Tiffany consulted with me because she was unable to control her anger. Anytime someone told her what to do - someone she was in a close relationship with like her mother, her husband, or her best friend - she would instantly respond with anger. She was struggling with serious marital problems when she first consulted with me.

Inner Bonding is a powerful process for healing the fear and false beliefs that cause our pain, and it's also a process for developing and enhancing our passion, productivity, and creativity.

A loving parent does not just attend to a child when he or she is crying or angry. Loving moms and dads enjoy holding and playing with their children when they are peaceful, laughing, and learning.

All of us have a dysfunctional part, a part that operates from fears and false beliefs. This part – our lower left-brain ego wounded self - was deeply programmed from the time we were born to think and behave in ways that, today, create much of our fear and pain.

The purpose of the wounded self is to attempt to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. While the wounded self might profess a belief in a higher power, it doesn't have a personal connection with a loving source of truth, strength, and wisdom, and so it often feels alone in the world. It tries to fill the inner emptiness, which results from being spiritually disconnected, with various addictions - to people, processes, things, and substances.

All of us are born connected with our spiritual guidance. Young children whose parents value them as individuals and foster their inner knowing, grow up trusting their inner authority. But many of us grew up with parents who, in their desire to have control over us, consistently undermined our inner knowing.

When we were young, our parents were naturally the authorities on what was good or bad, right or wrong. They were big and we were little, so we naturally assumed that they knew much more than we did. When they discounted our inner knowing, we may have learned to discount it as well.

Many people experience confusion regarding the difference between setting goals and letting go of their attachment to outcomes. A recent question from a client addresses this issue regarding some online advice to be in the moment and not worry about the future. "If that's so, how can you set goals for yourself? Everyone sets goals based on the outcome. Why else would you even set goals or try to accomplish anything?" she asked me.

Central to our wellbeing is knowing that we are okay - that we are worthy, adequate, and lovable. Feeling that we are okay can come from two different sources:

• Others' attention and approval
• Our own loving adult connected with our spiritual guidance.

Codependency is the term used to describe the addiction to feeling okay through others.
 

"I'm such a jerk. How could I have said that?"

"I'm a loser. I'll never get anywhere."

"I'm so stupid. I should have learned this by now."

"I don't fit in because there is something wrong with me."

"I'll never be good enough. I'll never do it right."

"I'm permanently emotionally damaged. I'll never be okay."

"No one could love me. I'm not lovable."

...and on and on.

Are you aware of how often you judge yourself and how you feel as a result of your self-judgments?

Melanie grew up with a narcissistic mother who demanded that Melanie conform to her mother’s concept of how a child should behave. To protect herself from her mother's anger, blame and disapproval, Melanie tried to be the "perfect child". She got excellent grades in school, was obedient at home, and never did anything to cause her parents to worry about her. She would listen for hours to her mother's complaints, becoming a mother to her mother by the time she was twelve years old. Melanie was parentified and learned to be a caretaker, always trying to prove to her mother that she loved her.

Yet no matter what Melanie did to please her mother, it was never enough.

Her mother would always find something to scream at her about, something to blame her for, something which, in her mother's mind, justified her intense disapproval. Not only did her mother not feel loved by Melanie, but her mother would also accuse Melanie of being selfish. This crazy-making situation created much confusion for Melanie, and she absorbed the belief that there was something wrong with her.

In Melanie's mind, the only way she could feel like she was a good person was to prove to others who were important to her that she loved them. This pattern continued in her marriage. Melanie married a man much like her mother - a narcissist who constantly demanded her time and attention. Again, no matter how much time and attention she gave to her husband, and no matter how much sex she had with him, it was never enough. Like her mother, her husband was never happy with her and was frequently angry, blaming and disapproving of her.

No matter how gently I offer it, sometimes the information is very difficult for the person to hear, such as, "Right now, you are pulling on everyone for love and approval. You have handed your inner child to everyone around you to take care of you. There must be a good reason you are doing this. Are you open to exploring this?" or "There must be a very good reason that there is no loving adult present here. There is just a wounded child. Are you willing to open to learning about this?" or "I cannot feel you when you cry like this. This pain is the pain of a victim, trying to get someone to take care of you. This is pain that you are causing by your own self-judgment and self-abandonment. This crying is a pull on others to take care of you. You hope others will feel sorry for you and have compassion for you because you have no compassion for yourself. There must be some very good reasons that you are abandoning yourself right now. Are you willing to open to learning about this?"
 

When I say these things to people, they are often furious with me.

They think I am judging them rather than offering them a truth. They do not get that truth is love - authentic radical love. Without knowing the truth about their intention and their behavior, they cannot heal. The truth opens the door for them to start loving themselves instead of spending all their energy trying to get others to love them.

We are often told that it's important to speak up for ourselves, but we have few role models for what this looks like.

Gwendolyn asked the following question about this topic:

Is it possible to feel great being single? Yes, of course it is! There are many people who love being single. However, not everyone likes it.

Lorna is struggling with this issue with her wounded self:

Before I had my first child, I was a very sound sleeper. The phone could ring without waking me up. However, from the moment I came home from the hospital with my first son, that changed. I now heard every little whimper from the bassinet that was next to our bed. My mothering instincts had seemingly automatically clicked on, and I became totally tuned into my baby's feelings and needs.

On the inner level, it was a completely different story. Since my feelings and needs were unimportant to my parents, I had learned to make my own feelings and needs unimportant to me as well. I had learned to tune them out and instead be very tuned into others’ feelings and needs.
 

Integrity:

• being reliable and trustworthy with your word - doing what you say you are going to do
• being honest, telling the truth about yourself
• not doing anything you would not want announced publicly
• walking your talk - adhering to the moral principles and standards that you profess are important to you
• being accountable for your actions and taking responsibility for your feelings

Ray consulted with me because his ten-year marriage was running into severe difficulties. He was deeply in love with his wife and was terrified of losing her, yet the outlook was not bright with the way things had been going.

We have all been brought up to believe that different externals are responsible for our happiness and safety. I was raised to believe that happiness and safety came from being in a relationship, from having good things happen, and from having control over the good things happening. My parents were not into things like houses, cars, or toys, so I never learned to connect my happiness with things. But lots of people do.

For example, Allen connects his happiness to people, things, and outcomes. As a result, he is constantly pulling on others for attention and approval. He is addicted to buying things and his garage is cluttered with his toys. And he can't be happy until he "finds the perfect job," and "makes more money." Because he connects his happiness and safety to all these externals, he is always trying to have control over getting what he wants. Trying to have control keeps him from being in the moment, which is where real happiness and safety exists.
 

We are beings of free will. We can choose to allow our ego wounded self to guide us, or we can choose to allow our higher guidance to guide us. An important aspect of the spiritual path is the path of healing the wounded self, so that we are able to release our ego will to our higher will.

Take a moment to think about Leo Buscaglia's quote. Have you ever thought about love this way – that you actually miss living your life if love isn't what your life is about?

"Everyone loved my mother and thought she was a saint, but I never felt good around her, and I never felt loved by her. There must have been something wrong with me," stated Pauline in our first session together.

While Pauline's mother's actions appeared to outsiders to be loving, energetically there was no love. The actions that appeared to be loving were really manipulations geared to control how others saw her. Her "giving" was designed to get attention and approval, rather than coming from an open, caring heart.

People I work with often ask me to explain the difference between wounded feelings and core feelings – the existential painful feelings caused by others and by life.

One way of understanding this is that our core painful feelings - loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, grief, sorrow, helplessness over others, and fear of real and present danger - all reflect external reality.

I love this analogy of how much influence each of us has on the consciousness of our planet:

Imagine a beautiful clear pool of water. Imagine that every time someone is negative, mean, or harmful to themselves or others, a drop of black water is dropped into the clear beautiful pool. With enough people whose energy is dark, it doesn't take too long before that clear pool starts to get darker and murky.

Now imagine that every time someone is kind and caring with themselves and others, and every time someone is joyful, a drop of crystal-clear water is dropped in the pool. With enough happy, kind, and caring people, the water begins to clear.