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EMDR is best known as an evidence-based treatment for trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, developed by Dr. Francis Shapiro.

However, a trauma does not need to be "big" in order to be hurtful or debilitating.

Automatic and maladaptive responses may be based on traumatic experiences that appear relatively insignificant or are long forgotten. A traumatic memory can be anything that frightened or disturbed us, and overwhelmed the brain's innate ability to process the event. The unprocessed memory becomes lodged in the psyche and triggers fear  or a flight-or-flight response when a current incident resembles the initial fright.

Unprocessed memories may explain why we repeatedly make certain choices even though we know they doesn't work for us, experience inexplicable or seemingly irrational fear, choose serial ill-suited partnerships, stay in unsatisfying occupations, numb ourselves with substances, avoid places or situations, or feel helpless like a child despite our biological age.

Other treatable but difficult-to-unearth manifestations of PTSD may be Complex PTSD, which is likely brought upon by chronic childhood stress, abusive family constellations or traumatic relationship syndrome. Additionally, we may even experience transgenerational trauma; traumatic memories that appear as real as our own but have their origin in previous generations.

EMDR is a technique of retrieving and processing memories through a series of eye-movements that mimick REM sleep. The brain can then move frightful events from "pending" status in its trauma centers to other parts of the brain that store successfully met stressors of the past. By "recognizing" and "filing away" unprocessed memories, maladaptive or unhelpful responses may seize.

If you are interested in learning more about EMDR, please see recommended reading or links to educational videos on the Resources page.

Induced After Death Communication (IADC) is an EMDR-based treatment for traumatic grief.

IADC was discoverd in 1995 by Dr. Botkin of the Dr. Botkin Institute when administering EMDR to Vietnam War veterans at a VA hospital. A variation and addition of eye movements presented clients who reported audible, visual or tactile encounters with the traumatically deceased, which in turn resolved clients' chronic grief and depression. Some clients received information they did not know previously, and could validate the accuracy.

While clinicians cannot claim these encounters are evidence of an afterlife, the technique is thought to be a highly effective treatment for grief. If there is no such thing as an afterlife or a continuity of consciousness, perhaps the human brain has an innate ability to conjure up multi-sensory imagery that brings incomplete experiences with a deceased loved one to a close.

IADC can also be applied as experiential spirituality, when death and loss bring forth a spiritual and existential crisis.

It is my personal hope that After-Death Communication is the future of healing grief.

For more information about Induced After-Death Communication and the Dr. Botkin Institute, please visit http://www.induced-adc.com/

or see recommended reading and links to educational videos on the Resources page.

Person-centered mental health counseling is a highly relational and personalized approach to engaging in the therapeutic process. Its idea was conceived by Carl Rogers, sometimes referred to as the father of Humanistic Psychology.

While various counseling techniques can be incorporated, a person-centered approach builds the foundation and leaves the lead to the client. 

The therapeutic relationship is a collaborative process that enhances and supports your self-knowledge, your choices, your needs and your pace. It meets you where you are, and nurtures your beingness.

In Carl Rogers' humanistic view, a person is like an apple seed. A seed carries within itself all the information to become what it was meant to be. It will aspire to give life to itself in any circumstance. It will grow into an apple tree.

Perhaps the conditions of your life have not supported the growth inherent in the seed, but the directions are still accessible and it is not too late.

In humanistic psychology, the question is not "What is wrong with you?", but "What happened to you?", and "What can we do so you can re-align with who you truly are?"

Within a person-centered approach, we have the freedom to try on different counseling techniques and find what fits for you. This freedom is borne from respect for your uniqueness.

It is within relationship that the Self we wish to unearth is seen, affirmed, and validated so it can flourish. A Person-centered therapeutic alliance can offer such a relationship dynamic, until you are ready to find more relationships that reflect and honor your true Self.

Within the framework of Spiritual Psychology,  we view ourselves not as human beings who have souls, but "souls having and using a human experience for the purpose of awakening to our essential nature". Our essential nature is the presence of love. 

We go through life with a soul-centered perspective, in which "how you relate to the issue is the issue, or how you relate to yourself while you go through the issue is the issue - it is also the opportunity". (Drs. Ron & Mary at the University of Santa Monica)

Obstacles, problems, pain and hurt in our life become vehicles to clear and update limiting beliefs about ourselves and others, as "Perception is edited observation," (David Hawkins). The editing is done by our Ego, its personal belief system and our interpretation of past experiences. 

"Problems are no longer in the way, they are the way" to show us where we must heal to reclaim our essential loving nature. A problem then becomes an opportunity for healing and awakening, and so does our hurt.

Our essential nature is loving, as loving is all that is left once anger and hurt dissipate, and we are thriving versus surviving.

"Healing is the application of loving to the places inside that are hurt."

Through the practice of Spiritual Psychology, we learn Compassionate Self-Forgiveness as an ongoing discipline of releasing judgments that hold us prisoner within our own minds, and reframing these judgments into perceptions that support well-being and self-honoring choices.

Taking responsibility does not mean blaming the victim. We are not at fault for what happened to us.  We rather derive meaning from what happened by learning to love ourselves, others, and life.

We were never broken.

We merely forgot or misinterpreted who we are, and are now using our experience to remember. In this rememberance, wholeness returns. In our wholeness, we experience the qualities of our essential nature in relationship to ourselves and others more often - love, joy, exuberance, compassion, acceptance, and peace, to name only a few. We are able to whole-heartedly love ourselves, others and the process of life. We are able to say a whole-hearted "yes" to our experience, past and presence, and go forth fully participating in and co-creating our reality.

The process of forgetting, healing and remembering is not an indication that we lost our way, or that there is or was something wrong with us, but that we are embracing and working our Spiritual Curriculum. We consider that we came to the Earth School for a reason. The soul is beckoning. We open the doors wide for the growth that is available to us.

In the practice of Spiritual Psychology, we release ourselves from self-victimization by accepting "what is" and taking responsibility for our judgments and our previous choices, which then frees us to make new and different choices from a neutral versus an emotionally charged perspective.

Releasing emotionally charged perspectives empowers us to interrupt the cycles of conditioned responses, let go of anger, heal the hurt, and find peace.

As we heal, we experience change naturally, as previous coping mechanisms are no longer needed.

We aim to be at peace and in the loving with ourselves, and lead a life of authentic self-expression and mutually supportive relationships.

Wholeness does not mean life will always be Disneyland, but we learn to view grief or suffering through the lens of self-compassion, wisdom and continued growth.

In a spiritual context, we may call this process of healing "awakening" to our true nature as souls of a loving essence. The loving essence is the very fabric we are made of, originating from and eventually returning to divine Source.

For more information about the practice of Spiritual Psychology as developed by Drs. Ron & Mary Hulnick, workshops, events, or the online Soul-Centered Living program, please visit https://www.universityofsantamonica.edu/,

or see recommended reading and links to educational videos on the Resources page.

Mindfulness is a practice of Buddhist origin, which can be incorporated into various therapeutic approaches. Its adaptation does not require a spiritual orientation.

It may include meditation- ,relaxation-, visualization-, or affirmation techniques, or the discovery of personal, self-nurturing practices that bring us into full awareness of the here and now. 

We calm our thoughts, quiet the mind, still the body or relax it through deliberate movement, until we are able to experience the present moment.

Through mindfulness, we are able to release anxiety and possibly ease depression. We become conscious. We go through life consciously experiencing, versus blindly reacting from conditioned or habitual patterns.

As our awareness increases, we realize that we have choice. We are not our thoughts, and we are not our feelings. A thought causes feelings, but a thought is not necessarily true. Neither is a feeling.

Mindfulness may awaken us to discernment, in which we can decipher random or habitual thoughts and their associated feelings from authentic truth and intuitive insight.

Mindfulness is not an attempt to passively accept the unacceptable, but to clear the mind and become present to our auhentic feelings so we can stand in our truth.

Inside of you, there is a knowing. To access this knowing, you must listen. To listen, you must become still.

Mindfulness is a foundational skill to achieve inner freedom and agency over who we are and what we want to be.