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  • How To Heal Childhood Emotional Neglect

    How To Heal Childhood Emotional Neglect

    Childhood emotional neglect is experienced as a lack of care, concern, or response to your feelings as a child. It can feel as though your parents:

    1- Didn’t notice that you had feelings

    2- Didn’t take the time to acknowledge them

    3- Or even shamed you for having them.

    As an adult,

    we then carry this trauma through our interactions and shame ourselves for experiencing feelings. or might ignore them altogether. This can lead to health and relationship problems and an inability to recognize or process emotions properly.

    It’s not always malicious or intentional and to some level, we’ve all experienced it. It’s useful to remember that parents are perfectly imperfect people with obligations, responsibilities, and, often, not a lot of free time.

    And so through trying to multitask or look after a sibling or keep the house clean, they may not have been present for your feelings.

    sort of unintentional neglect

    This sort of unintentional neglect isn’t always recognizable until later in life and I certainly only realized in my adult life that I too have experienced this as a child.

    A memorable instance was from a time I was unable to discuss with my parents how something my mother had done had affected me.

    In this particular example, my mother, who was an alcoholic, had deeply embarrassed me and my family at an important meal and for me, it was a very difficult situation to process.

    While my father was able to speak about this with other adult members of the family, if I tried to share how I felt about it I was shut down – the topic was off-limits. This is a primary way that emotional neglect is experienced – the inability to speak about certain topics.

    However, there are ways that you can heal this sort of emotional neglect from childhood and in this article, we’ll look at 7 ways that you can do just that.

    #1 – Discover and validate your needs and wants

    When you can’t talk about certain things, you don’t know or understand your needs and wants.

    With my specific experience, I wasn’t allowed to say to my Dad ‘I don’t want to go because Mom will be embarrassing’ – my feeling unsure or unhappy had no bearing on the outcome of the situation.

    Experiences like this can lead us to feel that our voice and our feelings are insignificant, and can mean we will learn to never ask for what we want or need as an adult.

    I’ve done a video called ‘Codependence Recovery – How to ask for your needs and wants’ which helps you learn how to start understanding what your needs and wants are and how to start asking for them.

    #2 Self-Care

    In moments of emotional neglect as a child, you often have to give away your self-care. Again, this is you not having a choice of what to do or how to spend your time .

    It is all decided for you. To heal from this sort of neglect, self-care that does not include others is a priority. Often, self-care suggestions can include activities that involve others .

    chatting with friends, organizing holidays, etc. – but by doing this you are once again relying on someone else to ultimately provide your needs for you.

    To heal emotional neglect, doing daily self-care will help to nurture and bring you joy from within. This says to your mind ‘I am worthy.

    I want or need this and I will provide it for myself’. It doesn’t matter how small the act of self-care is, as long as it’s something that ‘fills your tank’ and brings you joy each day.

    #3 Don’t assume, gather information

    As a child we’re not able to voice our feelings, so instead of talking through what we think is happening with our parents or others, we make assumptions in our minds.

    This means that as an adult if, for example, your partner is doing something that you’re unsure about, you may not ask them about it.

    Instead, as you did as a child, you might make up scenarios and assumptions in your mind that could be incorrect.

    Remember, adults in your life now are all dealing with the same pain from the past and many are trying, like you, to heal. When we assume something.

    Instead of assuming, ask! Stop and say ‘Can I have some clarity – what did you mean by this, why did you do this.

    Pause and try to steer clear of making up what you assume they mean – gather information and ask for clarity.

    #4 Make requests for care and love

    When you are shut down when asking for love and affection as a child, you’ll carry this on through to adulthood. This experience can lead many to think ‘What’s the point in asking?’.

    This shaming or dismissal of your feelings can mean you’ll find that you’re not able to voice what your emotional needs and wants are in adulthood, especially with someone you are very close with.

    So, try this with people who you’re not as close to first, because if you start asking these requests from those closest to you and get rejected, you’ll wind up feeling even worse.

    By requesting for your wants and needs to mete someone who’s not as close to you. It’s less likely to be as painful if they can not meet them.

    It will feel less like a rejection that comes from the place of your trauma. Then, work your way up to those closer and closer to you.

    #5 Learn to say no

    As a child, you’re not often able to say no to things your parents want you to do. Which means in adult life it can be very difficult for you to feel as though you have permission to say no to things that don’t serve you.

    For example, being with an emotionally or physically abusive spouse can be due to an inability to say no to things you don’t want in your life .

    you will often tend to put people in your life in an authoritative position. It’s why many people with emotional neglect issues can end up with narcissists.

    Remember, it doesn’t make you weak to be unable to stand up for yourself- as you learn more, you can do more to heal and more to stand up for yourself.

    If you have grown up in this sort of environment, it’s not easy to stand up for yourself and it’s not something to blame yourself for.

    However, it is your responsibility to do the work to break the cycle and you can learn more about how to say no with this video: How To Say No to Anyone Without Feeling Guilty.

    #6 Learn to rage

    When we are taught the message that we shouldn’t feel, we stuff rage down. Being embarrassed by my mother, for example – and having no one to talk to about this.

    Being unable to share my feelings with my father or talk them through was a suppression of my feelings and neglect of my emotions.

    Rage was not something I was able to express as a child, and this is often the case in many families that haven’t learned how to work through their own traumas.

    Learning to let the rage out through physical acts – hitting a punching bag, shouting, allowing yourself to feel angry. And learning that it is ok for you to feel this way when you need to will help you to heal from this neglect.

    #7 Learn to grieve

    Learn to feel sadness. There are likely to have been many experiences of grief and sadness in your life that you may be holding on to.

    Giving yourself permission to feel this is important for your growth.

    To heal this, it can help to learn to re-parent yourself. Talk, journal, or meditate on how you feel and say to yourself the things you wish someone had said to you when you were younger.

    It’s not possible to recover from childhood emotional neglect without dealing with the emotional pain and sadness .

    you cannot keep suppressing these feelings, even though they’re difficult to work through – take time and go easy on yourself as you journey through this.

    If you would like to learn more about childhood emotional neglect here are some videos to help you:

    1- ‘What are the Signs of Emotional Neglect’

    2- ‘Codependence Recovery: How to Ask For Your Needs and Wants’

    3- ‘How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty’

    Are you looking for more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!

    1- My Book, Your Journey To Success
    2- My Complete Emotional Authenticity Method
    3- My Perfectly Imperfect Private Group
    4- My Private Coaching

    To learn more watch the video:

  • How To Pick The Right Neurofeedback Clinician

    How To Pick The Right Neurofeedback Clinician

    Who should you seek out for neurofeedback training? There are four keys a person should be aware of when selecting a neurofeedback clinician.

    • Licensed Clinicians
    • Certified Clinicians
    • QEEG
    • Types of Neurofeedback
    • Conclusion

    In my last blog, I talked about why someone would consider training with Neurofeedback.

    This article will talk about what one should look for in a competent neurofeedback clinician. If you do not have time to read this entire blog, feel free to skip to the end.

    Licensed Clinician:

    The first criteria I would consider is seeing a licensed clinician. This can be a licensed professional counselor like myself, a licensed social worker. A licensed psychologist, or a licensed medical professional registered nurse, nurse practitioner, physician’s assistant.

    chiropractor, psychiatrist, a medical doctor (MD or DO), or a neurologist. Why?Each group will have training and experience in psychological and learning disorders.

    Neurofeedback is not only a training program. There are times when individuals may need to process their experiences. Especially those with a trauma background or PTSD.

    If you have a trauma history, I highly recommend seeing someone who specializes in complex PTSD. Some types of Neurofeedback can trigger painful memories as a part of the process.

    Now Neurofeedback can be extremely helpful in giving trauma victims relief and healing, minimizing triggers. Still, it depends on the individual, their history, and where they are in their therapeutic process.‌‌

    For example, I had a client with PTSD. He was a war veteran. After returning home, he became a police officer.

    When he entered my office the first time, I quickly learned that he was very hyper-vigilant.

    Initially, I could not acquire EEG from him because he reacted so strongly to the sound of footsteps in the lobby of Heart Matters outside of my neurofeedback office, even though the door was shut and locked.

    So we talked. I heard many of his horrible war experiences. I also learned about some of the awful experiences he went through as a police officer.

    He told me the primary impetus for his desire for treatment was his children. Several times his children came into his room while he was asleep.

    He awoke with a start, ready for a fight. He was terrified he was going to hurt his children.

    So we had him come after hours when no one else was in the office to acquire EEG. I could then do a QEEG assessment and set up a protocol for his neurofeedback training.

    Once, while he was training, he began to flood with memories of atrocities he saw while in the war. We stopped the training, and I gently debriefed him until he re-attached to the present.

    By the way, it was not the Neurofeedback that triggered these memories.

    We switched to another stimulus, and he continued training with little problem. I did recognize that he needed some out of neurofeedback therapy.

    So we had several sessions to help him process and de-escalate his trauma. He left our center a happy guy. Also no longer hyper-vigilant.

    Intrusive Memories

    He was no longer flooded or triggered with intrusive memories, and he felt safe in his skin. Can you see why it may be essential to have someone with my background for his treatment‌‌

    One crucial characteristic is the type of person you want as your clinician. Are they learners? What I mean by that is do they continue to pursue new knowledge. I am not a researcher, but I am a learner, and from the very beginning of my career, I continued to find something better to help my clients. There is no way to master the brain, but I will try. I am the type of person that has to understand how things work and how they fit together.

    So I have continued being mentored by the tops in this field. I continue to go to classes and seminars. I read studies and clinical information every day. Even listen to neuroscience podcasts while cycling. Why? I want results. We are constantly seeking to improve our neurofeedback practice at Heart Matters. I meet with my techs every week. We are doing neurofeedback training so we can heal, but also so we can learn directly from the process and have more empathy with our clients, and get better results.

    Certifications:

    In the neurofeedback field, there are two significant certifications. One is more basic, and the other is more advanced. The first one is called BCIA and is sponsored by the International Society of Neurofeedback Research (ISNR). BCIA certification requires, what I consider, a minimum of classwork and mentoring. The standards and education are more basic concepts. I chose not to get BCIA at the advice of two of my mentors and my educational background. However, this certification does guarantee that a provider does have some background and training in Neurofeedback.

    The second, more advanced certification is sponsored by the International QEEG Certification Board (IQCB). This certification has months of classwork and mentoring. Certificants have to exhibit mastery and a comprehensive understanding of EEG and quantitative analysis. The board exam is extensive. Those who pass all the requirements are designated as a QEEG-Diplomate (QEEG-D). Everyone that has this designation is also a confirmed licensed professional. There is also a designation for non-licensed professionals called a QEEG-Technician (QEEG-T). Individuals with QEEG-T do the exact requirements but are not licensed. They may be pursuing a license or still getting their education. Regardless, they are well prepared and well-trained professionals.

    I am now an executive member of the board. Part of my responsibilities is to review potential candidates’ backgrounds, coursework, exam, and mentoring. I approve of every candidate. I can say without question that these people are top-notch.

    QEEG

    QEEG stands for Quantitative Electroencephalogram. A clinician who uses QEEG is usually trained in brain phenotypes (locations and patterns for specific issues and symptoms) and brain networks and how they impact the clients’ symptoms. This is where the science is in training people with Neurofeedback.

    Unfortunately, some companies are great at marketing and poor at training and understanding brain circuitry. Most of these approaches, like NeuroOptimal, have a one size fits all strategy. As a result, their clinicians often don’t understand the brain nor how brain circuity works to create negative symptoms. This approach is going to help some people, but not most. I personally would discourage people from this type of brain training, not because it is dangerous, but because it will probably be a waste of money and time. Instead, I would look for a practitioner who has certification in QEEG and uses QEEG as an assessment tool for training the brain. I have had numerous people come in after doing this kind of training. They were not helped, felt disappointed, and were even skeptical of all Neurofeedback due to their bad experience.‌‌

    QEEG

    QEEG is what allows Neurofeedback to be specialized and individualized for the client’s unique brain and unique symptoms. Without it, the clinician is only guessing what needs to happen in training. That is not the approach I want for myself or my clients. I like the protocols to be specifically tailored for my client’s needs. For example, I am often referred young clients who have a diagnosis of ADHD.

    They are often diagnosed using a questionnaire that is based on symptoms. Sometimes they are diagnosed by a teacher because they struggle to stay focused in class or are disruptive. They are often sent to a doctor or psychiatrist and prescribed medication. In a QEEG, there are four patterns for ADHD. These patterns are called phenotypes. They are specific and indicate whether medication would be helpful or worsen the issue. If a child does not have this pattern, they mostly do not have ADHD. I often see children with an ADHD diagnosis that do not have ADHD.

    They may have an anxiety issue. We treat that with Neurofeedback, and they become rock stars in their classes. I had an adult patient who was convinced they had ADHD, and they happened to be a physician. They were on Adderall, which speeds up the brain because it is essentially speed. When I looked at their EEG and QEEG. I noticed two things. This is not a characteristic of ADHD. The second thing I noticed was a sleep problem.

    EEG

    The patient fell asleep during every EEG we acquired, whether her eyes were closed or open. I presented her EEGs to Jay Gunkelman. Jay has been an international expert on evaluating raw EEG for 60 years. He also owned and ran a sleep clinic for 15 years. He has seen thousands of sleep-disordered EEGs over his career. Without hearing a word from me about my patient, he determined she had a pretty severe sleep disorder. Jay has also been a consultant to neurologists and psychiatrists for most of his career. He advises them on appropriate medication for specific disorders. After his determination, he asked me about the patient. He not only confirmed my findings but was concerned about the medication they were on. He said the medication might help them stay awake initially during the day but eventually, it would become harmful to my patient, and interfere with their sleep.

    EEG

    The biggest problem is that the general public does not know the difference. The companies that practice without QEEG are often highly trained in sales techniques. I wish they were trained in QEEG and brain science. They have been trained to handle objections to questions like, “Do you use a QEEG?” There reply, “Well, we could, but that would raise the costs of your brain training. Would you rather spend your money on something designed to make you feel like something is wrong with you, or would you want to spend your money on training your brain?” I actually heard this response with my own ears. The fact is they most likely have no idea how to do a QEEG, and their price for brain training may be more than those who perform a QEEG assessment.‌‌

    Although there may be exceptions, stick with a clinician who uses QEEG to assess your brain.

    Types of Neurofeedback:

    There are multiple types of Neurofeedback that get excellent results.

    Traditional Surface Neurofeedback:

    There is traditional surface neurofeedback, which is where this industry began in the 60s and 70s. It is called surface because the emphasis is on the surface structures of the brain. The vast majority of neurofeedback practitioners do this type of Neurofeedback, and the good ones utilize QEEG. The particular focus of this type is to train brain rhythms. This place one or two electrodes on the patient’s scalp in specific locations and reward certain frequencies and inhibit others. They often use head maps to pick their locations but do not train using a normative database. This can be a very effective way to train the brain and has some benefits that other types of Neurofeedback do not have.‌‌

    swLORETA Z-Score Neurofeedback:

    I could do a blog on this alone. This is the type of training we mostly do at Heart Matters. The science is vast, and it is complex. The basic premise is location, location, location. In the 90s, technology advanced to the point that we could determine the sources of dysregulation down in the brain using EEG. That is a mouth full for sure. The basic principle is the surface sensors from a standard EEG cap can be used to triangulate locations down in the brain, much like your cell phone company can track your location by triangulating satellite signals in space. When these specific locations have issues, they disrupt the rhythms and the communication in the brain’s networks, and that causes symptoms like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and others.‌‌

    This type of training is called whole head (or brain) training because we can train multiple locations at once. The net effect is we can train more conditions with more specificity faster. Our average patient’s training is about a third of the average Traditional Surface neurofeedback sessions. We also are effective with conditions that surface neurofeedback is not.

     

    LORETA-Z

    LORETA Z-Score training also compares and trains our patients based on a normative database. The concept of training to a norm makes sense to me scientifically. For example, when we go to a doctor, and he tells us that we have high cholesterol, and we ask him how he knows, he simply states something like, “When we did your blood work, your cholesterol levels were above the norm.” He then may show you your metrics comparing your blood work to the norm. We do this as well with our Neurofeedback by using QEEG to assess our patient’s brain followed by training with Z-scores. . I have trained hundreds of people and have never seen a negative side effect. On the contrary, I have seen positive side effects, like an anxious kid who also quit wetting the bed.‌‌

    LORETA-Z

    I have heard the same salespeople ask, “Why would you train someone towards a norm when they are already exceptional?” They propose that normalizing a brain might remove someone’s giftedness. First, I have never seen this happen, nor have my mentors. A gifted artist does not lose their talent when their brain has been trained to reduce anxiety or depression. As one of my mentors stated, “When you learned to ride a bike, did you forget how to walk?” I have seen gifted people become more focused in their gifted areas after doing Z-Score training. I believe in the science behind Z-Score training because it is safer and reduces the chances of adverse side effects.

     

    Neurofeedback

    So there are various forms of neurofeedback training. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. There are things traditional surface neurofeedback can do to help you that swLORETA Z-Score can’t. There are things that swLORETA Z-Score can help you with that traditional surface neurofeedback can’t. swLORETA Neurofeedback helps faster than traditional. On the surface of things, traditional seems cheaper, but it probably isn’t because more sessions are needed over the course of treatment. I believe that swLORETA requires more extensive training and knowledge of the brain’s circuitry, which is why I continue weekly mentoring with Dr. Lubar, who knows it all. He was one of the first to do traditional surface neurofeedback, is a consummate scholar and practioner, and he now does swLORETA. There are also consummate scholars on the traditional side, which is why I study with Jay Gunkelman biweekly.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, I believe the critical thing in seeking out a neurofeedback practitioner is to find a well-trained licensed clinician who has certification at least with the BCIA, but preferably QEEG-D, who utilizes QEEG assessments. But I think having a qualified practitioner is the main starting point. You may not have the choice of a clinician, such as myself, in your area who does swLORETA. Stay away from practitioners that do not require certification and do not use QEEGs.

    So what do you do when you don’t know? Feel free to send me an email. I probably won’t be able to treat you if you are not in Colorado Springs, but I can refer you to someone who is reputable in your area 9 times out of 10, or at least help you ask the right questions.

    About The Author Mike Pinkston:

    For nearly 40 years, Mike has been helping others heal from complex emotional, physical, and sexual trauma and abuse. He is also an expert in diagnosing and treating PTSD, Dissociative Disorders, as in multiple personalities, sex addiction, Love addiction, love avoidance, and Codependence.

    He is also an expert in parenting and marriage, and family structures. In addition, Mike has advanced certification in EMDR and clinical hypnosis. Mike also specializes in Neurofeedback training, a cutting-edge treatment for many emotional and psychological difficulties that regular talk therapy and medication can not find solutions for. Things like ADHD, Bipolar, Anxiety, depression, PTSD, Addiction, and much more.

    Finally, Mike has also spent over 25 years supervising and mentoring other clinicians.

    If you are looking for more information about Neurofeedback or want to contact Mike for an appointment, he can be reached at:

    mike@theheartmatters.org

    719-257-3488

    www.theheartmatters.org

    I am fortunate to have called Mike my counselor and now my friend and colleague. I am forever indebted for how he helped me save my life—so much of what I currently teach and continue to learn from Mike.

  • The Tinder Swindler: How To Avoid Toxic Men

    The Tinder Swindler: How To Avoid Toxic Men

    The Tinder Swindler on Netflix showed us how women worldwide are susceptible to being conned in life because they don’t realize how they can play an equally responsible role in the dynamic.

    Unfortunately, this is not often discussed in documentaries such as the Tinder Swindler and it’s certainly not something we’re taught growing up so that is what we are going to tackle in today’s Best Day Blog article.

    Before we dive in, though, there are some crucial points to bear in mind:

    1- The Tinder Swindler. aka Simon Leviev was consciously aware that he was conning these women. The women were NOT consciously aware they were conning themselves.
    2-The women are NOT to blame, and they are responsible – I will show you how both are true.
    3-If you notice anger surfacing over the prospect that the women conned themselves, that is a great opportunity to learn how you con yourself!
    4-If you choose not to read the full article due to feeling anger at the content, you will rob yourself of the opportunity to learn how to protect yourself from a similar situation.

    Don’t take the easy route and mistake this for victim-blaming. On the contrary, if you are open to a deeper understanding of human and relationship dynamics, what I am about to share empowers the victims of such crimes, sets them free, and raises people’s ability to create healthy relationships, find love, and defend themselves against predators.

    For many, what I am about to share will challenge most of your current emotions and cultural beliefs.  At first, it will be quite a mouthful, but if you stick with it, you realize it was good for you, because it is healthy and based on truth.

    The explanation for how the women conned themselves comes down to two advances in neuroscience and psychology. The first is by Lisa Feldman Barrett, who shared her discovery in 2017 with her book ‘How Emotions Are Made.’ Her work transformed previous theories on emotions and how our brain processes information.

    Secondly, my development of what I call the Worst Day Cycle, which is a self victimizing process we all live out until we heal the childhood trauma that created it.  Coincidentally, our books came out around the same time, and both combine to create a scientific understanding as to why and how these women conned themselves.

    We Create Our Emotions. Nobody makes us feel anything.

    Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work shows that we create emotions in three ways. Our physiology, the cultural and societal beliefs we are exposed to, and our childhood experiences. In this way, often, our very first experience of feeling a certain way will dictate our future reactions, as our brain assumes that any time we feel that same way, the same events will unfold. You may think you are an adult making decisions but in fact, it is the child inside you that is making the decision.

    For example, suppose you grew up in a physically violent family. In that case, when you are exposed to violence in your relationships, you’ll associate this with family and love – you’ll believe, based on your earliest experiences, that violence=love.

    Below is an excerpt from How Emotions are Made to explain how we are responsible for creating our own emotions. You may often hear people saying things such as ‘You made me feel like this,’ She made me feel this,’ but these are disproven in Barrett’s work, emotions – are not, and cannot be, forced upon us by other people.

    “Emotions are not built-in. They are not universal but vary from culture to culture. They emerge as a combination of the physical properties of your body, a brain that wires itself to adhere to whatever environment it develops in, and your culture and upbringing, which provide that environment. Emotions are not reactions to the world. From sensory input and past experience, your brain constructs meaning and prescribes action.”

    This is so important when analyzing the Tinder Swindler case because it helps to set the scene of understanding as to why these women were able to be conned and unknowingly conned themselves. Their brains made predictive assumptions from their histories that created the illusion that they were innocently duped when in actuality, they played an active role in the duping.

    How do emotions create the women’s conning of themselves?

    Her opening statement below gives a lot of insight into her emotional thinking and how she planted the seeds for her own self-conning:

    “The moment I get nervous, then I know there is something special here. I’m after that all-consuming, kind of what you’ve grown up with. The first memory I have of love is Disney. I had memorized the entire beauty and the beast cassette. I love how she’s just a small-town girl just like me, hoping for something bigger. She meets this person, then she saves him in a sense, and he saves her. They go into a different life together. It just sticks with you like the feeling of a prince coming to save you. I think that even though you know it’s not real, it’s still with you. I think everyone has that little bit of hope deep down inside. It will be as magical as they are portraying it to be.”

    The feeling of nervousness she mentions is a prime example of physiological learning. She formed a prediction in her mind that this was a feeling of love towards Leviev. Because this was a feeling she had experienced previously, her mind immediately associated this sensation of nervousness with love – even though, on this occasion, it could have been a different indicator of fear or worry.

    In particular, the reference to Disney, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. She was looking for a beast – or a narcissist in today’s terms. Simon Leviev certainly has many narcissistic traits; She believes that Simon (The Beast) is the Prince that she can save, and the way to do this is by giving him money.

    The belief that a person is powerful enough to save another is a God complex. It is also a narcissistic trait but from the disempowered victim position. Her idea that she can save Leviev and change who he is as a person is a crucial part of her swindling herself – it’s important, again, to remember that she is not to blame as this was an unconscious feeling, whereas Simon’s behavior was conscious. She unconsciously believes that she has enough power (a disempowered narcissistic trait) to change him. It is her Disney childhood dream to rescue a beastly man.

    Furthermore, there is such a thing as ‘love addiction,’ which is the fantasy-like creation of a super love for someone in your mind. In her eyes, Simon became the Prince, and she believed they could both save each other. Here she’s creating a fantasy based on a construct of emotions. She has implanted in her mind due to memorizing the Disney story.

    Remember, this is all unconscious to her, but she wants her Disney dream and will do anything she can to have it. Unfortunately, Disney trained her to look for a beast and skewed her view that love is based on intensity and trauma. She’s not to blame for this, and she is responsible on an unconscious level – she’s participating through the false belief that she can save a man by financially conning him to get what she wants. To be the beauty that loves and nurtures the beast into a prince.

    So, to recap, her brain created the following emotional predictions and assumptions:

    1- She equated danger/fear with love – the Beast
    2- The Beast, or Simon, is a prince that she can save
    3- A God complex to get her power back over her fear
    4- She created a love-addicted fantasy of Simon.
    5- She conned herself unknowingly based on her learned emotional experiences

    How The Worst Day Cycle created the conning of themselves

    Trauma in childhood is inevitable simply because we are all human and perfectly imperfect. Each parent will make mistakes that leave wounds in us. It’s important to remember that trauma does not have to be a huge event. Trauma is any experience in life that creates a negative response or feeling. Trauma is the first stage of the cycle. It generates feelings of fear, which is stage two.

    The third stage of the cycle is shame which is a loss of our authentic power. A prominent way parents traumatize us and place this shame in us happens when we make a simple mistake. It was simply the act or behavior that was bad. To solve this dilemma, we create a false self to get our power back.. It becomes a learned emotional response. It is actually a survival instinct. I go into much more detail about this process in my book, ‘Your Journey To Success.’

    In addition, we learn from our parents how relationships work. Therefore, the adult relationships we pursue reflect the relationships we experienced as children.

    Shame turns into false victim power.

    In our culture, there is an unintended consequence to protecting them. Our culture now absolves the victim from any responsibility. This has created tremendous power from the disempowered victim position. Instead of the media and society teaching the public that we make our emotions, that we are all stuck in The Worst Day Cycle and reliving our unhealed pain from childhood, and seeking out the same perfectly imperfect hurtful relationships we experienced as children, they are celebrated. The women now hold power over Simon Leviev and society. Reliving our Worst Day Cycle is a tremendous payoff for us all. Being the victim gives us the power that we lost as children. No one will hold us responsible for the part we played. It WORKS!

    In conclusion

    These women are not to blame. Bypassing responsibility for their feelings, thoughts, and actions onto others.

    Therefore, if we genuinely want to protect victims and take away the predator’s power, we need to start teaching everyone that our upbringing, beliefs, and manufactured emotional projections that create our Worst Day Cycle play a part in our being responsible.

    Unfortunately, for these women, the lack of information on how emotions are made and The Worst Day Cycle enabled Simon Leviev to consciously con them while unconsciously conning themselves.

    For more on this, watch or listen to Lisa Feldman Barrett’s TedTalk – ‘You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions, your brain creates them,‘ Read her book ‘How Emotions Are Made.’
    Then, check out the Worst Day Cycle playlist on my YouTube channel, pick up my book ‘Your Journey To Success,’ and dive in even further with my free masterclass, ‘Your Journey To Emotional Authenticity’!

    Are you looking for more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!

    1- My Book, Your Journey To Success
    2- My Complete Emotional Authenticity Method
    3- My Perfectly Imperfect Private Group
    4- My Private Coaching

    Learn more here:

  • How To Heal The Worst Day Cycle – Part 3 Fear

    How To Heal The Worst Day Cycle – Part 3 Fear

    In part 3 of how to heal The Worst Day Cycle, I will share how the brain and body create the emotional, and chemical addiction to fear, which is stage 2 of the cycle. If you missed parts one and two, I provide links at the end of this article.

    How the brain works

    It takes tremendous energy for our brain to do anything. For example, 25% of the calories we ingest go straight to powering the brain. So, our brains have come up with an incredibly ingenious solution; it chooses to repeat what it has already experienced in life. Scientists estimate that 95%-99% of our lives; our subconscious repeats what we learned in the first seven years of life. Our brain doesn’t care (or know) whether something is good or bad for us? Its primary concern is energy conservation and survival.

    So, what did we learn in childhood? In part 2 of this series on The Worst Day Cycle, I spoke about how everyone experiences childhood trauma because we are human. The only way we could not experience trauma is if a perfect ‘God’ raised us.

    This might be new information for you, and you may feel like you want to stop reading? If so, you are experiencing fear. Whenever we see, smell, taste, touch, hear or learn new things, our brain goes into fight, flight, or freeze mode – it is an automatic survival response. New information threatens what we already know and could potentially cause harm or danger. This physiological response of fear may be triggered without observable effects on behavior and without subjective awareness, i.e., you may not even know you feel fear right now. Still, if any type of information is new, your body will produce the chemically addictive fear response.

    Why does this matter? What happened the first time you remember making a mistake? Can you feel or hear it? Was Mom or Dad looking at you a certain way, or did you simply pick up on a feeling in the room? Or maybe you were physically punished? Whatever it was, the message received as a child was that ‘You’re bad!’. This is a learned reaction to making mistakes and only comes from our parenting – it’s not an inherent characteristic of our species. It requires a great deal of awareness and intention not to leave wounds and trauma in our children, and, once again, it’s not to blame parents but to enable them to take responsibility for their humanness and perfect imperfections.

    To reduce a child’s experience of trauma, a parent needs to know how to communicate the difference between an objectionable behavior and the child’s inherent worth.

    So, as an adult, when you experience new things or make mistakes, you are subconsciously and immediately taken back to those experiences when your parents sent the message that you were bad. Because this is what your brain knows, it reaches for this experience to conserve energy. As adults, self-destructive behaviors like unhealthy relationships, poor finances, weight issues, job insecurity, etc., actually have their origins in your childhood. Your brain is repeatedly seeking to repeat what it knows.

    We’re all afraid of success.

    Let me share something with you, and this will shake up what you’ve always thought. Not a single person on this planet is afraid to fail. Since the brain seeks to repeat what it knows at all costs, everyone is afraid to succeed. The proof? Have you ever found yourself procrastinating? When you think about making a change, no matter how small, whether it’s going from being in bed to getting up, to sending an email, or visiting a friend, what comes up? Thoughts like ‘Ugh, I don’t feel like it,’ ‘I’ll start the diet tomorrow, ‘I’ll do it later. Do you see, at that moment, you have chosen failure?

    The feeling of doing anything new creates a fear response – because we learn in childhood that if we do something different (i.e., something that could potentially upset mom or dad), we could be unloved, rejected, or abandoned. Therefore, since we have repeatedly accepted failure, we are not afraid of it. What we are fearful of is a new action that would create success. So we repeat failure.

    Because of the subconscious programming we have from childhood, we get stuck in the chemical cocktail of self-victimizing negative feelings. That is why our greatest fear is to succeed.

    There is also a second way that our brain sabotages us. When we experience fear, it stops blood from flowing to the front part of our brain. The front part is the cognitive part, where thinking and learning happen. Therefore, if we can’t regulate ourselves emotionally, we can’t access intellect and decision-making.

    When we lack emotional skills, we often don’t know what we want and struggle to make decisions, so it is crucial to start moving more into our feelings to heal our childhood issues. This is the way you regain your authentic self. We must become experts in how the emotional pain from the past influences us in the here and now.

    Bessel van der Kolk points out that neuroscience shows that we can only change the way we feel by becoming aware of our inner experiences and learning to befriend what is going on inside of ourselves. This means that, no matter how old you are or how perfect you believe your childhood was, everything you are going through now originated in your childhood experiences. Until you can befriend those emotions and experiences, you won’t be able to make a change.

    Do any of these sound familiar in your life now:

    1. You are a great listener, but you don’t know how to make conversation because you fear voicing your own opinions and beliefs?
    2. Go along instead of fighting and protecting yourself?
    3. Care for others but don’t ask for help?
    4. You get others to decide for you instead of sharing your desires and preferences, or do you not even have any?
    5. Don’t recognize excludion, mistreatment, or abandonment?
    6. You can’t feel others’ anger or fear or see you are in danger?
    7. Misread social cues? Your mirroring component is dysfunctional?

    Van der Kolk also says, ‘All too often, your decisions are based on the fear of getting in trouble or getting abandoned, rather than on the principles of having meaningful and equitable interactions with the world.’ All of the above are perfect imperfections that don’t make you bad. They are simply learned subconscious behaviors that have led to inauthenticity as adults because we are so afraid of rocking the boat and being rejected.

    As Alice Millar says, ‘In every adult lies dormant that small child’s fear of punishment at the hands of the parents if he or she should dare to rebel against their behavior. But it will lie dormant only as long as that fear remains unconscious. Once consciously experienced, it will dissolve in the course of time.’

    More about the body, fear, and stress

    As Gabor Mate says, ‘For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline, and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons, stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided.’

    These are your workaholics, the people who cannot keep still – or can’t date “boring” people. They can’t bring themselves to stop and feel. But unfortunately, this avoidance doesn’t work. You cannot run from your pain and trauma forever and expect to be authentically happy or authentically you.

    Unfortunately, our medical disease model is only concerned with prescribing pills to deal with these issues. That is a significant problem for us all. As Van der Kolk says, ‘After conducting numerous studies of medications, I have come to realize that psychiatric medications have a serious downside, as they may deflect attention from dealing with the underlying issues. The brain-disease model takes control over people’s fate out of their own hands and puts doctors and insurance companies in charge of fixing their problems.’ This isn’t to say we should get rid of medication, but medication only medicates symptoms; it doesn’t treat the cause of conditions.

    With so much apparent evidence, our future relatives will wonder why the medical establishment didn’t help people more emotionally? I am confident that we will rethink how we treat illness and disease in the next few hundred years.

    In conclusion

    1- We get stuck in fear.

    2- We fear success, not failure.

    3- We become emotionally addicted to repeating failure because it requires less brain effort than making a change.

    We are now ready to discuss the next stage of The Worst Day Cycle. In the following article, I will show you how shame becomes a self-victimizing power dynamic to stay the child.

    Stick around to learn how mastering shame and denial are the two most essential steps to reclaiming your authenticity, conquering The Worst Day Cycle, and developing Emotional Authenticity.

    How To Heal The Worst Say Cycle – Part 1

    How To Heal The Worst Say Cycle – Part 2

    Are you looking for more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!

    1- My Book, Your Journey To Success
    2- My Complete Emotional Authenticity Method
    3- My Perfectly Imperfect Private Group
    4- My Private Coaching

    Learn more here:

  • How To Heal The Worst Day Cycle – Part 4 Shame

    How To Heal The Worst Day Cycle – Part 4 Shame

    As a species, we need two things to survive, attachment to another human being and the ability to pursue our authentic selves. Because our caregivers are human and therefore, perfectly imperfect, we survive by dropping our authentic selves to create attachment. The loss of our authentic self creates shame. In part 4 of my 5-part series on how to heal The Worst Day Cycle, I will share how shame keeps us locked into repeating the pain from the past against ourselves.

    What’s important to know about shame?

    Shame is all about control. As a child, we don’t have the emotional or cognitive development to handle the overwhelming emotional nature of our parent’s perfect imperfections. We are powerless to stop their imperfections and powerless to make sense of them. We create a false persona to hide our hurt feelings from ourselves and more importantly, to create a life-saving attachment with our parents.

    Even the rebellious black sheep of the family who is always causing frustration for their parents have found a unique way to forge attachment. They are exercising negative control – disorder and dysfunction – to get the attention and attachment they crave. Creating trouble works, it gives us power and attachment.

    Adulthood

    As we mature into adulthood we refine our ability to exercise our shame-based power over others. We subconsciously choose partners, careers, even friends, and hobbies that will replay the same neglectful abandoning hurtful emotional experiences of our childhood.

    John Bradshaw explains shame and the loss of self this way, ‘The wounded inner child contaminates intimacy in relationships because he has no sense of his authentic self. The greatest wound a child can receive is the rejection of his authentic self. When a parent cannot affirm his child’s feelings, needs, and desires, he rejects that child’s authentic self. Then, a false self must set up.

    You cannot offer yourself to another person if you do not know who you really are. Toxically shamed people tend to become more and more stagnant as life goes on. They live in a guarded, secretive and defensive way. They try to be more than human (perfect and controlling) or less than human (losing interest in life or stagnated in some addictive behavior). A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself.’

    Blame on Other People

    Why do you not want to share your history with others? Because you don’t want to share it with yourself and because toxically shamed people will not want to hear or accept things about themselves. People who chastise others are always chastising themselves – it is always a reflection of their own inner shame.

    Bradshaw Says:

    Bradshaw goes on to say, ‘The voice is mostly created by the shame-based, shut-down defenses of the primary caregivers/society. Just as the shame-based parents/society cannot accept their own weaknesses, wants, feelings, vulnerability, and dependency needs, they cannot accept their children’s neediness, feelings, weakness, vulnerability, and dependency. That voice is the result of the “parents/societies desire to destroy the aliveness and spontaneity of the child whenever he or she intrudes on their defenses.

    We must remember that the shame-based caregivers/society were once hurting children themselves. Like ours, their pain, humiliation, and shame were repressed. Their anger toward their shaming parents/society could not be expressed for fear of losing the parent/place in the world. The parents’/societies defenses against their pain and shame prevent these feelings from erupting into consciousness. If the parent/society were to let the child express those feelings, it would threaten their own defenses. The parent/society must stop the child’s feelings of neediness and pain so that the parent and society doesn’t have to feel their own feelings of neediness and pain.’

    Admit to Shame

    It is difficult to consciously admit to shame, trauma, pain and imperfect upbringings. Shame is about control, so to get angry and chastise others when they bring this to our attention is an attempt to control the reality we have always known.

    Interestingly, shame is the core motivator of the super achieved and the underachieved. Many people with high levels of shame are falsely empowered, Bradshaw says, ‘The distorted thinking can be reduced to the belief, “I’ll be okay if I drink, eat, have sex, get more money, work harder, etc.” The shame turns a person into a “human doing,” rather than a human being.’ The super achieved do this to show they are successful and independent and high-achieving when really they are just trying to cover up their feelings of intense shame.

    Alice Miller

    Alice Miller discusses this very succinctly when she talks about the successful person, ‘The contempt for others in grandiose, successful people always includes disrespect for their own true selves, as their scorn implies: “Without these superior qualities of mine, a person is completely worthless.” This means further: “Without these achievements, these gifts, I could never be loved, and would never have been loved.”

    Take Donald Trump, as an example, he was unable to ever admit he was wrong – he was horrifically abused as a child, his dad always told him he wasn’t enough, so he became a super-achiever in order to be better than his dad because without these achievements he would never be loved. This is more than just parenting though, we live in a shame-based society that is upheld by those at the top, and because we won’t call it out, it doesn’t change. We avoid emotions and Emotional Authenticity to keep our shame alive!

    Cognitive addiction

    Every thought starts as a feeling – the emotion comes first. Yet, we all denounce feelings and instead try to think our way through things. Which is a waste of time because you can’t change your thoughts until you change your feelings. As Bradshaw says, ‘Cognitive addictions are a powerful way to avoid feelings. I lived in my head for years. I was a university professor. Thinking can be a way to avoid feelings. All addictions have a thinking component, which is an obsession.’

    This also applies to the emotionally vulnerable. They hide their shame behind being the ‘nice’ person. Being nice is a covert way of playing the victim because the nice person. Wants recognition for being such a nice person. They continually pick people and situations where they give more, do more.

    Whether we exercise our shame from the falsely empowered or disempowered position. The loss of self replays itself in pain against ourselves.

    Bradshaw continues, ‘Unconditional love and acceptance of self seems to be the hardest task for all humankind. Refusing to accept our “real selves,” we try to create more powerful false selves. We give up and become less than human. This results in a lifetime of cover-up and secrecy. This secrecy and hiding is the basic cause of human suffering.’

    Healing shame requires becoming an expert in reclaiming your authentic self

    To become an expert we need to accept the following:

    1. Learned denial in childhood to survive
    2. Adapted false personas to create attachment.
    3. Self-victimize to get our power back

    We know we have recovered when we can laugh at ourselves. Laugh at our perfect imperfections and share them openly with others. If you need help learning how to do that here are some suggestions:

    1- Take my free masterclass, ‘Your Journey to Emotional Authenticity’

    2- Watch my 5-part video series on Youtube- Reclaim Your Authentic Self By Becoming Trauma-Informed.

    3- Pick up a copy of my book ‘Your Journey to Success’

    It’s not an easy journey, but I promise if you choose to do this healing work, you’ll discover the truth about the world and about yourself, which will produce true freedom in your life. Take your time and, as always, enjoy the journey.

    Learn More here:

  • How To Heal The Worst Day Cycle – Part 5 Denial

    How To Heal The Worst Day Cycle – Part 5 Denial

    Reclaiming Your Authentic Self by Becoming Trauma-Informed, PART 5 

    It has been my life experience that the single greatest killer on the planet today is denial. It permeates every aspect of life and it is always at the central core of all life problems. Denial of this truth itself is why no one is talking about or dealing with it. Therefore, becoming an expert in your denial and self-deception is the most important skill you need to learn if you want to overcome The Worst Day Cycle. By doing so, you will have a profound impact on your healing journey.

    To recap, The Worst Day Cycle is initiated by trauma in childhood, which creates a fear-based emotional chemical addiction. Due to our lack of Emotional Authenticity, we develop a shame-based, self victimizing false persona in a misguided attempt to regain our lost inherent power. To protect us against the emotional reality of the pain in childhood and loss of self, we collapse into denial. The denial of these truths guarantees that the cycle will repeat itself.

    How Denial and Self-deception Operate

    1. 1. As a species, we must attach to another human being or we will die. Because our parents are perfectly imperfect and human they hurt us. To attach and survive we create a false self. We had no choice, our life depended on it. The role of the false self is to minimize, suppress, repress, condone, justify and deny that our parents hurt us. We create this lie to forge attachment with them. We subconsciously fear that if we accepted the truth, we would lose their attachment and die. Even if we are aware of their imperfections, a false attachment seems better than no attachment. That furthers our defiance to admitting how they hurt us. Our inability to live in truth affects every single adult decision for the rest of our lives until addressed.
    2. 2. We then blame, judge, and criticize other people, places, and things. We do this so that we don’t have to admit the part that our shame-based false persona played in setting up our own self-victimization in our adult life struggles. There is an added benefit to our self-deception. It shields us from having to face that we created a false self and therefore, we don’t know who we really are.

    Society And Brain Design

    1. 3. Society and brain design also play a role in our self-deception. For centuries, science and society have incorrectly denigrated and downplayed the importance of emotions in our life and intellect. For one, we now know that emotion precedes all thought. That means Emotional Authenticity is essential to intellect. Secondly, the logical left side of the brain becomes myopic and shuts out truth unless it confirms its current belief. Conversely, the emotional right side’s ability to include context and diverse options makes for a more complete, and precise intellectual thought and decision. In short, the more emotionally developed a person is the better their thoughts and decisions. Interestingly, because of brain design, these facts will quite often be denied even by those that have made the discoveries in the brain.
    1. 4. The combination of The Worst Day Cycle, societal beliefs and norms, and the brain’s design proved to be a formidable adversary to our reclaiming our authentic selves, accepting and loving our perfect imperfections, and achieving our personal potential.

    A quick reminder. We are not to blame for doing the best we could with the information we had, AND we are responsible for letting these truths in and doing the work to collectively heal The Worst Day Cycle and reshaping societal norms and beliefs.

    The Three Main Ways Denial Shows Up

    1. 1. The fear of success

    2. Make sure to catch up on the previous articles to learn more about why we have a fear of success, not a fear of failure. We fear success because of what we have to give up. We developed our self-victimizing false persona to attach. To succeed we would have to stop hurting ourselves and relinquish the self-victimizing false persona. That subconsciously feels like a loss of attachment to our caregivers. Additionally, we would also have to admit we don’t know who we are. True success is the ability to walk in who we authentically are. To do so would require the death of the false attachment and the false self. To avoid this we most often procrastinate. When did you last procrastinate? How many excuses did you use to put off doing something? That is a denial of your authentic self! We don’t want to face the truth that we are re-victimizing ourselves by not taking the action we need to achieve our goals. What we’re afraid of is letting go of the false self that we think we are. Studies show that we lie to ourselves 10-200 times a day cycle. The self-deception we use to avoid achieving our full potential through procrastination is a primary way we do this.

    1. 2. Codependence

    2. In part, codependence is a denial of responsibility that allows us to stay the child. We stay the child by blaming others for making us think, feel, or do things. In reality, nobody makes us think, feel or do anything. In particular in relationships. We put the blame on the other person and rarely take enough responsibility for our own actions. While I would never condone a person’s poor treatment of another, the only way a relationship happens is when we allow the person close to us. Therefore, if that person mistreats us, we have to ask ourselves, what attracted me to this type of hostility? Most of us do not know that answer because society has not taught us how to find the answer.
    3. When a person understands The Worst Day Cycle, they will see it all correlates back to the unhealed pain in their childhood. They literally chose this person to help them see what pain from the past they need to heal so they can reclaim their authentic self. We demonstrate this codependent denial of personal responsibility in our reaction to compliments and criticisms. Many people find it very difficult to accept compliments and may even become defensive. Compliments don’t make us feel, think or do better. They only have an effect if we decide they match our own personal truth! Do you see what that means?

    We Cannot Accept a Compliment

    1. We cannot accept a compliment because it goes against the messages we received as a child. To accept the compliment we would have to be a traitor and drop the false self that we created for attachment. Criticisms match the personal truth our caregivers placed in us that we are trying to suppress, repress, minimize, condone and deny. We lack awareness that our defensiveness and hurt feelings are about the carried shame from childhood. Instead of admitting it is our childhood experiences that created these feelings, we protect the false attachment bonds we created with our caregivers and project the hurtful feelings onto the person in the present. This is at the heart of the current cancel culture and its efforts to demonize speech. They are unaware that they are projecting their unhealed shame and denial codependently onto the world so that they can stay the child. They are yearning for all of us to be the loving parents they never experienced. The fact that we can’t accept compliments demonstrates how detached the cancel culture is from their authentic selves. For if we were living in our authentic selves, we would be able to hear and accept compliments and recognize criticisms as the other person expressing their unhealed shame and denial from their Worst Day Cycle. We would not allow another person’s pain to corrupt our personal truth!
    2. 3. Whenever we judge, blame, hate or criticize any person, place, or thing, we are always talking to ourselves. It might be true that those people, places, or things are doing what we are critiquing but the only reason we can see it in them is that we do the exact same thing either directly or indirectly.

    Basic Ideas

    It is like watching a 3-D movie without the glasses. We have basic ideas of what is going on because we have watched a movie before but since society has not taught us Emotional Authenticity or The Worst Day Cycle, we can’t quite remove the distortion from the screen, things are a bit fuzzy. What we don’t realize is we are noticing these things in the other person so that we can ultimately reclaim our authentic selves and forgive ourselves for the part we have played in our misfortunes. They don’t need canceling, they need thanking and embracing for teaching us about ourselves. When we learn how to confront and heal our shame and denial the glasses appear. We then see these truths clearly.

    Let me share with you how I discovered this process.

    One day I was driving and as I sat behind a car that wouldn’t turn left, I began honking and yelling ‘I hate stupid drivers!’

    After a bit, I paused, regathered myself, and queried, ‘Kenny, this is about you’.

    At the time I denied the truth. I screamed out, ‘but I don’t drive like them, I would fricking turn!’

    But, I remembered that everything is emotion-based, not thought-based, so the fact I didn’t think that I drove like them was irrelevant. Instead, I turned my focus to the emotional content of what I was saying about the drivers – ‘I hate stupid drivers.’

    I then broke the words down emotionally and how the words I was choosing actually reflected back onto myself.

    ’I hate’ is a descriptor of how I feel about myself for what I am doing. My judgment, blame, and criticism was calling the other person ‘stupid.’

    I was trying to tell myself that I hate myself for being stupid.

    The Worst Day Cycle

    Now the real work began. As a child, where did I get sent the message I was stupid? Without hesitation, my mind flooded with direct and indirect messages from both my dad and brother. Those messages left me with the impression I was stupid. To this day cycle, feeling stupid is the worst thing I can feel and it carries the deepest shame. I then looked over my life at all of the ‘stupid’ decisions I had made to re-victimize myself and confirm the false persona that I was a stupid person?

    I have struggled with multiple addictions, two divorces, in one of those, I stayed even after being physically and verbally abused, a bankruptcy, playing two pro sports I never wanted to play, and countless other ‘stupid’ decisions before spending three days cycle contemplating taking my life.

    It was a penny drop moment and I laughed out loud when I realized, no wonder I think this driver is stupid, I must be the dumbest person I know. Is that true, am I stupid? Of course not. I had spent a life doing the best I could with the information I had at the time. Science, society, and parents never taught me about The Worst Day Cycle or specifically about denial so I had no idea how any of this works. I was just doing the best I could with the information I had at the time. The blessing is that I was now in truth. I could see myself, my authentic self clearly. I am just perfectly imperfect, I can now forgive myself and no longer hate myself or carry the false persona of being ‘stupid.’

    The Worst Day Cycle

    There is one final step to your judgment, blame, and criticism – look for the metaphor. Do you see the metaphor? I displaced and projected my vitriol onto other people’s ‘driving’ because I couldn’t ‘drive’ my own life. I was living in a false persona. It had me making life decisions that worked against me and not for me. Because I was not present in my own life I was not ‘driving’ my life.

    When you confront and conquer your denial you discover the glasses and reclaim your authentic self. This is an act of maturation and re-parenting. You no longer need to be codependent. You have found how to provide the nurturing your perfectly imperfect parent could not provide.

    To learn more about this piece specifically, watch the video ‘How to turn any insult into a blessing.’

    [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj1iBbER_UE[/embedyt]

    You can also find the accompanying article on my blog.

    The Scales of Injustice

    All of these create what I call the scales of Injustice. On one side of the scale is high denial, on the other is low self-esteem. The denial side is nearly breaking the scale in all of our lives because what is denial? A lack of truth – we don’t want to admit that our parents hurt us, that we don’t know who we are, that we have created a self-victimizing false self, that the criticisms are true, that we don’t forgive ourselves. You can’t have high self-esteem if you have high denial because you are not living in truth. We all live with a false attachment mechanism designed to get our parent’s approval. Its role is to protect who we are from coming out and jeopardizing everything we have falsely created.

    If you’re struggling and you feel as though it still hasn’t sunk in, perhaps you’re still not ready to admit your perfect imperfections and put the 3-D glasses on, then listen to the words of Byron Katie who says,

    ‘Notice how often you defend yourself (with words, actions, the way you dress, your tone of voice) and how stressful that can be. What impression—what “you”—are you trying to hide or strengthen? Whom are you trying to convince?’

    Pia Melody says this, ‘It is tempting to avoid our accountability for having erred in a relationship when we can hide behind something of which we are innocent—using the innocent part to divert attention from the guilty part. That is at the crux of the problem.’

    We are Denying

    We must own the parts of ourselves we are denying – this is the key to healing. If you feel anger when reading this, look at what truth you’re trying to hide from yourself? You’re doing the best you can but you must take responsibility for the information you have now gained. You can now choose to do the work or to stay stuck.

    Beverley Engel says it this way, ‘When we continually blame someone, we stay stuck in the problem instead of focusing on the solution. It is also important to realize that blaming someone is different from requiring the other person to take responsibility for his actions.’

    Gaining the glasses to watch your 3-D movie properly means becoming an expert and developing the knowledge, skills, and tools of Emotional Authenticity, and conquering the four elements of The Worst Day Cycle; trauma, fear, shame, and denial. Only then can we live in truth and only then will we have self-esteem. Only then can we admit our own perfect imperfections and forgive ourselves.

    The Brain’s Design & How Society Keeps Denial and The Worst Day Cycle Alive

    We have two hemispheres – left and right. All information comes into our right hemisphere and it sends it to the left, and the left sends it back. Take playing an instrument, the left filters and sorts all of the information that the right gathered. The left should then send the information back, but this doesn’t always happen.

    This is why Ian McGilchrist’s book says,

    ‘The right hemisphere’s view is inclusive, it sees context, options & solutions. The left hemisphere’s view is exclusive, analytic, and fragmentary – but, crucially, unaware of what it is missing. It, therefore, thinks it can go it alone.’ ‘In terms of the metaphor of the Master (the right) and his emissary (the left), the Master realizes the need for an emissary to do certain work on his behalf and report back to him. That is why he appoints the emissary in the first place. The emissary, however, knowing less than the Master, thinks he knows everything and considers himself the real Master, thus failing to carry out his duty to report back. A sort of stuffing of the ears with sealing wax appears to be part of the normal left-hemisphere mode. It does not want to hear what it takes to be the siren songs of the right hemisphere, calling it back into reality. The left hemisphere blindly pushes on, always along the same track. Evidence of failure does not mean that we are going in the wrong direction, only that we have not gone far enough in the direction we are already headed.’ ‘Even WORSE! The left hemisphere is not keen on taking responsibility. If the defect might reflect on the self, it does not like to accept it. But if something or someone else can be made to take responsibility – if it is a ‘victim’ of someone else’s wrongdoing, it is happily prepared to do so while being convinced that it is righteous!’

    These are the people who are spearheading cancel culture – they are stuck in the left hemisphere, exclusive and fragmentary, and crucially unaware that are abolishing inclusivity, options, and solutions. They are completely blind that they are headed in the wrong direction.

    As McGilchrist goes on to say,

    ‘Emotion and the body are at the irreducible core of experience: they are not there merely to help out with cognition. The feeling is not just an add-on, a flavored coating for thought: it is at the heart of our being, and reason emanates from that central core of the emotions, in an attempt to limit and direct them, rather than the other way about. The feeling came, and comes, first, and reason emerges from it: Even the prejudice we have in favor of reason cannot itself be justified by reasoning: the virtues of reason are something we can do no more than intuit.’

    In other words, the virtues of reasoning come from feeling. Cognition, rationality, and logic emanate from intuition and emotion. If you’re not learning Emotional Authenticity or how to conquer The Worst Day Cycle and are simply listening to the left hemisphere, you’re not going to improve, you’re going to keep going in the wrong direction.

    Why Do We Keep Doing This?

    Scientists’ reliance on the left hemisphere even when they know the left hemisphere is prone to denial! This is why I’m not a fan of cognitive-behavioral therapy. CBT attempts to minimize and suppress emotion, rather than sharpen and enhance it to the detriment of us all.

    As Bessel Van Der Kolk points out,

    ‘We now know that there is another possible response to threat, which our scans aren’t yet capable of measuring. Some people simply go into denial. Their bodies register the threat, but their conscious minds go on as if nothing has happened. However, even though the mind may learn to ignore the messages from the emotional brain, the alarm signals don’t stop. The emotional brain keeps working, and stress hormones keep sending signals to the muscles to tense for action or immobilize in collapse. The physical effects on the organs go on unabated until they demand notice when they are expressed as illness. Medications, drugs, and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. But the body continues to keep the score.’ “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”

    The medical community lies to itself with grave consequences for us all. For example, physicians are not trained to know that our emotional health impacts our physical health the most. If we were to ask ‘How was your childhood?’ before prescribing pills, we could help people heal the source of most medical problems, rather than simply attempting to medicate the symptoms away.

    Our health is an emotional problem, our politics are an emotional problem, our relationships are an emotional problem, and our world is an emotional problem.

    The solution?

    This is not about blame; it is about truth and responsibility. We can only do what we know and since the vast majority do not know any of this information they are just doing the best they can. But, for those of you who have made it this far you are now responsible. You now have the information you never had. You can continue in denial and ignore the truth, stay stuck as the irresponsible codependent child or you can take ownership and put a plan in place to make a change within yourself. Your personal change will have the added benefit of facilitating a change in all of those you come in contact with. If you choose not to do so, you are responsible for those consequences. Even if your false self and left hemisphere try to convince you otherwise.

    If you feel you are ready to re-parent yourself, heal the pain from the past, love and accept your perfect imperfections, and reclaim and forgive your authentic self, I have created several steps to achieve that. But to be clear, this is not a journey for those who are getting ready to be ready. This is a journey for those that are sick and tired of living below their potential, and are desperate to become their best self. If you are ready for this journey, take one of the steps below.

  • The Bad Vegan and The Worst Day Cycle

    The Bad Vegan and The Worst Day Cycle

    This Best Day Blog article and accompanying video is an analysis of the happenings that took place in the Netflix docu-series Bad Vegan – Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.

    In this article, I will be discussing what created the attraction between the ‘meat suit’. Otherwise known as Anthony Strangis, and the bad vegan, Sarma Melngailis. Having this information will allow you to protect yourself from falling for a ‘meat suit’ yourself! Throughout the article I’ll be sharing lots of helpful resources so that you can gain the knowledge, skills, and tools that you need so that you don’t ever fall prey to a situation like this.

    What creates a ‘meat suit’ and what creates the vegan who is attracted to them?

    For those who haven’t yet watched the documentary, the ‘meat suit’ is what Strangis calls his human form, his vessel. He believes he is a ‘non-human’ and that his body is simply here as a physical representation of himself – his meat suit. I will refer to him as the ‘meat suit’ from here on out.

    What created the personality of the meat suit, though? Well, it is something I call The Worst Day Cycle. The Worst Day Cycle explains how we end up in relationships like these. Furthermore, it explains how we fall short in reaching our potential. If you would like to learn the full process and how it is operating in your life because yes, it is operating in all of our lives, I discuss it at length in my book ‘Your Journey to Success’. Your cycle may not be as extreme as what was portrayed in Bad Vegan, but everybody on this planet is caught living in The Worst Day Cycle.

    What is the Worst Day Cycle (WDC)?

    On my YouTube channel, I have a 5-part video series which takes you through the WDC called ‘Reclaim Your Authentic Self By Becoming Trauma Informed. You will find that series within my WDC playlist.

    The WDC consists of four parts, trauma, fear, shame and denial. This might be hard to swallow but every single one of us experiences trauma in childhood – this is unavoidable. For the Meat Suit in Bad Vegan he experienced significant neglect and abandonment from his father who often took him gambling when he was a child. He and his mother were also held hostage and he watched as his father held a gun to her head. While many of us do not experience this level of trauma. We do experience emotional injuries from our perfectly imperfect caregivers.

    Worst Day Cycle

    For Sarma the ‘Bad Vegan’, she experienced her parents divorcing at 9 years old which is a difficult experience for anyone to go through and her sister, with all best intention, took on a protective role for her, often talking for Sarma and becoming her voice – this is also what happened in the relationship with Anthony – he became her voice. Sarma ended up playing the prisoner just as she had as a child and therefore subconsciously looked for this in her partners. Someone who could talk for her and ‘protect’ her – the trauma cycle repeats.

    Many people don’t realize that they’ve experienced trauma in their childhoods. They believe they are completely recovered from it, but most often this isn’t the case. My video ‘The Wounded Inner Child’ will help you to understand more about this. When you are living in denial and not accepting that your childhood was less than perfect. You can’t recover or prevent similar events like those that took place in ‘Bad Vegan’ from happening.

    Worst Day Cycle

    When we go through these emotional and traumatic experiences our brain actually becomes emotionally addicted to the explosion of fear chemicals and hormones that are released – we become addicted to the trauma – my video on ‘The Tinder Swindler’ goes into this phenomena in some depth. Because we have been conditioned to minimize and suppress our fears, we are all stuck in it. We’ve never been taught the Emotional Authenticity Method I teach to cope with these difficult emotional life experiences.

    There is a great deal of work in science, medicine and society that has taken place around emotions because we now know that, actually, emotions do run our lives – not our intellect. Emotions come first – every thought we have starts with a feeling, and because we haven’t developed the Emotional Authenticity that we need, our brains automatically replay the unhealed emotions from the past when we experience new things or things that subconsciously trigger the same feelings we experienced as children.

    The Third Stage

    The third stage of the cycle is shame. As a child we must physically and emotionally connect to another human being to survive. Therefore when our parents are imperfect and create emotional injuries inside of us. We adapt and create a false persona to fit in. It is a survival mechanism to protect ourselves. Because it happens so young, we believe it is the real “us”. This loss of the authentic self creates a power vacuum. Shame is ultimately a power dynamic. We use this deep shame core as adults to regain our power. How do we do that? By choosing hobbies, friends, careers and relationships that mirror the injuries of our childhood. We do this because even though we have been hurt, who is responsible for the hurt? Ourselves, we CHOSE, this person place or thing.  The overwhelming truth that we are responsible for our self-victimization send us into denial.

    About Denial

    Denial is the single greatest killer on the planet today. He is the main reason you don’t have the relationship, career or life you want. This is exactly what Sarma was caught in – the shame and denial portions of the cycle. She kept going back, choosing to re-victimize herself (shame) by denying the abuse and lies that were right in front of her. Not because she is a bad person but because as a society we don’t teach about The Worst Day Cycle or how to attain Emotional Authenticity.

    To dive deeper into how denial is the single greatest killer on the planet today, I really recommend checking out my ‘Self-Deception/Denial’ playlist on YouTube so you can learn how your denial is affecting your life and begin the healing journey.

    The Worst Day Cycle is incredibly powerful. People often think that these sorts of experiences can only happen to people who aren’t smart or are defective in some way, but Sarma was a very clever woman. It happens to all of us. Many people find this very difficult to accept – that even the ‘victim’ could be responsible for bad things happening to them, but learning to accept responsibility for this is the only way to heal. Sarma wanted money, she wanted her dog to be saved and she made the choice to stay. She did these things because of The Worst Day Cycle and her lack of Emotional Authenticity.

    Resources and links to help you

    We must become an expert in the worst day cycle and how trauma, fear, shame and denial operate in our lives. My book ‘Your Journey to Success’ goes through this in detail.

    If you would like to start your healing journey then sign up to my free masterclass ‘Your Journey to Emotional Authenticity.’ Learning my Emotional Authenticity method does not take long and you will see very quickly how much better your life becomes and when you have the knowledge, skills, and tools, how easy it is to avoid being eaten by a meat suit!

    Are you looking for more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!

    1- My Book, Your Journey To Success
    2- My Complete Emotional Authenticity Method
    3- My Perfectly Imperfect Private Group
    4- My Private Coaching

    To learn more watch this:

  • How To Deal With a Narcissistic Child

    How To Deal With a Narcissistic Child

    It can be very difficult to discover that you have an adult Narcissistic Child and equally as difficult to know how to deal with them because as parents, we will do nearly anything to support and love our children.

    There are many different ways that an adult Narcissistic Child can be managed, but in this article, I’ve picked out five solid suggestions to help you manage your child’s demanding and often selfish ways.

    As a bonus, I will share 3 of the best things you can do to help yourself because this issue can cause a lot of pain and anguish, so finding a way to allow yourself some time to rest and do some introspection is just as important to ensure you remain in the best frame of mind to help both you and your child.

    It’s also important to note the fact that at the development age of around 3-6 years every child goes through what would be described as a narcissistic phase. At this age, it’s normal for them to believe the world really does revolve around them. This is an important part of child development and figuring out their place in the world. This becomes a problem when the child gets stuck in this phase and cannot appropriately develop. That is also why a child can not be diagnosed as a narcissist. As such, this article is aimed toward those who would be classed as adult children, eighteen and older.

    5 Tips For How to Deal with a Narcissistic Child

    #1 Boundaries don’t work

    Unfortunately, narcissists will not respect any boundaries you put in place because they don’t think they matter. Narcissists, by nature, are abusive, and abusers do not respect boundaries. Remember, narcissists believe it’s all about them, so unless the boundary benefits them somehow, it won’t work. This is where many people can go wrong in believing that by setting boundaries, they will be able to change the narcissist’s behavior. However, recognizing and accepting those boundaries won’t work is important. Boundaries can be helpful for you personally, but they must be for your own happiness and peace only. Your child won’t adjust their actions based on your boundaries. To learn more about boundaries take advantage of my free download, How To Keep Our Boundaries In 3 Simple Steps.

    #2 Accept the scraps

    As difficult as it may be to accept that in a relationship with a narcissistic child, you will not receive the love, attention, or affection that you may desire. You will only ever get the small scraps of attention or love they wish to give you, and there’s not a lot you can do to change this. In this relationship, the child is in control; no matter how much you want things to change, the child is the one to decide how things will work.

    As parents, we want to teach or figure out our child’s behavior, so we can improve it. This plays right into their hands and the power they crave. Therefore, It is important that you try to keep hold of a certain amount of self-esteem and power – don’t waste time trying to reason with the child or trying to figure them out, as this will be wasted energy. Instead, moving on to tip three, try turning everything into a question.

    #3 Turn everything into a question

    A good rule for parenting in general, particularly with a narcissistic child, is to ask them a question instead of telling them something. For example, when your child is treating you badly, instead of saying something like ‘Stop treating me that way, it’s not nice’, ask a question such as ‘I’m curious, what advantage do you get from treating me that way?’ This way, you’re staying contained and placing a boundary within the question at the same time. You have to remember that the child doesn’t care how you feel naturally, so turning the question around to be about them rather than you invite them to be introspective and more likely to be interested in finding the answer as it’s related to them.

    Another great question would be to ask them what they think about a certain behavior. For example, ‘Do you think that is kind or do you think that is hurtful?’ which is good for getting them to explain themselves. Whilst, they may not answer the question and may even get defensive about the question itself, keep doing this and reflecting back to them in this way. This is a method of deflecting and shielding yourself by creating a ‘Wall of Pleasantness,’ which stops you from falling back into the trap of investing your time and energy into trying to change their behavior. This can create a form of connection and potential insight in a way that hands back the responsibility to them.

    #4 Put the responsibility on Narcissistic Child:

    Following this, turning their comments into questions is a way of giving responsibility back to them – both protecting you and making them think about their actions. If your child is unhappy with the way things are, then you can ask ‘Why do you think you want things another way?” Or, “why would you choose that?’ – it’s about making them responsible, rather than trying to defend yourself or get into a debate. For example, if they’re saying somewhat derogatory things to you, rather than becoming defensive, flip it back on them and say, ‘Ok, that’s an interesting perspective. Why would you want something like that in your life then?’The secret is to create questions that place the responsibility for their behavior and their outcomes squarely on their shoulders. This protects you from avoiding sucking into investing your own thoughts and feelings into the situation.

    #5 Safeguard your money, possessions, and heart

    It’s not uncommon for narcissistic children to steal from you. Often because it feels as though they are entitled to anything they want, they prey on your desire to fix and help them. Maybe they’ll even make you believe it will be different this time. But it’s important to remember that this is all part of their game. They can be very cunning in order to get hold of what they want. It’s not easy, but it’s important to remember that it’s not real. Remind yourself to accept the scraps and to place responsibility on their shoulders.

    It’s your turn

    Part of what can cause parents of narcissistic children to become tired, fraught, and disheveled is that they have been spending all their time trying to help the child not to be a narcissist, which is, unfortunately, an uphill battle. Spending time trying to figure out what the child is saying or meaning is often fruitless. These next three steps flip the attention onto you so that you can heal yourself. It can also help better be there for your child in the right way.

    #1 You’re number one

    The first step is making your recovery your priority and taking your focus off the narcissist. It’s a red flag to be spending all of your time and energy trying to ’fix’ them. Instead, invest time in self-care for yourself and prioritize yourself so that when you interact with your child, you come to the interaction in a much more positive and stable frame of mind.

    #2 Watch their actions, not their words

    If and when there is time and space for you to focus on the narcissist. It’s important to look at their actions rather than their words because the words they speak don’t matter. The narcissist’s main goal is always to get what they want when they want it. So they will tell you what they think you want to hear only for their own benefit. Keep a closer eye on what they’re actually doing. Actions never lie, and are never up for debate. A person is the sum of their actions!

    #3 Accept that you played a part in your child’s behavior

    This is the toughest but also most loving thing you can do for yourself. Be willing to accept that you have unhealed trauma that will have contributed to your child’s behavior. Ironically, to not accept this is narcissistic in itself – the inability to accept the truth. The self-esteem wound is truly at the core of narcissistic behavior. Narcissists are unable to accept the truth and look at themselves honestly. Narcissism is primarily a learned behavior from the type of childhood they experienced with their caregivers. This can be a difficult truth to accept, but it shouldn’t be. We are all human and perfectly imperfect. Since we don’t teach parenting skills, most of us are just winging it with no idea if what we are doing is helpful or hurtful. That doesn’t make any of us bad. It is just the truth. The key to healing from anything is truth.

    What is the primary cause of becoming a Narcissistic Child?

    This is a sensitive and emotive topic to discuss, especially for the parent of a narcissistic child. It can be very difficult at first to accept that your child may be this way or that you have played a part in how they are. The natural inclination is to believe it is genetic in nature. Scientifically it has been proven that genes become activated through the environment they are placed in. A child might be born with a specific gene for a disease or illness, but that is not enough for the gene to activate. We all have genes that carry the potential for illness and disease. As long as we don’t experience the environment for the genetic factors to activate, they won’t. Famed cell biologist Bruce Lipton discovered this years ago and shared how it all works in his book ‘The Biology of Belief.’

    I personally don’t feel any parent is to blame, and they are responsible. It is both. A quote from Gabor Mate that addresses the difference between blame and responsibility is helpful here to understand that while you may have played a part, it’s not you who is to blame.

    Gabor Mate Quote:

    “I need to make the distinction between blame and responsibility. Blame says that you did something wrong. You did something that you could’ve done differently, and therefore you are at fault. Responsibility says yes, I played a part in creating this in my child but not consciously or deliberately. I did it because I was programmed to do it by my own childhood experience which in turn was programmed by my parent’s childhood experience. Therefore, nobody is at fault. Everybody does their best, but we do pass these unconscious patterns on. And we don’t blame people for having unconscious patterns. Instead, we try to make them conscious of it so that they can take responsibility for it.

    Therefore, there’s no responsibility without consciousness and that also means there is no blame. So I don’t blame the person or their parents for their perfectly imperfect parenting, but I do say that the unconscious patterns they learned in their childhood have an impact on every area of their life. So if they want to have a better life and want to help their child they have to get conscious. They have to face the self-deception and get into the reality of what they have been doing so they can stop doing it or do it differently. Doing this liberates people from blame and empowers them to be response-able! Which means they are able to respond appropriately, lovingly, and confidently to events in their life and in this case, their children.”

    How to Help Narcissistic Child:

    If you want to help your narcissistic child, becoming conscious and taking responsibility for how you played a part in the relationship and upbringing, rather than focusing on them wholly, will do this. Don’t avoid yourself and your part in this – place the focus back on yourself and on your unconscious patterns that have added to the dynamic so that you may heal them. By modeling your ability to heal the unconscious traits that have contributed to your child’s development. It will be easier for your child to start doing the same.

    Are you looking for more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!

    1- My Book, Your Journey To Success
    2- My Complete Emotional Authenticity Method
    3- My Perfectly Imperfect Private Group
    4- My Private Coaching

    To learn more:

  • How to Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

    How to Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

    Think about a limiting belief you have right now. What is it? “I’m not attractive,” “I’m not smart,” “I’m not thin enough,” “I don’t make enough money,” whatever it may be. Do you notice when you think about that limiting belief that the feeling is very negative? It matches with the negative thought. That is because a belief is when our thoughts and our feelings line up.

    Now try and change it. Tell yourself “I’m beautiful,” “I’m intelligent,” “I’m sexy,” “I’m rich,” whatever – you’ll notice the feeling hasn’t changed. You don’t feel more attractive, smart, fit, powerful. That’s at the heart of every limiting belief and this is why personal development programs produce limited results. They all teach that we need to change the way we think about ourselves, but no amount of thinking will change what we feel; until we gain Emotional Authenticity, we will never conquer our limiting beliefs.

    Why do limiting beliefs happen?

    The first thing to recognize is how the brain and bodywork. With every piece of information we ever take in, whether we see, smell, touch or taste it, we first have an emotional reaction. That is because all incoming information checks our emotional centers first. Our brain is checking our previous emotional experiences so they can be categorized. All this happens well before we are cognitively aware. Because in the past you got sent the message that you’re not capable or smart or beautiful. You are replaying those feelings. That is why when you try to talk positively, you can’t believe it. The previously unhealed feeling is more powerful. Therefore, we all become what we feel, not what we think. If you have limiting beliefs, you have to shift the way you feel. Limiting beliefs are part of The Worst Day Cycle. I share that full process in my book, Your Journey To Success.

    How do you change previous emotional experiences? Begin healing The Worst Day Cycle!

    Step one

    Step one is to learn about your feelings. At the top of my website www.thegreatnessuniversity.com inside the tab titled “free content,” you’ll find a feelings wheel. Print it off and start tracking your feelings a few times a day over the next 3-5 days. This will help you become able to identify how your limiting beliefs are associated with emotion and will help you put a name to those emotions. When you become aware of which feelings are creating your thoughts, you become more able to start progressing in the process of healing your pain.

    Step Two

    Once you check in on your feelings ask yourself where in your body you are feeling those emotions. This step is critical because we store those traumatic emotional memories physically in our bod. Our physical and mental health are so closely entwined to negative feelings, we start to feel them in places in our bodies. This could be the tension that you hold in your shoulders when the limiting belief presents itself or it could be a stomachache, which is really common in anxious children. It could be a headache, cold-like symptoms, fatigue, muscle strain, arthritis, chronic pain or any number of other ailments. Become aware of how these feelings are actually affecting your health.

     Step three

    3. The third step is to ask yourself when was your first memory of that feeling associated with your limiting belief? For most people over thirty, you’ll remember something within the last one to five years. Write it down. Then ask yourself about your next memory and write it down, and then your next and your next until you can’t go any further. You’re going to see you’ve been repeating this limiting belief for decades. Eventually, you’re going to arrive at an original moment in childhood when you experienced this hurtful emotional event that has caused you to create your limiting belief. It’s likely to have been your parents or caregivers who taught you to have these feelings. This means your parent’s perfect imperfections and their own unhealed pain was placed into you, it created this limiting belief that you have been carrying for them all of these years. You have just discovered  The Worst Day Cycle and how you have been replaying the pain from the past for most of your life.

     Journey To Success

    Unfortunately, the process is far too long to go through in a single article, I wrote my book Your Journey To Success based on this cycle. But, I have resources to help. If you go back to my website www.thegreatnessuniversity.com and the same tab “free content,”  you’ll find another free download called 10 Simple Steps to Heal Emotional Pain. It walks you through the complete process to heal and shift that emotional pain.

    You’re going to learn to take those hurtful moments that have left you defeated, frustrated, and stuck for decades and create new feelings, thoughts, and beliefs that work for you. It was somebody else’s pain that was dumped into you, and you’ve been carrying it for far too many years. You’re going to learn how to give it back to them. With those feelings no longer plaguing you, it becomes possible to say, “I’m beautiful,” “I’m intelligent,” “I’m sexy,” “I’m rich,” or whatever else you desire and believe them. You’ll now be able to create the appropriate feeling authentically.

    Remember: we become what we feel, not what we think. The Emotional Authenticity process of healing The Worst Day Cycle provides you with the knowledge, skills, and tools to create the beliefs that can change your life for the better and overcome your limiting beliefs.

    Are you looking for more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!

    1- My Book, Your Journey To Success
    2- My Complete Emotional Authenticity Method
    3- My Perfectly Imperfect Private Group
    4- My Private Coaching

    Learn more here:

  • How To Heal From a Narcissistic Parent

    How To Heal From a Narcissistic Parent

    The experience of being raised by a narcissistic parent is just devastating and the consequences and effects last a lifetime. It is devastating to be left with feelings of emptiness – or filled with confusion and sadness, or the sense that we’re unlovable by those who are supposed to be our greatest protectors.

    This article will offer suggestions that will help you heal from this dynamic and provide you with some tips to get started on the recovery process.

    1. Educate yourself (what you’re doing right now)

    You’re already making a great start. Educating yourself is important and here’s why: studies show that the biggest boost of self-esteem we get comes from learning.

    The core wound for those raised by a narcissistic parent is low self-worth and low self-esteem. Our identity and worth come from our parents and if they’re incapable of giving that — of creating that healthy attachment and bonding that every human being needs — it leaves us with a gaping, empty hole we then have to fix. Learning is a great way to start filling that hole.

    Whenever we learn something new, there’s this massive chemical reaction inside of us — we love ourselves more for learning well. Therefore, make learning a priority. Learn about the negatives like how bad narcissistic parents are, but also learn about the positives like recovery and the journey into yourself. Don’t stop there, learn about new hobbies like ballroom dancing or painting or any other hobby; the point is to learn. Make sure you also take advantage of my free downloads here: http://kennyweiss.net/resources/

    2. Seek trauma recovery

    We can’t get out of this on our own. In life, if we want to achieve anything, we have to take classes with a teacher to guide us.  We need someone who has the skills and tools that our parents never had to guide us along that journey. Find somebody and make that investment in yourself.

    Sadly, many people will define that as a cost and have many reasons or excuses to avoid this step, but what they’re avoiding is their worth and their recovery. They’re avoiding the ability to love themselves and the ability to love their own children or spouse or anyone else. Unless we pursue trauma recovery, we are severely limiting our life capabilities. I personally don’t see any o us as a “post.” I believe we are all worth the investment.

    3. Do grief work

    There are five stages of grief, right? Shock/denial, anger, bargaining, sadness/depression, and acceptance. Most people live their life in the first three stages. They don’t let in the weight of what they have experienced. That then expresses itself in anger, which manifests in poor relationships, being shut down, addictions, and similar things. Then with bargaining, they look for any excuse or reason not to do the work because they’re trying to avoid step number four, the sadness. Society tends to manipulate people into a false sense of nirvana when there’s really a lot more pain and dysfunction than we ever talk about or deal with. This is how we minimize the effect of what we experienced in childhood.

    This is why grief work is so important — it recognizes in all of us the part of ourselves we’ve neglected, our pain. Our denial of that pain is robbing all of us of true health. Instead, society keeps projecting the need for perfection when what we need to be dealing with is our imperfection. The day we learn how to heal our pain and imperfections is the day we start achieving acceptance and freedom.

    4. Stop the self-abuse

    Because of developmental trauma, we are all stuck in a cycle where we project perfection and hide imperfection. We need to rip off the band-aid and confront the denial of these imperfections. We do this by becoming an expert in our imperfections. When we can accept the deepest, darkest, most broken pieces of ourselves how could we not love ourselves? Do you see that when we can accept the most horrible thing that we never want anyone to know, it is proof of our self-love because we no longer care if others know? You can read more about this concept in my book, Your Journey to Success.

    5. You need to reparent yourself

    A narcissistic parent is immature; they never matured out of the narcissistic stage we all go through in early childhood development. So we need to learn how to parent ourselves. How do we do that? We need an expert. That’s part of why we have to hire somebody to help us with the trauma recovery. They also need to teach us what developmental deficiencies are. We need to use experts to help us become aware of them and essentially need to find a surrogate parent. That can be done through the use of support groups, coaches, counselors, and therapists. They become the trusted advisor we never had until we can become it for ourselves.

    So if you have been raised by a narcissistic parent, it’s incumbent on you now that you’re the adult to go heal yourself. I offer plenty of free content for those looking to heal on my free online magazine site, www.thegreatnessuniversity.com. It’s perfect for those who are in the discovery phase of the process and are ready to take action. There is plenty of content on self-love, codependence recovery, narcissism recovery, and more with options to watch videos, read, or a combination of the two. There are also a ton of free exercises to download.

    If you feel you are ready for the full process I would suggest looking for a trusted expert in the field to guide you along the journey of recovery. If you would like to learn more about all the different ways I help people which include online masterclasses, private groups, and private sessions, you may email me directly at kw@kennyweiss.net.

    Are you looking for more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!

    1- My Book, Your Journey To Success
    2- My Complete Emotional Authenticity Method
    3- My Perfectly Imperfect Private Group
    4- My Private Coaching

    Learn more here: