painful, repeated cycles of giving away our power and over-giving. This therapeutic alliance, involving trust and collaboration between the patient and therapist, turns out to be a major component of successful treatment. In fact, research shows the therapeutic alliance can sometimes be even more consequential to the therapeutic outcome than the type of therapy used. Also, while not all psychotherapies focus on the patient's past, the idea that the past largely shapes the present persists in many forms of modern therapy - an idea popularized (but not discovered) by Freud. Arrested Development In 1905, Freud proposed that psychological development in children takes place in psychosexual stages.

The idea that human sexuality begins at birth - not at puberty - was a controversial one, but controversy was nothing new to Freud. During the oral stage, which takes place from birth until about one-and-a-half years old, the mouth is the major source of sensual pleasure for a child. The child obtains gratification through sucking and putting things in his mouth. Between the ages of one-and-a-half and three, the child shifts his attention from the mouth to the anus, and his primary source of pleasure is defecation. Fixation in any of these stages causes certain compulsions in adulthood. I grew up understanding that the world could be a very cruel place and that even though we may feel safe today, we may not be tomorrow. In Venezuela, anti-Semitism was never a thing. Venezuela opened its doors to the Jewish people who came from Europe and made our families feel welcome immediately. But sadly, Venezuela was not the safest place for other reasons. Growing Up In Venezuela To be honest, I had a very happy childhood in Caracas, the capital. I had lots of friends, a big house, a beautiful community, and getaways to the beach every single weekend with my family. And even though Venezuela was not as dangerous as it became after 2010, the fear of getting robbed, kidnapped, or even killed kept me awake at night. I remember from a young age being in my room not being able to fall asleep because I was afraid to let down my guard at night. Honestly, I never really feared monsters under my bed, ghosts, or the dark like other kids. What do you take me for? Oh, just some girl I know. In just a few lines, in just a few moments, romance can get a quick kick start between two people who once had it. If you once had it, and most couples did, you can get it back. Tap into memory.

Take a detour around hurt and anger. And above all, pay attention. Set aside time to linger with each other but have no agenda. We often prescribe for our patients a weekly date night. If your schedule won't allow that, make it a biweekly or monthly date night. The three stages in this self-harming cycle that I call The Prison of Over-Giving are: Habitual over-giving to prove one's value in our workplace or in a relationship; A steady depletion of one's resources, often accompanied by addictive behavior patterns in which we try to give something back to ourselves as it becomes harder and harder to keep giving at the level people around us have become accustomed to; Some kind of crisis where it becomes necessary to change our behavior in order to survive. This phase is usually marked by a withdrawal from the relationship or the workplace, either temporarily or permanently. This time-out period gives us - as habitual over-givers - an opportunity to isolate ourselves in order to recuperate and replenish our energy reserves. The following example shows how, with increased awareness, we can gradually transform a pattern of over-giving and find new ways of behaving in which we allow ourselves to receive more love and kindness both from ourselves and from the people around us. The Holes in the Road There is a story that is used a lot in therapeutic settings to explain how, with practice, we can get better and better at becoming aware of our patterns as they are playing out in our day to day lives. The story generally describes how someone begins to notice that as they walk along in life, they seem to be falling into a lot of holes. For example, the child overindulged in the oral stage may become needy or fixated on oral sex as an adult. People with oral fixations may also be nail biters, thumb suckers, and smokers, especially in stressful situations. The child overindulged in the anal stage may become stingy, stubborn, compulsively neat (ie anally retentive) or obsessed with anal sex. The most crucial event of the child's life occurs in the phallic stage (from the ages of about three to six). In this stage, the child first begins to derive pleasure from self-stimulation of the genitals and takes an interest in the parents' genitals, as well.