Journey to Becoming Whole

By Kristen Ober, MFT

A comprehensive workbook to help you break free of mental, emotional and spiritual blocks to happiness, using therapeutic techniques such as: The Emotional Freedom Technique, Mindful Meditation and Guided Journaling Exercises.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312344877

Book preview

Journey to Becoming Whole

Journey to Becoming Whole:

A comprehensive workbook to help you break free of mental, emotional and spiritual blocks to happiness, using therapeutic

techniques such as: Emotional Freedom

Technique, Mindful Meditation and Guided Journaling Exercises.

Kristen Ober, MFT

Copyright © 2014 by Kristen Ober

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, educators, and others. For details, contact the publisher at [e-mail].

ISBN: 978-1-312-34487-7

www.journeytobecomingwhole.com

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my father, through his death he uncovered the secret to a happy life. To my Reiki Master and spiritual teacher Anne Reith, PhD. For her phenomenal spiritual guidance and belief in my ability to overcome my limiting beliefs and lastly to my husband Chris and my two beautiful daughters, Grace and Abigail, who continuously love me, even when I forget my value. Thank you for being the windows to my soul.

Introduction

I wrote this workbook to offer effective, applicable solutions to an epidemic that I have witnessed in our society. The epidemic I am speaking of is at the base of every addiction I have treated, every eating disorder, every sexual addiction and every issue of codependency. This epidemic is at the base of divorces, unhappy families; it is at the root of self-harm, depression and anxiety. The epidemic I am speaking of is the loss of our true selves, the loss of our light and our disconnection from our birthright. It is our right as human beings to be unconditionally loved and accepted for who we are, despite the mistakes we have made.

I have worked as a psychotherapist for sixteen years and I have made a career out of helping people solve their problems. Throughout my journey as a psychotherapist, I have witnessed amazing self-discoveries, beautiful recoveries and triumphs. I have come to understand others as they began to understand themselves, and for this I am truly grateful. I have come to believe in the power of self-love but have also witnessed the destructive power of self-loathing. I did not however fully comprehend how negative beliefs about who we are at our core can literally kill us, until the death of my father in 2013.

I am second oldest of eight children; my father was a respected lawyer who was literally loved by everyone he met. He had a generous heart and a kind spirit. He was far from perfect but always accepted and forgiven his flaws because everyone that knew him could see how kind he was deep down inside. Everyone saw his inner light; everyone except for him. In the counseling world, there is a term commonly used to describe severe self-loathing: it is toxic shame. As I watched my father die just shy of his sixty-third birthday, I personally witnessed how toxic shame can be.

My father suffered a stroke in 2009, mainly affecting his frontal lobe. Our frontal lobe contains most of the dopamine-sensitive neurons in the cerebral cortex. The dopamine system is associated with reward, attention, short-term memory tasks, planning, and motivation. After my father had his stroke it became painfully obvious that one of the key motivating factors to his success was running away from his own belief about who he was. Without a functioning frontal lobe, my father was unable to continue working. It was painfully clear that without the ability to prove his worth by providing for others, he was lost. When he was unable to prove to himself that he was good by doing good for others, the truth about who he believed he was became overwhelming. He slipped further and further into depression and was unable to regain hope. He spent the last five years of his life terrified and ashamed, hiding from the world. In the summer of 2013, he suffered from complications of another disease he had, diverticulitis. The Mayo Clinic defines diverticulitis as: Diverticulitis (di-vur-tik-u-LI-tis) occurs when one or more diverticula in your digestive tract become inflamed or infected. Diverticula are small, bulging pouches that can form anywhere in your digestive system, including your esophagus, stomach and small intestine. However, they're most commonly found in the large intestine.

A complication of diverticulitis is when one of these pouches breaks through the intestinal wall, allowing fecal matter to travel into the blood stream. This is what happened to my father and his body became toxic. He was admitted to the hospital and put into a medically induced coma in hopes that he might be able to recover. As he lay dying for two days, it became crystal clear to me that he was going to die because he believed he had no worth.

In her groundbreaking book You Can Heal your Life, author Louise Hay explains how our beliefs and ideas about ourselves are often the cause of our emotional problems and physical maladies and how, by using certain tools, we can change our thinking and our lives for the better. (About the Author; www.louisehay.com/about-louise/). Her definitions for the physical issues that killed my father are:

Stroke: Giving up. Resistance. Rather die than change.

Rejection of life: Inflammation of the colon: a deep sense offear and worry of not being good enough.

Not everyone will agree with my perception of what killed my father, but my deep desire to understand why such a wonderful man left this earth so early has not only brought me peace but it has brought a deeper understanding and respect for how healing emotional wounds can heal our lives and the lives of people who love us.

My father’s death motivated me to dig deep and begin to explore how we can save ourselves from our past experiences and fears about our worth so we can begin to live life from a place of self-acceptance and joy instead of self-judgment and fear. This workbook will take you through a seven-week journey to help you retrieve pieces of your soul that have been buried by negative belief systems. It will enable you to purge and reprogram thoughts and subsequent emotional and behavioral patterns that are robbing you from living authentically.

You are provided daily journal exercises for your mind, daily Emotional Freedom Technique scripts that will enable you to re-wire your body’s energetic response to emotions. Lastly, you are given a daily meditation to reattach yourself to your soul. In order to experience the full benefit of this workbook, you will need to do the following. Purchase a journal that you use specifically for the exercises in this book; you will be writing in it daily. Plan time in the morning or evening