Relationship issues, financial problems and yes, even the death of a loved one are all part of our universal human experience – but they are not without purpose.  The challenges of human existence are the means by which each of us explores and ultimately addresses our personal growth. Personal struggle is an invitation to our own awareness.

This is a hard concept to really get but a very important one. The more conscious awareness we can bring to our lives, the more clarity we then have about the purpose our struggles play in our growth as human beings.

Most people feel victimized by their struggles and try to find someone or something to blame. Feeling victimized and blaming the outside world activates our “stories” (the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves) and causes us to see others as our rescuers or our persecutors. This triangle of disempowerment is the dance that is played out over and over by each of us. What we must do is reframe the way we think about our troubles. Yes, it is easier said than done – but it can be done.

The reframe for feeling victimized is to take responsibility for your situation, and at the same time recognize that you are not your struggle. You are infinite awareness having the experience of a human struggle.

Although there may be people and situations in your life playing the role of villain, only you can change your consciousness-­ and thus change your energy such that you no longer attract the situation or type of person that is causing you to feel pain. This is the ultimate act of taking responsibility – and the one most resisted.

If we continue to hold the energy of fear and doubt, we continue to call the same energy, in the form of different people and situations, to ourselves over and over again. We have all seen this happen. Have you ever had a friend who repeatedly attracts the same kinds of “destructive” relationships into his or her life?

When we say that we can’t trust anyone, we are in this loop and we are attracting people and life circumstances that embody our fears.  Think of it like this: We are the producers and directors of the “movies” of our lives and we “cast” people who play the roles we need to teach us and to help us see the mirror of ourselves.

This is very important. Your struggles and sorrows are not punishment. They are your teachers; a series of invitations to look at the way you hold yourself in the world and to explore your own consciousness. When I see a client with a lot of problems, I don’t see an unfortunate victim; I see a brave soul that has asked for a lifetime of intense lessons and who has the potential for an amazing awakening.

So, the more conscious awareness we can bring to our lives, the more clarity we have about the purpose our struggles play.

Each of our lives is an incredible kaleidoscope of people and events that we attract with the vibration of our consciousness. As we are attracting people into our lives, it is useful to know that others are attracting us into their lives as well. If we can live with awareness, we begin to understand how we can be a vessel for the awakening of others. What a beautiful gift!

Remember - all of us are infinite awareness having a human experience. Other people don’t have to understand this to benefit from the energy exchange. When we do our work and personally evolve to the point where we don’t project our fears and needs onto others, we can then see others as they really are and have beautiful, intimate, and authentic relationship with them.

When we cease to see others (or our struggles) as ways to find our security and other forms of emotional fulfillment, when we cease to be victims of our own lives, we are then able to have honest interactions without agendas. Relationships then become sources for mutual empowerment, fulfillment and personal expansion.

Think about the problems you are currently facing in your life. What are your struggles there to teach you?

I consider my approach to be fairly atypical. For the past 12 years, I have incorporated a number of alternative modalities into my work, including Reiki (energy healing) and shamanism when these approaches are useful for clients. My greatest skill is my ability to meet my clients “where they are,” without judgment, and my work with alternative approaches has taught me that one of the most important roles I play in my client’s lives is as “teacher,” helping them to find their own answers and assisting them in finding their own truth and place of wholeness. For many clients this can be both an extraordinary and painful experience…but well worth the effort.

I have been married to the same woman for 26 years and my own successful relationship has also been a tremendous teacher for me in terms of my work with couples.

Without a doubt, one of the common problems in any relationship is poor communication skills and/or a complete lack of communication. Such problems arise for a variety of different reasons including each partner’s background and the “baggage” they bring to the relationship from their own family of origin. It is very common for couples to try to re-create their parents’ relationship – regardless of how dysfunctional that relationship may have been. Of course, this is not a conscious intent, but it manifests when a person has not dealt with issues from his/her family of origin – and these issues become more pronounced when the couple faces (inevitable) adversity.

When couples meet and go through the courtship, they are usually motivated by surface attractions, sexual desire and a typically unrealistic image of the beloved. Of course, this unrealistic image is very difficult to maintain over time – one because we all grow older and two, because marriage is not only a sexual union, it is also a financial partnership, a child-rearing partnership, a career partnership, etc. Partners’ lack of agreement on these fundamentals will inevitably lead to issues in the relationship later on, when sexual desire and romance tend to wane. I should note that happy, healthy sexual relations in long-term relationships are also critically dependent upon healthy communication and the trust that develops as a result.

To create a happy long-term relationship, it is extremely important for the couple in therapy to once again get to know each other – a marriage “reality check” if you will. Within this process the therapist’s role is to create a safe space in which honest communication can take place about each individual’s hopes, dreams, values and motivations, individually and as part of the couple. Through this process, it is also the therapist’s job to help each partner work through the very different ways men and women communicate.

I often see a situation in which a woman talks with her husband about a problem she is experiencing and his response is to offer a “solution” to quickly “fix the problem” and move on. Women frequently feel denigrated by this common type of interaction, because it feels as though he is trying to be smarter or somehow the more logical of the two. What she really wants is to be heard and have her feelings validated.

So in working through relationships issues in this way, a therapist helps the couple to “re-train” their learned modes of communication and behavior, creating a safe place for both to listen and be heard. This is “practice” – very much like meditation and is learned by each partner throughout the therapeutic process.

Fundamentally, the success of any marriage will depend upon whether the partners are people who see the relationship as an invitation to become more conscious, and have the motivation to alter behaviors that are not working.  Marriage is an opportunity to see a mirror of oneself and to learn to love oneself and partner unconditionally. In other words, If there is something about my partner I don’t like it, it is often because I am seeing a reflection of something in myself I need to change.  Marriage, at its best is not fragile but dynamic; a fluid relationship that encourages both partners to become stronger, healthier, happier individuals.

Since the middle of the last century, marriage has shifted from a mutual dependency to a spiritual partnership.  We honor marriage because of its gift to us as a beautiful method of discovering ourselves in the eyes of another. So successful marriages are not created; they happen when the partners are authentic [honest] and are able to express their love for themselves and each other. Differences of opinion are a vital component of a loving relationship and can foster creativity and a unique and powerful expression of synergy.

Finally, there are some marriages that truly do need to end due to a lack of commitment to authenticity. When this is the case, the therapeutic process makes this abundantly clear fairly quickly. Very different skills are required to find a potential life partner, begin a relationship, maintain a relationship and end a relationship that is no longer functional. It is rare to find someone who is adept at all three without the aid of therapy or other kind of intervention at some point in the relationship.

There is a plethora of licensed therapists in most localities as well as life coaches and other healers. I think it is vital to find someone who can see the issues clearly and doesn’t have an agenda or bias related to relationships. Surprisingly, many couples spend more time choosing the color of their new car’s interior than investigating their preferences in a therapist. A good therapeutic relationship will be one in which both partners feel that they are being heard.

I love to work with couples that want to discover themselves and are able to see their marriage as a way to become more aware of whom they are –to discover more of themselves. We all have this capacity. Through my years of work with couples and individuals I have come to understand that we human beings are infinite awareness having a human experience. Coming to know that about ourselves as individuals and in our intimate relationships is the ultimate gift of the universe and the birthright of every man and woman on the planet.

However, the fact that Attachment Theory is gaining a renewed sense of vigor and is ardently being taught at such institutions as the Geffen School of Medicine is not surprising in these times.

In brief, Attachment Theory as applied to couple relationships is based on the notion that the therapist’s role is to help the couple form a thought-based attachment to his/her partner to create an “us versus them”(read fear-based) mentality – in essence creating couple cohesion by solidifyingthe couple as an entity separate andagainst the rest of the world. You may recognize this methodology in certain political or religious organizations that seek to create similar types of separations in order to enable members to justify violent or surreptitious acts.

The teaching of thought (brain)-based therapeutic methods in the mainstream medical training schools isconsistent with many other programs whose purpose it is to keep us locked into our “computer or reptilian brains” so that we cannot access our higher consciousness and discover for ourselves that we are all infinite awareness having a human experience. What was it that the Buddha said? “Attachment is the source of all human suffering.”

Are therapists actually being taught that creating an infantile attachment to your partner is the way to relationship bliss? I am afraid so. But I think I’m going to stick with the Buddha on this one.

If we form a brain attachment to our partners based on a fear-based “us vs. them” approach, then we lock our neurons into a pattern of forming synapses based on the fear of the loss of our beloved. This fear keeps us locked into a primitive, caveman-like fight or flight response and causes all kinds of destructive behaviors that prevent personal growth – as both a couple and an individual. Being locked into our primitive, reptilian brains prohibits us from the awareness of what some have called the Godbrain.

The Godbrain allows us to feel one with everything and know that the universe will give us exactly what we need. We don’t need to spend all of our waking hours in a survival state protecting the illusion of our “us versus them” relationship and being afraid of the myriad of hideous disasters that we are constantly told we should fear. The Godbrain allows us to open our intuition and for some, a natural clairvoyanceand a trust in the universe that was previously unknown.

I spend a great deal of time in talk therapy with clients. I encourage couples to see how their lives have unfolded in just the way needed to bring them to the magical place they have come to today. I acknowledge that there has been a lot of pain in their journey, but that pain is there as a teacher, and is not present to punish them or cause them to be afraid.

This approach enables clients to stay in a place of gratitude and allows them to feel the beauty and power of consciousness. My approach does not engender fear or the destructive sense of being a victim. I help clients to alleviate guilt by teaching that they are not responsible for their beloved’s happiness. Releasing the burden of care-taking our beloved enables us to love from a place of wholeness not associated with the obligation of attachment. Role-playing is often used as a way of modeling heart-centered communication for couples that have difficulty in this area. My therapeutic model is somewhat eclectic, yet every intervention on my part is crafted to help the client find his or her whole self, within the couple and as an individual.

I utilize Past Life Regression Therapy (PLRT) as a way of helping clients experience the immortal,eternal nature of their beings and to recognize that often their beloved is someone they have known in many other lifetimes. This experience enables the client to feel the connection with their beloved at a deep level and gain the security of knowing that their connection is not an accident and that it will play out in the way that is in the highest interest of both parties. This opens the heart to unconditional love in an expansive way and allows the partners to explore the infinite nature of consciousness.

Contrast this with the idea of attachment, which occupies the brain with fear of loss and the need for protection and exclusion.

Another method I use in sessions with clients is guided meditation. I have discovered that this experience helps clients to gain a sense of how they can be creators of their own lives and also gain a sense of the power of the universal consciousness. Like PLRT, meditation opens the areas of our awareness associated with wholeness and oneness and enhances the feeling of power in our choices to help avoid the sense of victimization. I have many guided meditations in my repertoire and tailor a client’s experience to his/her individual circumstance.

Finally, I use Reiki healing to allow my clients to gain a sensation of wholeness. This is difficult to describe in words.I find that clients often respond to the healing over a long period of time and that the benefits of the session have a subtle, yet powerful effect onconsciousness. My sense is that clients who ask for Reiki or who show an interest in the concept of being healed by the universe are already open to oneness, and are more attuned to the knowledge that they are infinite awareness having a human experience.

I have always said that the choice of a therapist is a very personal matter. I encourage you to seek a therapist who can meet you where you are and who shares your basic values and beliefs. This will help you and your partner get the most out of your sessions and enable the two of you to move towards the people you are becoming – as individuals and as partners in life.

In particular, it is this line in the song that I find so meaningful:

“But I ‘m not giving in an inch to fear
Cause I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe to someone”

The someone I had in mind was me, and I realize that not “giving in to fear” was important to me from a really early age.

My earliest memories growing up in rural North Carolina were feelings of terror when I was outside playing and an airplane of any sort would fly over. The worst were the jets that would break the sound barrier and the sonic boom would leave me petrified. I was also bombarded with the fear of nuclear war, having been a young teenager during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There were many TV shows and other warnings about our impending doom, not the least of which was an itinerant preacher who made a special visit to the Baptist church I was forced to attend. He would continually inform the congregation that Jesus would be coming soon since the world was soon to be consumed in a nuclear holocaust. I will never forget him. His name was Jeter Porch, (he looked like Ichabod Crane and I found out later that he had committed suicide). I always wondered if he became depressed after his prophecy failed to materialize.

My father died of alcoholism when I was 10 years old and I was left to figure a lot of things out on my own. Being afraid of almost everything had become a prevalent reality for me. My mother, who loved me, gave in a lot more than an inch to fear – making no attempt to help me make sense  of the crazy world around me.

I played football in high school and my mother went to every game; but I realized she was only there to somehow mitigate her concern that I might be injured. The fear continued.

I spent 4 years in college with the fear of being drafted and sent to Viet Nam if I should stumble and not keep my student deferment. In my senior year, the lottery was initiated and my number was high enough to keep me from being drafted, but not high enough to ensure that I might not be called at a later time.

After I had the near stoke of divine intervention and knew that I was destined to be a therapist, I entered graduate school. In the spring of my first year at graduate school, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease. I will never forget the impact of the doctor’s words, on the telephone: “Yes, the lymph node we biopsied was a bad one. You have cancer.”

I could go on but I think you get the picture. As a therapist and a healer, I have dedicated my life to overcoming fear, my own and my clients. I know now that when we are afraid we are in the reptilian mode of flight or fight and incapable of accessing our higher consciousness. The system of control of consensual reality wants to keep us in this part of our brain as a way to maintain control over every aspect of our lives.

Over the years I have learned many ways  to enter a higher consciousness –  including breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, and shamanic journeys. My entire counseling practice is devoted to aiding clients in shifting from the “computer mind” to divine consciousness. This practice is a constant reinforcement of the notion that one is not a victim, but an aspect of God having a human experience.

Encouraging clients to accept their divinity while they are experiencing divorces, job losses and the death of loved ones is a formidable task. I am grateful for the opportunity to provide that service because it helps to solidify the notion in my awareness. I have come to understand that whatever the presenting problem, the solution is to transcend the fear.

As we become more able to access our higher selves, we have the ability to see the larger picture and get a glimpse of how we created the situation we find ourselves in as a way to learn from it. Everything in the control system…in consensual reality… orchestrates to keep us locked in our fear (fight or flight, reptilian brain).

To bring this full circle, I am now able to be grateful for my childhood experiences, as they prepared me to deal with what is now transpiring in our world today. I am honored to help others deal with their anxiety and depression  and see the opportunity to help others find  freedom from the fear so prevalent in the world.

I will give you an example of a system which I run across all too often. A client comes to me for therapy as a result of a divorce and child custody issues. I am typically hired to work with one of the partners for an issue like depression, anxiety, substance abuse or anger management. The client is often dealing with issues like this after having been accused of malfeasance by the other partner. The legal counsel has leveled the complaint and ordered psychological assessments for both spouses and all of the children. Amazingly the assessments almost always show exactly what the attorney is alleging. When I ask a few questions, it is easy to determine that the psychologist has a cozy relationship with the attorney. The cost of the assessments can run $7,000 or $8,000 each. This is in addition to the attorney fees which are upwards of $25,000. Realize that neither party nor the children have received any therapy at this juncture. Everyone is angry and afraid and the buzzards have circled down to feast on the carcass of the marriage. This system is perpetuated by the courts because they are part of it and are handsomely compensated for it.

From an energetic perspective, the anger and fear created by the attorneys keep the clients locked into the reptilian brain which is characterized by the fight or flight syndrome. When people are afraid, they are easily manipulated. They lose their ability to think clearly and are willing to spend their last dollars to save the children from the evil clutches of the person they were madly in love a few years ago. This scenario is repeated in so many situations including illnesses, job loss and loss of loved ones through death.

As a therapist and a healer, I see the solution as being able to connect with our hearts and to our higher selves. We can learn to see ourselves and each other as one and not get pulled into the “blame game”. We can develop a meditation practice and learn to breathe to avoid slipping into fight or flight mode. I teach clients to take responsibility for their situations without blaming themselves. Every situation is an opportunity to expand our awareness to a new level of forgiveness for ourselves and other. I don’t advocate fighting the system; I encourage people not to fall into it. We can stay out of the system energetically even as we are in it by having a spiritual practice as outlined above.