The Essense

The very nature of the healing process is to get to a place where life and life's processes are seen differently; where Spirit can become a part of the internal process of healing, not just contributing to the healing, but being the essence of the healing process.

The definition of therapy is to make the unknown known, thus returning choice to the individual. A Course in Miracles defines a miracle as something that takes us back and releases the past in the present and gives us back our future. Within the therapeutic context this 'miraculous' definition of healing is also the working definition of grief.


Susanne Forward writes in her book, Toxic Parenting, that there are five basic levels of recovery. She implies that we have to be prepared to implement each of the levels as follows:


1. Know what happened to us.


2. Know how we felt as it happened.


3. Understand the legacy of those experiences: the ghosts, the monsters, and the demons.


4 Come to understand what it is that we want now.


5. Finally answer the question: Do I have the courage to do what is necessary to make it all work?


You will find that as you identify yourself (willingly or not) as co-dependent you will have to go through a process of unraveling and processing if you want to free yourself. This thought stems from Alice Miller’s benchmark work 'Drama of the Gifted Child':


"When we are in touch with our true feelings and can express them and not have to repress them, the energy to act them out at inappropriate times and places diminishes over time."


It is a given that if we lost our voice to speak about our pain then we will act it out. Conversely as we recover and regain our ability to speak and process our deep-seated feelings then the need to act out to be heard will diminish. Alice Miller writes:

"It is very striking to see how...acting out ceases

when the patient begins to experience his/her own feelings."

So today we are going to write about our feelings about mom/dad


Papa Bear, Momma Bear and Baby Bear come home to find: a page or two please, more if you like.


My Dad often made me feel: 10 replies


My Mom often made me feel: 10 replies


Dad's ways to show caring was to: 10 replies


Mom's ways to show caring was to: 10 replies


If my dad touched or held me, I felt: 10 replies


If my mom touched or held me, I felt: 10 replies


Dad helped mold my view of me into: "


Mom helped mold my view of me into:


Dad's view & opinion of women was:


Mom's view & opinion of women was:


Dad's view of men was:


Mom's view of men was:


My view of women is:


My view of men is:


Dad's opinion of love was:


Mom's opinion of love was:


My opinion of Love is: