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TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR'S QUALIFICATIONS

The author, Jeannie Alvin, M.A., is uniquely qualified to write this. She lived through the discovery of this new type of healing, and then recognized that it was, in fact, a new path.

Jeannie had failed to heal for years in a number of healing methods, and had been told repeatedly that she was too damaged and was not healable. When she began to heal in only three 50-minute sessions a month, she knew that if she, as damaged as she was, could heal, a new door was opening for many others.

She later became a healing partner for others to fill their voids. She subsequently taught classes to practitioners, and documented their positive results a year later in her master's thesis. Her college papers, journals, and other work were copywritten in the Library of Congress beginning in 1980.

The author received a B.A.and an M.A. in Psychology from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont in 1983 and 1987, respectively.

She then became a healing partner as a counselor, then as a psychotherapist in Denver, Colorado. She periodically offered classes ranging from two to four hours to a weekend seminar. She gained state accreditation to offer a class to counselors who treated recovering alcoholics.

Now residing in  California, she is a member of Toastmasters, International, developing her public speaking skills to help promote her book and teach her healing path. She speaks fluent Spanish, and is learning French, so that she can speak to many people about healing in their own language.

GET THE LOVE YOU DESERVE

(How to Fill Those Voids Within)

by  Jeannie Alvin

available at www.inetworld.net/lovesource

jalvin@inetworld.net  your e-mail feedback is welcome!

c. 1996 by  Jeannie Alvin, Vista, California, USA. All rights reserved. No commercial use without written permission from author. International copyright claimed. You are free to reproduce this material, in whole or in part, provided you include this copyright notice.

To write to the author:

Jeannie Alvin, PMB # 70, 993-C S. Santa Fe Ave

Vista, CA, USA, 92083

GET THE LOVE YOU DESERVE

(How to Fill Those Voids Within)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

(note: page numbers from my word processing program may correspond with yours, so I left them in the TOC.)

PROLOGUE   1

1    MANY ROADS TO ROME           5

MY CROSSROADS - WHEN MY HEALING BEGAN 8

MISSING BUILDING BLOCKS, THOSE VOIDS WITHIN 11

CLUES IN ADULTS THAT POINT TO MISSING BUILDING BLOCKS IN INFANCY 13

GUIDE FOR HEALERS AND SEEKERS OF HEALING 15

MY LIFE PRIOR TO HEALING 19

MY LIFE AFTER SOME HEALING; FORGIVING 31

COMPASSION 33

IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO HAVE A GREAT CHILDHOOD 38

MISSING BUILDING BLOCKS IN OUR CULTURE 39

2    MY HEALING BEGINS! 43

HEALING OTHER PEOPLE BEGINS 52

POSSIBILITIES FOR HEALING OUR CULTURE 57

3     BUILDING A HUMAN BEING 62

FILLING THE BUILDING BLOCKS IN CHILDHOOD 62

THE SHORTCOMINGS IN OUR CULTURE 62

4     A VISION OF LOVE IN ACTION 75

THE HEALING PARTNER'S QUALITIES AND SKILLS 76

THE POWER OF THE HEALING PARTNER'S WORDS 80

DANGER OF DENIAL IN HEALERS 90

Note:  the following sections are in continuation page 1

5     WHAT LEAVES THE VOIDS WITHIN? 96

SATISFYING NEEDS IN CHILDREN

IN THE SIX STAGES OF CHILDHOOD 97

SATISFYING NEEDS IN CHILDREN FROM BIRTH TO SIX MONTHS 98

SATISFYING NEEDS IN CHILDREN FROM SIX TO 18 MONTHS 99

SATISFYING NEEDS IN CHILDREN FROM 18 MONTHS TO THREE YEARS 100

SATISFYING NEEDS IN CHILDREN FROM THREE TO SEVEN YEARS 100

SATISFYING NEEDS IN CHILDREN FROM SEVEN TO TWELVE YEARS 101

SATISFYING NEEDS IN CHILDREN FROM TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN YEARS 102

CLUES IN CHILDREN FROM BIRTH TO SIX MONTHS THAT INDICATE PROBLEMS IN EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 109

CLUES IN CHILDREN FROM SIX TO 18 MONTHS THAT INDICATE PROBLEMS IN EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 110

CLUES IN CHILDREN FROM 18 MONTHS TO THREE YEARS THAT INDICATE PROBLEMS IN EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 110

CLUES IN CHILDREN FROM THREE TO SEVEN YEARS THAT INDICATE PROBLEMS IN EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 111

CLUES IN CHILDREN FROM SEVEN TO TWELVE YEARS THAT INDICATE PROBLEMS IN EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 111

CLUES IN CHILDREN FROM TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN YEARS THAT INDICATE PROBLEMS IN EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 112

HOW VOIDS ARE CREATED FROM BIRTH TO SIX MONTHS 113

HOW VOIDS ARE CREATED FROM SIX TO EIGHTEEN MONTHS 118

HOW VOIDS ARE CREATED IN CHILDREN FROM 18 MONTHS TO THREE YEARS 118

HOW VOIDS ARE CREATED IN CHILDREN FROM THREE TO SEVEN YEARS 119

HOW VOIDS ARE CREATED IN CHILDREN FROM SEVEN TO TWELVE YEARS 120

HOW VOIDS ARE CREATED IN CHILDREN FROM TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN YEARS 121

CLUES IN ADULTS THAT SHOW VOIDS FROM BIRTH TO SIX MONTHS 121

CLUES IN ADULTS THAT SHOW VOIDS FROM SIX TO EIGHTEEN MONTHS 121

CLUES IN ADULTS THAT SHOW VOIDS FROM 18 MONTHS TO THREE YEARS 123

CLUES IN ADULTS THAT SHOW VOIDS FROM THREE TO SEVEN YEARS 123

CLUES IN ADULTS THAT SHOW VOIDS FROM SEVEN YEARS TO TWELVE YEARS 124

CLUES IN ADULTS THAT SHOW VOIDS FROM TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN YEARS 125

SATISFYING CHILDHOOD NEEDS FROM BIRTH TO SIX MONTHS IN ADULTS 126

SATISFYING CHILDHOOD NEEDS FROM SIX TO 18 MONTHS IN ADULTS 129

SATISFYING CHILDHOOD NEEDS FROM 18 MONTHS TO THREE YEARS IN ADULTS 130

SATISFYING CHILDHOOD NEEDS FROM THREE TO SEVEN YEARS IN ADULTS 132

SATISFYING CHILDHOOD NEEDS FROM SEVEN YEARS TO TWELVE YEARS IN ADULTS 133

SATISFYING CHILDHOOD NEEDS FROM TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN YEARS IN ADULTS 134

6    THE POSSIBILITY OF CREATING A NEW MENTAL STRUCTURE 140

STATEMENTS THAT CAN CREATE NEW MENTAL STRUCTURE 153

7     EMOTIONS, THE ATMOSPHERE IN WHICH WE LIVE 157

WHAT ARE EMOTIONS? 161

WHAT DO EMOTIONS TELL US?  166

EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS ARE NOT CAUSED BY EMOTIONS 171

INNOCENT WISHES ARE LINKED TO EMOTIONS  172

HOW TO HELP OTHER PEOPLE'S ANGER DISAPPEAR 175

THE POWER OF PRETEND 178

PHASES OF THE HEALING PROCESS  185

PERSECUTOR, RESCUER, AND VICTIM, THE DRAMA TRIANGLE 194

REQUESTS AND DEMANDS 200

8    ADVANCED LISTENING SKILLS 204

PRACTICE FOR INTIMACY 212

HEALING WITH EMOTIONAL RELEASE 213

Note:  the following sections are in continuation page 2

9     RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE RECEIVING PARTNER 226

SAFETY GUIDELINES FOR RECEIVING PARTNERS TO SELECT HEALING PARTNERS 226

SAFETY GUIDELINES FOR HEALING PARTNERS, LIMITS TO SET 230

THE SAFE USE OF PERSONAL POWER 235

BARRIERS FOR HEALING PARTNERS TO OVERCOME 235

10    SPIRITUAL GROWTH 239

WHAT IS LOVE? 240

11    EPILOGUE 252

OUR NATIVE ROOTS 252

DARE TO DREAM 255

NEW HORIZONS 258

Excerpts from my journal, "Coming Alive"   274

PROLOGUE

FAMINE OF THE HEART,

THE PLAGUE OF OUR TIMES

We have a famine in our world as serious in its destructive force as the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. It is devastating the lives of rich and poor, old and young, educated and uneducated. Our famine is emotional starvation, observable through all walks of life. While emotional starvation does not cause all problems, it is the root cause of much of the misery that permeates our culture and our world.

The famine in Ethiopia left death. Emotional starvation in our homes, our schools, our businesses, our social programs, our local and national governments, leaves not only the dead, victims of drive-by shootings, gang warfare, drug abuse, suicide and other tragedies. It also leaves the living dead, from whom we avert our gaze. They may shuffle past us on the streets, beg for money in front of the grocery stores, or silently go about their work in our offices, avoiding our eyes. It is now so blatant that it is getting hard for even the most determined to ignore signs of this famine. It is a famine of the heart, the plague of our times.

My parents were affected by this famine. Their emotional starvation was the cause of my childhood abuse and misery. Much less emotional starvation than I endured can cause serious disruption in people's pursuit of happiness and well-being. Yet a wide range of people, from desperately miserable and dysfunctional as I had been, to healthy and functioning people, have benefitted from techniques and experiences similar to the ones that helped me.

Most people have at least an occasional sense of being trapped by life's circumstances. It may occur with the birth of a handicapped child, poverty, the loss of a loved one, or being in the wrong job. In a myriad of ways, life's circumstances can appear to be insurmountable. Carma Lord is a 49 year old woman who felt this way. She had just received the shattering knowledge that her difficulties in the past years were caused by multiple sclerosis. Her reaction to this event expresses poignantly how many of us feel when life seems to trap us.

Carma's beautiful poem speaks to our hearts. We all can identify some times when we have felt like we were trapped, with no way out.

I escaped the trap of the unhappy life that my abusive childhood had created. My subsequent healing raises questions for politics and governments, therapies, social agencies, schools, jails, and most important, for child-rearing practices and child-rearing support systems. While healing emotional starvation will not solve all problems, it will solve some, and help many people.

My intention is that the lessons people learn from my struggles and solutions will help create personal change. With enough personal changes in our culture, political and social changes can occur. Perhaps then the famine of the heart plaguing our times will only be something our grandchildren read about in history books.

Have you ever reached a crossroads in your life, where looking back, you did some things and experienced some things that changed your life forever?

Many people are searching for intimacy. Could many of the keys to intimacy be found in pre-schools? Can adults experience something so profoundly simple and have their lives work better? Will they have the courage to request and try it?

There is a golden thread of truth that runs through all religions, through the teachings of all of the great masters, through what is great and profound in education, in love, through whatever really works in all areas of our lives. This truth is often very simple and has great power. The experiences that healed me after I reached my crossroads were also very simple and powerful. They got me out of the trap of my life circumstances. They bring early childhood education out of the halls of academia and pre-schools, into psychology, education, churches and temples. I want to share my experiences with integrity. I know that my search for love and intimacy, and my discoveries, have something in common with all humans, and have the potential to help others.

The experiences that healed me were those seen in day-care homes and in pre-schools. The profound difficulty I had when I needed to eat, and chronic low energy were ameliorated in great degree by being held by a warm person and drinking from baby bottles. My inability to experience any degree of intimacy was healed by being held and being truly listened to by a person who allowed me to become dependent. The torturous events of my infancy and childhood were healed to some degree by my regained ability to feel the emotions associated with past events, after I had experienced enough support to be able to face them. I gained support for living through the days outside of the healing sessions with a new mental structure that I created from powerful statements from my healing partners.

Why doesn't our world work better? Sometimes it seems that most humans grow up in dysfunctional families. It is certainly true that most of us have voids, or holes, in the continuum of development that began at our birth, or even before. When we are over-stressed, or lose someone we love, we can fall into those holes and experience the worst pain of our lives. My holes and traumas were extreme, but pain is pain, and when we hurt, we all hurt in similar ways. We may behave in a variety of ways as we react to our pain. Still, the underlying pain that I feel when I hurt is the same pain that you feel when you hurt.

I may or may not have had more holes to fall into than you have, and fewer tools to dig myself out, yet on my path toward healing I discovered how to fill in those voids. I was told by numerous psychiatrists and psychologists that these voids could not be filled.

The doors for filling voids in a gentle and natural way were not opened until I discovered them, because the healing professions had no answers for me, nor for anyone else on a quest for filling in the voids. The psychiatrists and psychologists treat the effects and symptoms of those voids. I learned how to remove the cause.

I also learned many tools for alleviating the pain. The more I learned, the more connected I became to myself and other people, and to Spirit, to God, that higher power.

I was as emotionally unhealthy as a person can be and remain alive. I now have loving, close relationships. My friends tell me that I am a gift in their lives, as they are in mine. I take so naturally to the ability I now have to attract good people to me. I am able to read the signs of trouble, and usually stay away from mean or untrustworthy people.

I reached my major crossroads in 1979. I was too miserable to continue in the direction I had been going. I was thirty-three years old, divorced, the single parent of a four year old, and deeply depressed. I wished I were dead, but I wouldn't kill myself because I knew my suicide would irreparably harm my son.

Sometimes a child becomes a great motivator for a parent. My child's needs spurred me on to try again to heal after each failure.

I was diagnosed as having zero prognosis for recovery, and for living. I did not believe those professional opinions, although in retrospect they were correct in terms of professional knowledge at that time, and for the most part, today as well.

This is a new path that has not yet reached most helping professionals. This is a path of healing the cause, rather than treating the effects, which are the symptoms. My belief that I could heal played an important role in my forging this new path and my consequent healing.

My diagnosis was labeled, and I was considered to have  no chance of healing. The use of these labels caused me additional pain that I did not need.  Also, the use of this label towards me served professionals only enough for them to tell me that I was not healable.

The use of that diagnosis as a descriptor of me was dehumanizing. The use of these labels always coincided with a denial of me as a thinking person, as a partner in my own healing. The people labeling me in this way never included any acknowledgement that I was a highly intelligent person with dreams and ambitions, with gifts inside that I wanted to develop and give. Like everyone, I wanted to live a full life. Those who labeled me were also outspoken in their opinions that I had little future, little to give, and they certainly were not interested in my thoughts.

Almost everyone experiences feelings of isolation. Almost everyone experiences the desire for more intimacy, to feel understood, to be acknowledged and accepted, to truly feel loved. In those intensely quiet and honest moments when you are reflecting deeply on your life, when you look back at where you have been, and forward to where you want to go, do you not long for more of these experiences? The longings that we feel at times like this are pointers to what is possible, and clues to missing building blocks.

Almost all adults have missed receiving at least a few building blocks of childhood on their path of development. With some simple methods of returning to that place on the pathway where something is missing, we can get our unmet needs satisfied, and fill in those missing building blocks, even if we are many years removed from childhood.

The people that we call mentally ill only have more missing building blocks and fewer or no tools to dig themselves out of holes than the average person. As for the chemical imbalances for which the mentally ill are treated, some of those imbalances are the result of emotional starvation. Those will be alleviated when the tremendous voids are filled in. If you check the chemical balance of the people in Ethiopia who are starving, and then check it again when they are fed regularly, I venture to say that their body chemistry would be awry when starving, and return to normal when not starving. There is a parallel. Many of the chronically mentally ill are emotionally starving. Missing building blocks of infancy, which the mentally ill usually are missing, are the building blocks of love and trust. They are starving for infant love. Many can be healed. The drugs with which many are treated can have serious long-term side effects, and only alleviate symptoms.

If you want an easy way to guess what the emotional age of a person is, look at their behavior and functioning. Ask yourself what age baby or child exhibits that behavior. The chronically mentally ill often have difficulty feeding themselves, bathing and grooming themselves, and maintaining the adult functions of creating a home and working. What age baby or child cannot feed or groom itself? A small infant cannot feed or take care of itself. Of course an infant cannot work or create a home. Do you know adults who have temper tantrums, and want everything their own way, and want what they want right now? Does this remind you of a toddler in the "terrible two's?"

Everyone, doctors and lawyers, bricklayers and waitresses, was once an infant. For many of us, much happened that interrupted the experiences of bonding, love, emotional, intellectual and spiritual development in infancy or later in childhood.

When we don't develop in these needed ways, a small inner part of us remains waiting, undeveloped, longing for these needs to be met. When the voids are small, the disruptions in a life that is fulfilling in love and work and contribution to others are minor. Yet a lack of intimacy may be the exorbitant price paid for that small missing building block. When the voids are great, the disruption in one or more of these major areas of our lives is also great. People who have difficulty functioning in the adult world of work, adult relationships, and contributing to others are likely to be suffering from large voids in the building blocks of their infant or childhood development.

  Clues in adults that point to missing building blocks in infancy

There are clues in adults that indicate missing building blocks. If you discover that you are missing a building block, do not be overly concerned. You are only missing an experience that you can choose to recoup, even years after the original missing or traumatic experience.

Following are clues that indicate missing infant building blocks, those from the first six months to a year after birth, in adults:

1. Thinking back to your own childhood, did you feel loved? (Not

did you know it, but did you feel it?) Do you consider your mother to be a warm and loving person? Your father? Did you consider yourself close to them? If you answered no to any of these questions, you may be missing an important developmental building block from infancy.

If you answer "yes" to the following questions, you may have a missing building block from infancy:

2. Do you have difficulties with food? Do you feel hunger as a signal in your stomach that you need to eat, or do you eat according to the clock? Do you get dizzy or have a headache, or eat for some reason other than a signal from your stomach? You do not feel a hunger signal in your stomach, and a stomach signal of fullness after eating.

3. Do you feel that you never receive enough love, money, or possessions?

4. Your viewpoint of the world is that people are not okay, or they cannot be trusted.

5. You do not like to be touched, you find yourself isolated, or a loner; affection is not a part of your life.

6. You cannot easily identify what you want and what you do not want.

7. You often need to be in control, dominate, "be right," and are very critical and judgmental.

8. You are unable to experience pleasant sensations in your genital areas, or are hypoglycemic, or are an extremely "hyper" person who never slows down. If you suffer from eating disorders, feel pressure instead of emotions, have suicidal or homicidal plans or thoughts, feel helpless and inadequate, and feel dependent or fight to avoid feelings of dependency, if you use anger to avoid feeling fear, if you deny your needs and wants, if you are unable to be close and intimate with others, if you are obese, if you are unable to participate in the normal world of work, if you have been in a mental hospital, or a jail cell, you probably have missing building blocks from infancy.

How does a newborn baby experience love and how can adults re-create that experience? We can re-create the essential experiences for adults to recapture the unmet building blocks from infancy to adolescence. There are needs to be met in each of the six stages of infancy and childhood development from both a warm woman and a warm man. Anyone can miss receiving one or more of them in any stage. Clues that indicate missing building blocks in the stages of development beyond infancy will follow in other chapters of this book. Also, further chapters will explain how to fill the voids in adults from all of the ages and stages of childhood.

I don't know if I should classify what happened as I healed an educational experience, a therapy, a love experience, or a spiritual awakening. Carl Jung, one of the great masters of psychology, stated that every psychological problem is ultimately a matter of religion. In his book, Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore takes what he calls the Renaissance approach of not separating psychology from religion. In this book, I do not separate psychology, spirituality, or education. There are many educational and personal growth courses, and the experiences I had could conceivably fit the parameters that define these courses. And there are a myriad of ways that people find love. Before these experiences, I did not believe in God, although I remember wishing that I could at least have had that comfort. These experiences were a very unusual way to find love, but they worked for me. As I discovered love, in my own way, I found myself to be loved by God, and had some meaningful spiritual experiences. I've heard the old saying, "There are many roads to Rome." This was my road. Perhaps it will be yours. I've struggled for years with the question of how to label the experiences that changed my life from utter and complete misery to feeling good most of the time. So I will simply describe the healing and growth-enhancing experiences and the results.

After eight fruitless years of trying various therapies and healing methods, I finally found myself beginning to heal! As I began to heal, I was given two gifts at once.

I began, at last, to feel good sometimes and to connect to people for the first time in my life. That was gift number one. And simultaneously, I experienced a second gift.

As I made these gains, I knew, in the deepest part of myself, what aspects of the experiences could be meaningful and helpful to others. These impressions turned out to be true; they were to prove helpful to others. This knowing is sometimes called intuition or inner knowing.

I kept a journal, which I called "Coming Alive." Nine months after I began to heal, my healing partner asked me to join him in offering this to others, with favorable, sometimes dramatic results.

I later taught a short version of these important experiences to other facilitators. They were able to add aspects of this type of healing to their work.

People read the college paper I wrote in 1983 for my B.A. at Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont. In it I described this work, and compared it point by point with the harsh but similar process originating with Jacqui Schiff, who wrote All My Children, (a book, not the TV show!) Some wrote to me that they were inspired to try it after reading my college paper. I learned that other healers simply read my college paper and changed their therapy practice.

From experiencing and "knowing" that this was a repeatable path for others, I proved scientifically that it is. First I offered it to others, and documented the positive results in a college paper. Then I taught it to other healers, who were able to achieve positive results without my presence in the healing sessions. That is documented in college papers, as well.

So I decided to write my experiences in as clear a way as possible, knowing that many professionals will be able to simply read this material and begin to offer it to clients. Other people, in need of healing like I was, will be able to use this book as a guide in requesting healing experiences from people untrained in this new path. I believe that many, from the emotionally healthy, to those people like me, with glaring gaps in emotional health, will find it to be their own "Road to Rome."

I will briefly discuss my own life prior to my crossroads experience, so that the reader has some idea of the long road I traveled, and how very much I was helped. My point with sharing my story is to show that anyone, no matter what the damage, can heal.

I sometimes forget that my life was almost the complete opposite of what it is now. As nice as I tried to be, no one used to like me. Few treated me well. I found mostly abusive people with whom to relate, people who would hurt me more. Physically I was toothpick thin, stiff and rigid. My movements were stiff and awkward. My voice was flat, like a computer verbalization. I looked like the "walking dead" that I nearly was. I was horrendously lonely and life was more painful than I could stand.

From the small glimpse of my childhood that I share in the next few pages, you may be able to sense the misery, hopelessness, joylessness and lovelessness that was my life for thirty-three years. You may see how the relatively simple experiences that will be described later in this book could be so important to someone having such a background. You may also see why such a background left tremendous voids.

To go from a life of hell to a real life is possible. Also, for you to go from a good life to a great life is possible. Perhaps you are one of the loving people who will give an hour or two of your week to someone whose needs are as great as mine were. You will then give someone else a life worth living, and help reverse the tragedy of our times, this famine of the heart.

My story is a very happy ending to a tragic story. It is one of triumph over very difficult odds. This could not have happened without the grace of a few loving people who opened their hearts and arms and ears to me in love and sympathy.

I've been asked how I can remember incidents from early childhood and infancy. Some were related to me by relatives, neighbors, and family friends. Others surfaced in cathartic emotional release sessions, years after healing began, when I was finally able to begin facing the hurts perpetrated on my body, and begin to tolerate the feelings of pain and hurt, terror and rage. Sometimes I experienced intense feelings in the healing sessions. Impressions of what happened would surface. I also had revealing dreams. I've grown to believe that we contain a record of everything that has happened to us in our mind and bodies.

Readers who wish to skip the stories of the torture and abuse that I suffered may omit the indented sections describing them. If you are very sensitive, or for any reason wish not to read descriptions of profound pain and suffering, I suggest that you skip ahead beyond the indented sections to the regular paragraphs.         SKIP

Before beginning to heal, I remembered nothing of my childhood except being kicked out of the house at age seventeen. As I began to heal, I remembered these events gradually as the amnesia about my whole childhood began to lift.

I was an honor student, always at the top of my classes. Because I was one of the top twelve juniors in our class rank, I was awarded the distinction of "Junior Escort."

I was attending the practice session for my part in the seniors' graduation ceremony. When I arrived home from school that day I found all my belongings scattered on the front lawn, and was locked out.

There had been no threats of such a dire consequence, although with my sister away at college, I had found it increasingly difficult to avoid my mother. Our contact, never good, had deteriorated.

I became suicidal that day, but decided to wait to kill myself until I was twenty-one. I thought I should be grown up to make such a large decision. The thought that I should be dead would not leave my mind until I reached that crossroads at age thirty-three.

The constant thoughts of suicide left me drained of energy. I now unconsciously feared success as the success of my junior escort experience became associated for me with becoming homeless and losing all my important relationships and my belongings. I already feared almost everything about myself and others, and now feared success.

My parents told me many details about my infancy. They did so casually and sometimes proudly. They had solved a problem for themselves. They seemed to have no idea of the traumas they inflicted on me. They were young, immature, very ill-equipped even to deal with each other, much less a brood of children. They had children in a time before psychotherapy was readily available to people, and before it became a popular subject in the culture, as it has during the last fifteen years or so in the United States.

For as long as I can remember, my mother and father were at war with each other. There were daily screaming battles, every time my father arrived home. I would wait in dread, hoping that violence would not occur. My father is a cold, emotionless, domineering man, sneering when challenged, with a need to totally control. He is also highly intelligent, ambitious, and charming when things go his way. He always is certain that he alone is right, with a complacent assumption of his superiority over others. He berates most normal and natural desires and all emotional expression as "irrational."

My mother is emotional to an extreme, often during my childhood, out of control. She attempts to totally control others by her emotional outbursts. She is also very intelligent, energetic, ambitious, and charming when she gets what she wants.

Both of my parents are college graduates, professionals. Many parents consciensciously do the best that they can. My parents both were too self-centered to think of anyone but themselves. Both my father and mother were pampered children of very dysfunctional families. Both expected to get their way, due to a childhood where their needs and demands were fulfilled without regard for other people's needs. In addition, they did not realize that they had almost nothing to give emotionally, and unknowingly passed their unresolved pain on to their children. I believe in the combination that they created together, these two people were worse parents than either might have been alone or with another partner. The abusive discipline they used was to get me to start or stop doing something. They apparently gave little or no thought to the effects on me of their harshness.

They both left great gaps of neglect and deprivation when they were not disciplining. My parents' acts of abuse were quickly forgotten by these two young people in their twenties, who had no adequate tools for childrearing, lack of emotional support, and financial difficulties. Unfortunately the result to me was a shutting down and closing off of everything about myself other than my mind.

However,it is important to show a more complete picture of them than abusive parents. Those harsh acts were, for them, a few moments in a few years of their lives. They have also done many kind, generous and fine things and have many accomplishments. From my earliest memories, both parents acknowledged my intelligence and potential. They enrolled me in childhood programs such as the Girl Scouts and many others, which greatly enhanced my learning as a child. I am glad that they each have found happiness with other partners in their old age.

As a newborn baby, I was my father's special baby. To help me be strong in life and to fight dangerous emotions, he instructed my mother not to go to me when I cried. She was to play the radio or turn on the vacuum cleaner, and only go to me when I became quiet. This certainly destroyed any opportunity for bonding that might have begun between my mother and me.

After years and years of healing, when I could tolerate the feelings, I experienced the pain of starving as a newborn. It felt like snakes biting me on the inside. Later, my grandmother told me that when she visited our house, when I was an infant, she often found me naked,lying in my own puddles on a cold wooden floor. My mother didn't want to bother with diapers.

Another memory surfaced from this time. I was sexually stimulated, and then fingers were inserted into me. The memory of great pain in that area returned in my healing. I have the uncomfortable conscious memory of my mother's odd comment to me, "You were a hot baby!"

At approximately nine months to a year old, when I could toddle around, I began to scream regularly when my father left for work. I tried to catch him to keep myself safe. When he left, I was burned by cigarettes and bitten by my mother, in addition to being starved.

More training on fighting those dangerous feelings was to come! My parents prepared a tub of cold water, and had it waiting. When I screamed for my daddy, he returned. They picked me up and dunked me under the cold water. They pushed me back under every time I came up screaming. I finally came up quiet, unconscious. I thought my parents were killing me. My mother told me that my voice immediately changed that day, from a high-pitched one to a low one.

This has been a very difficult trauma to recuperate from in my healing. I have only recovered in part. In many sessions I remembered bits and pieces of the trauma, and little by little experienced the life-threatening terror that was too much for a baby to feel.

The memories of being burned and bitten surfaced in therapy. The words, "Don't burn me, don't bite me," came out of my mouth, again and again, with tears, and me screaming "No,no!" And again, "Don't burn me, don't bite me."

After several sessions like this, I told my therapist that I knew my mother was disturbed, but I had a hard time believing that she would burn me, although I remembered her biting my younger brothers, to teach them not to bite each other. That very week, a relative confided that Mom had confessed, "Don't tell anyone, I regret this, but when the girls were little I'd get so angry I'd bite them."

Obviously both she and my father were very disturbed emotionally to have done these things and the other cruel acts that punctuated a long and joyless childhood, culminating with a total abdication of parental responsibility when my mother kicked me out of the house at age seventeen. What was done to them in their infancy and early childhood, to perhaps pass on cruel acts from which they hadn't healed? And perhaps even more to the point, what wasn't done for them in their infancies and childhood years? What were their voids? What parenting was missing, or what was done to my mother to create a human who could act in such uncontrolled frenzy? What was done, and what was missing, for my father to be so totally emotionless and insensitive that he could design acts of starvation and drowning, and perpetrate them upon an infant?    SKIP AGAIN

At age four and a half I stopped talking. I could only whisper. This resulted from being given an enema with an adult-sized quantity of water. I remember how it began. First I was put on the kitchen table, lying on my back. Then the table leaf on the side was put up, squeezing my arm in horrible pain. Then I was held still while too much water was forced into me. Now every part of my body had been invaded.

After that I could only whisper. This old reaction continues to appear on those now rare occasions that I am over-stressed. In those times I whispered or cannot talk.

I also remember at about age five, my father saying, as he waited to "gain self-control" before spanking, that he spanked me on my thighs as he had learned that he wouldn't break my legs by hitting me there. While he waited to gain his self-control, he held me over his knees with my panties down. I waited in terror for him to hit, as he droned on about how great he was to have such control.

At this same age, I remember when my parents daily war became violent. My daily fear was of this sort of ferocity surfacing in their daily screaming and belittling matches. This day my sister and I were huddled at the end of the kitchen counter in terror. We were unable to escape as we would have had to cross the battle zone. My dear sister, only about six years old herself, tried to protect me as best she could. My parents were throwing dishes at each other and breaking everything. When they stopped, even their eyeglasses were broken. A while after the battle, I remember sitting on my father's lap, and hearing intense silence, and pointed out the pretty bubbles floating by. I escaped the feelings of terror that I could not tolerate by hallucinating.

The rest of my childhood was interspersed with abuse. I had so little sense of self that I was seven years old before I said "I" to refer to myself. School and learning became a safe and rewarding haven for me. I always learned very quickly and read voraciously. In high school I took the PSAT tests, and scored in the 99th percentile in most areas.

I covered the bruises on my upper thighs from the girls in my gym class, having a great fear of crying if anyone noticed. The bruises were from one hard slap of my father's hand. At first welts raised up around the edges of his finger marks, and a purple bruise in the shape of his hand appeared. These bruises took about three weeks to completely disappear, turning from an initial dark purple to yellow as they faded.

My life after some healing; forgiving

Before healing, I hated and feared my parents, and hid my whereabouts from them. After years of healing I forgave my parents, as I realized that I had received more love and understanding and tenderness in my healing than my poor parents may have received in their whole lives. Having been asked how I could forgive my parents, I looked back at myself prior to any healing. I, better than anyone I have met, know what it is like being so incapable of expressing the love I felt for my son, due to my severe blocking of my emotions. I remember that I loved him just the same, but I also ached because I could see how my mistakes and inabilities in expressing love were hurting my son. And I certainly knew how it felt to hurt.

I spoke to my dad twice about these horrendous incidents. I told him that just the one incident in the bathtub had cost me many years of relationships with people, because I was afraid of everyone.

That and other incidents had cost me at least twenty years of my adult life, as every spare penny went for therapy. It cost me the time and money that other people spend on the normal material pleasures of our culture. A nice car, a house, vacations, nice clothes, spending money, all were beyond my reach. All my spare financial resources went for healing.

I was committed that I would not pass on a loveless, friendless, joyless and hopeless life to my son. Thank God I succeeded. We both now have love, friends, joy and hope in our lives, although we both still have many shortcomings due to my history.

My father was very sad when I told him this. He was then in his late sixties, I in my late forties. We finally spoke to each other and felt close. We shared our feelings of love. He had initiated this conversation by saying that he had been scared to death of his father. He said that he hoped he hadn't been that way for his children. I told him that unfortunately we had been scared to death of him, and mentioned how the bathtub incident had crippled me emotionally, for all these years. In a broken voice he whispered that he was sorry. We spoke a second time of these sad acts. Then he said that this was too painful a subject for him to discuss further. He said he had done the best he could. I said I knew he had. By this time I fully realized how little my parents had to give emotionally, and the sad fact that the very little they gave me was truly all they had to give. They weren't intentionally withholding any emotional gifts.

By this time I realized how little my parents had received emotionally from their own upbringing. I had some compassion for them, as I know how difficult it can be to go through life with so few internal resources.

A number of years after my healing sessions, I now felt good most of the time. So I decided to give my parents my unconditional love as a gift. I actually relate more to my mother now than to my father, but I see them both, and we share our love. Now that I don't need my mother to give me anything, she has been extremely generous to me. I very much appreciate her gifts as acknowledgement of the love that has grown between us. I thank God that they are still living, and that we have gotten to this point in our relationships while they are still alive.

My son is now twenty-one, a young man. I succeeded in my goal to have the family lineage of abuse stop with me. He is a warm, loving, easy-going person. His sixth grade teacher said he was the warmest person she had ever met. That's pretty great, considering that until he was four, he had a totally cold mother. As I got warmth from my healing partners, he got it from me. His opinion of his childhood is that it was fine, and he wouldn't change a thing. When I point out glaring gaps in areas where I lacked the tools and the emotional building blocks to meet his needs, he is very pragmatic, and says he's fine. He says that I couldn't help what I didn't have. He has a very generous heart. He continues to be a gift in my life.

By now you realize how much I had been hurt. I have healed, and am still healing, not perfectly, and not from everything. Healing will be ongoing with me for my whole life. Since life keeps getting better as I heal, and I know how, why stop?

My father didn't realize why he thought it was so important to teach me not to cry. But his mother, my grandmother, confided in me that as a tiny infant he was smothered with a pillow by his father who tried to stop his crying. In addition, perhaps tragedies that are too painful for people to deal with emotionally are passed on unconsciously to children. The tragedies on my father's side of the family were one sudden death by drowning, and another death by being horribly, accidentally burned.

On my mother's side, one tragedy was a grandmother being placed in an orphanage as a child, where she went hungry. She went searching for food in garbage cans. She was bitten by dogs and rats competing for the same food scraps.

My major childhood traumas involved hunger, bites, burns, and almost drowning, reflections of those family tragedies. Is this coincidence? Or do we need to have more compassion and offer more support to victims of tragedies? Our culture is not concerned with offering much emotional support. Do we not tend to blame victims, rather than offering support? Notice our culture's attitude toward the homeless, many of them obvious victims of lack of the building blocks of childhood.

After reading this, you may feel blame and anger towards my parents for the hurts they inflicted on me. I certainly did until I had healed enough to let it go. But can you also see that they had been hurt? Can you also feel compassion for them, knowing that they've lived to an old age with unhealed traumas and great unfulfilled voids? And in spite of the fragility caused by the emotional wounds and great voids that she carries, my mother has the courage to bless my sharing of some of her darkest moments so that others can heal. Would you have her courage?

My hope is that you will be able to see possibilities for healing other hurt people, yourself included. I hope that you will also learn compassion for people who hurt people. I heard many people's life histories during a long internship for my training as a counselor. I learned that people who warped themselves always did so in order to survive when they were children. We all unconsciously leave a trail of hurt people behind. I have hurt people. You have hurt people. We have hurt the ones we love and those we don't love. We've hurt our friends. We've hurt our co-workers. We've hurt strangers. If we could look back on our path and see who we've hurt, each one of us, you and I, would see a trail of hurt bodies, minds and spirits, going back into the far distance. So let us not judge others. There's a very wise old Indian saying that before we judge, we should walk in the other person's moccasins. If you can begin to suspend your judgement of others, knowing that there are reasons beyond your awareness for their actions, that in itself will be a great step in growth for you.

Prior to some filling of the tremendous voids within me, I was unable to benefit from therapies, personal growth courses, or religion. After some of the voids had been partially filled, I was able to learn and grow from all of those.

One of the gifts of the lovely healing experiences I had is that I no longer consider myself to have had an unhappy childhood. Yes, I had those awful experiences, then had the wonder and beauty of a very happy childhood starting at age thirty-three!

Some answers will be found within these pages for people committed to making a difference for the chronically mentally ill. What about alcoholics, drug addicts, and incest victims? Since holes can be filled in, it may take people with more holes longer to do the job, but it is possible. When many healthy people offer this type of healing, there will be many creative variations of this new path. Then our world can better heal the famine of the heart suffered by our needy people in such great numbers.

I am sharing my experiences to teach the possibilities of this new way of healing for people committed to giving to others, and for those in need of healing. I hope to inspire you to believe, in spite of whatever obstacles you have to overcome, that you can succeed in reaching your goals of healing or offering healing. I want to offer the gifts I was given to others, and to illustrate the power and the simplicity of these experiences.

There appears to be a need for healing in many of our professions. Some people in our culture who need help are not receiving it because of a lack of money. Money is an exchange of energy. Let's make it a fair exchange.

In the old days, farmers used to pay what they could, often a basket of vegetables and a chicken. Today, sometimes medical treatment costs the whole farm!

This greed bespeaks of an unhealthy area in the psyche of some people, a missing building block from infancy, that there is never enough money, love, possessions. More money, more zeroes in the bank account, another degree, another car will not fill those voids within.

Many people are not like this. Today in the obituary section was a lovely tribute to Dr. Arnold A. Ariaudo, a dentist for 60 years. When he began his dental career in 1934, he studied Spanish in order to better serve the farm workers. These workers were on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. He charged them on a sliding scale, taking only what they could afford. Sometimes that was lettuce, melons, potatoes or rhubarb.

The healers I now work with to complete my healing are treating me free of cost. They will continue to work with me until I am fully healed. They will not stop working with me for any reason. I believe this to be a spiritual reward for my lifelong commitment to healing, and the tremendous efforts I put forth to be healed.

A spiritual aspect of trade and commerce is that it is another opportunity for us to learn to give and receive, equitably and fairly. With a desire to fully experience giving and receiving, we can learn to give as we receive, by our attitude and sincere appreciation of gifts we are given. We can also learn to receive as we give, experiencing the pleasure of giving, and seeing the benefits that our gifts offer another person. When we have plenty, it is time to share. When we need, it is time to accept.

My childhood was truly a horror. But an even greater horror lies beyond my personal trials and misfortunes, or those of any one person. It is the horror stories and the missing building blocks that caused them, that lie like a gaping collective wound at the core of the famine of the heart in our culture.

If someone were to interview all of the people who have been suicidal, people who have been in mental hospitals or who are in jail cells, we would discover that a great percentage of these people have equally horrid childhood histories, with many missing building blocks of childhood.

Of those who don't have a childhood history of horror, how many have a history of absent parenting? How many people basically had to raise themselves? If this survey were done, many people would begin to get a sense, as I have, of understanding with compassion, although not condoning the wrong actions of these people.

I understand that it is hard to function in the adult world when childhood building blocks and tools for problem-solving are missing. Can you see that the more a person is missing, the harder it is for them to function?

As time goes by, I hope that more and more people gain understanding with compassion. When many decide to commit time, love, emotional support, understanding, and the filling of voids to as many people as possible, we will be able to reverse the famine of the heart that is the plague of our time.

We can only end a famine of the heart by a giving of the heart, and from the heart, many times over. We must reach the point of being able to give just because it is needed, as a service, and not for any other reward than the satisfaction of giving.

Bibliography and Resources:

All My Children, by Jacqui Lee Schiff, c. 1970, Jove Publications, Inc. NY.

The story of Jacqui Lee Schiff's discovery of the hungry baby inside young schizophrenic people.

Care of the Soul, by Thomas Moore, c. 1992, HarperCollins Publishers, NY,NY.

A glimpse of the depth and sacredness in our everyday lives.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MY HEALING BEGINS!

HEALING OTHER PEOPLE BEGINS

POSSIBILITIES FOR HEALING OUR CULTURE

Perhaps you realize that you may have a few voids of your own that you could fill. So now I'll share with you a glimpse of how I began to fill my voids and began to heal. In the succeeding chapters I will include clues in adults to help you pinpoint areas of potential voids and potential growth in the remaining five stages of infancy and childhood. I will also detail how adults can fill any voids in the six stages of infant and childhood development. In addition, I will point out clues to voids in children.

The ages and stages of childhood have been observed and described by psychologists from Freud to Piaget to Erick Berne. Each stage has its own needs, and a child in each stage differs in his perception of himself and the world. This is the reason why adults with voids in the various stages of childhood have different viewpoints of reality. A person with voids in infancy will see an unsafe world, full of hurtful people who cannot be trusted. A person with early needs filled will see the same world as safe, and easily find trustworthy people with whom to relate.

The needs for parenting children varies in each of the six ages and stages of childhood. So naturally, filling those unmet needs in adults returning to those different ages and stages will vary according to the age and stage being addressed. Love needs vary with each stage. Love to a baby may be the timely response to a cry, being fed while being tenderly held in warm arms, and bonding very closely. In another stage the need may be for exploration. In one stage the need may be for totally positive, nonjudgemental attention, while in another the need may be for some correcting of behavior. Getting the love you deserve will vary in content and form as adults, as well as children, grow and heal.

I realized that my childhood and infancy needs

were grossly unsatisfied. I became aware that the satisfaction of those needs would lead me to a life with love and easier and more successful functioning in the world.

Jacqui Lee Schiff's discovery of a "hungry baby" inside of her schizophrenic clients, and her decision to give these people a second chance for a healthy childhood, opened the door to healing severe problems. However, in her efforts to heal, she mistakenly believed that the way for hurt people to open was to use pain as a tool to break their defenses. (I discovered, to the contrary, that defenses come down when the environment is safe enough.) Her harsh treatment methods alongside of offering baby bottles and other childhood experiences appealed to few psychologists or clients, and only healed a few people. However, she is the true pioneer of this style of healing. It is indisputably her discovery. The gentleness and powerful statements that I discovered are more effective. These are important and needed changes in the atmosphere and treatment, but Jacqui Lee Schiff correctly discovered the needy infant inside of the chronically mentally ill. She provided a starting point for developing a treatment offering repeatable, easily teachable healing when none existed before.

I had great gaps in my early needs. Many readers will not have these great gaps. Not everyone will need to be fed a baby bottle, as I needed. Some will have later childhood needs. Those people will need to play and ask questions. Some people will have voids in adolescence. Their needs will reflect the sophistication of the almost grown child. The clues that point to later childhood and adolescent needs are described in chapter five.

It was not easy to find someone to hold me and feed me a baby bottle. Psychologists and psychiatrists are trained not to touch clients and to avoid letting clients get dependent on them. But if I were to have a healthy return to "infancy" as an adult, that meant that I would need to be dependent. It took all my courage to ask people to hold me and feed me a baby bottle. It was not easy to ask. I feared ridicule, and was very embarrassed to reveal this need.

I met a man whose eyes and quiet voice and manner appealed to me. He was a "counselor," lacking the formal training of psychologists and psychiatrists. I will call him Sam, not his real name. Fortunately for me, Sam hadn't been strictly trained not to touch clients. He offered me a gentle form of "bodywork," using breathing exercises to free emotional blocks. Sam was also highly trained in emotional release work, which he said I might use at some point in the future. We agreed to meet three times a month for fifty minutes.

In the sessions, Sam had me lie down on a foam mattress and do some gentle breathing exercises. After a few minutes of this breathing work, during which my body began to tingle, I would sit up and talk about my life. Sam would simply listen to me.

This was an enormous change from the psychologists I had consulted before. For the first time, I experienced being listened to non-judgementally, being truly heard. I asked about the strange sensations that occurred during our breathing work. Sam said softly, "You are coming alive."

I told Sam of my harsh childhood, followed by the harsh therapy I pursued fruitlessly for eight years. I told him of those professionals' belief that pain, in the form of harsh verbal confrontations and long hours standing in a corner, would "break" my defenses. Sam said that he believed that gentleness was the key to my treatment.

Gentleness! The proponents of the harsh and confrontational treatment I had undergone told me that gentle methods had been tried and failed; that people like me were not helped by comfort.

I told Sam that I needed him to feed me baby bottles, and to be held in his arms like a baby. I told him of the great dependency that could develop. I don't remember if I told him about the possibility that I would regress into childhood, then grow up again with him providing the parenting. I knew that most of the healing was simply having a good infancy and childhood in a bond with new parent figures.

Sam had never heard of such treatment! Throughout his years of counseling, other clients had expressed yearnings to be held and fed, but no one had asked him for the actual experience until I did. He decided to venture into the unknown with me, and complied with many of my requests, if they "felt right" to him. Although asking for what I believed I needed was very hard at first, Sam was so kind that asking became easy! I soon progressed to demanding!

Sam agreed to continue seeing me three times a month for fifty minutes, hold me, feed me baby bottles, and continue the rest of the session as before, with breathing exercises and talking. Later, our contact expanded to include a brief phone call each evening. I kept a journal of my progress, which I called, "Coming Alive." Excerpts from my journal are in the appendix.

People who have fewer voids than I had are able to spend an hour or two a week in healing sessions acting as if they were very small children, then go on with the rest of their week and their lives as if they had just spent an hour or two with a friend. This type of healing experience causes no disruption in their lives, their unmet childhood needs get fulfilled, and their relationships and functioning improve.

But people whose early needs were grossly unsatisfied may regress almost completely, as I did. They will then very naturally progress from stage to stage until they are "grown up" again, this time healthier. I knew I was a thirty-three year old woman, but I also knew that I was a four and a half year old child! The woman faded into the background, and the child dominated my personality. Fortunately Sam had been a pre-school teacher before becoming a counselor! He had some years of practice using gentle methods to handle child-like behavior!

My friends were horrified at the changes in me! I had turned from a quiet, withdrawn, intelligent computer programmer into a sometimes loud woman who played at the beach all day. I was evicted from a restaurant for singing at the top of my lungs, off key, in the ladies' room. I had come in off of the beach to use their restroom.

My friends may have been horrified, but I knew I was healing! From the theories expressed in the eight years of harsh therapy I had undergone, I knew that most of what I needed to heal was for me to have the infancy and childhood that I was denied with my parents. I experienced "being a baby" in my three counseling sessions a month, and at home, where I fixed my own baby bottles. The rest of the time I played as a small child plays, for the first time in my life. I sent my son to be cared for by others, as I could not take care of him while I was regressed.

After a few weeks of sessions with Sam, I had a revelation. I realized that if the harsh but pioneering treatment could heal a few people, then these gentle experiences obviously were heralding a new treatment for many people. I was one of the most severely damaged clients to attend the Jacqui Schiff treatment, with the worst eating difficulties that she had ever seen. I had attended her treatment full time, but I did not heal. In fact, I left more damaged than when I arrived. If I could begin to heal in only three fifty-minute sessions a month, the door to the healing possibilities suddenly seemed to open wide. I had discovered a successful gentle version that the pioneers and practitioners of this type of treatment were sure didn't exist! Some of those very pioneers were quick to quietly adopt my gentler version after reading my college paper.

After nine months of healing sessions, of massive doses of comfort and wonderful listening, and attentive parenting from this loving man, my eating difficulties were greatly relieved. I felt good for the first time in my life, and was able to tolerate being angry, scared, and sad for short periods. Prior to this time, I thought "feeling good" was when no one was hurting me. I was beginning to connect with people in a way I never had before.

I shared my discovery of the gentle method of treatment with people who were familiar with Jacqui Schiff's "children." I visited the Eric Berne Seminar in San Francisco while I was still "a child," in 1979. I was thrilled to meet notables there such as Steve Karpman, who had defined the "drama triangle" of rescuer,persecutor, victim; and others who had been members of the seminar since the days when Eric Berne, the founder of the seminar, was alive. I was made a lifetime honorary member of the seminar.

HEALING OTHER PEOPLE BEGINS

After these initial nine months of a childhood, I "grew up" and became a co-counselor with Sam. He was intrigued by my progress in healing, and wanted my help in offering it to others.

During a long internship, Sam and I offered these experiences to clients in once-per-week sessions at a large clinic, with very good results.

Some of the most poignant memories of that time involve children. My son was six years old. We lived with a man, and my son asked him to be his daddy. The man opened his arms, and gathered my son into a hug. They bonded closely, and my son soaked up love and trust from him. Also, I now was able to give my son warmth. One day he playfully cried like a little baby, and said, "Waah, waah, I'm your angel baby." This brought tears to my eyes and goosebumps. During the first six weeks of his life I had called him angel baby. After that I had used another affectionate nickname. It was a clue to me that he was remembering and healing the voids of his infancy.

One male client was so rigid and stiff in his movements that the other clients called him "the puppet." Although very handsome, he was very stiff and mechanical. He occasionally brought his small three-year-old son along with him. Sam and I saw him for a year, doing the breathing exercises, holding him and offering a baby bottle, and listening to him. Then he joined a therapy group conducted by a doctor at the center.

A year later the doctor shared a letter from this client with us. He wrote that his little boy, now five years old, said, "When I was little, you couldn't take care of me. Go to the store and buy me some baby bottles and take care of me now." So he went to the store, bought some baby bottles, and let his son "be a baby."

This points to new possibilities for treating children. I once read of a foster home for difficult pre-school children. In the basement was a rocking chair, baby toys, and cribs. The children were told that they could go down there and "be a baby again" if they wanted to. Then they were held and cared for by a warm person. At first they avoided the basement, but eventually all were drawn to it. They were "babies again" as long as they wanted to be. All of the children benefitted, were no longer "difficult children," and adjusted well to new foster homes. I hope that the awareness that people get from reading this book creates a grass roots demand for people to get their baby and childhood needs satisfied. I hope that it gets easier to find people who will hold other adults and offer a baby bottle, warmth, unconditional listening, and other needs of childhood.

In the future I would totally regress to childhood two more times, each time taking a leap forward in healing. My personal relationships improved afterwards, although they suffered during each time I was regressed. My ability to function in the world around me was substantially less during the periods of regression, then improved greatly each time I "grew up."

I now have the skeletal structure of a healthy framework from which I relate to others, and enjoy my life. The damage from the severe abuse is so great that I will continue to heal my whole life. I still have some difficulties that impede me at times. I don't balance my energy well. I internally push myself, and seem unable to truly rest. When I attempt to work a normal eight-hour day, I collapse after two to three months. I still am not in a close relationship with a man. I have done more healing work regarding my mother than my father, and have more close relationships with women than with men.

Because of the magnitude and volume of the torturous and abusive acts perpetrated upon me, in addition to the glaring gaps in my emotional development, my progress towards complete healing is slower than that of most people. Once I typed a simple list of the abuse chronologically, with no details or story. The list went on for 18 pages, typed, double spaced. The abusive incidents that I shared in the previous chapter were only to give a glimpse of the damage I suffered, so that there is knowledge that all damage can potentially be healed.

I was fortunate because the first and most frequent feeling that I began to experience as I healed was feeling good and being able to receive love and warmth from others. Very gradually, I began to experience the emotions concerning the abusive incidents. Still later, I was able to express words and emotions towards pillows representing my parents in healing sessions. I grew in health and strength as I progressed, and as I continue to progress.

In the first weeks and months of my regression to childhood with Sam, I wanted to shout this good news from the rooftops, so that others like me could begin to heal. I realized that I needed to gain credentials in the field of psychology so that people in the healing professions would listen to me. I learned that this type of healing had to show its effectiveness without my presence.

I overcame many of the fears that stopped me from pursuing higher education. In 1983, in two quarters, I completed the two years I needed for my B.A. in Psychology from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. I graduated on my thirty-seventh birthday. Two years later I graduated from Goddard with an M.A. By the time I had my B.A. and M.A. in Psychology, I had shown that this treatment worked without my presence, in the treatment settings of other healers. Besides earning my credentials, I had the satisfaction of knowing that my discoveries were proven and documented.

I taught other facilitators a short course in the basics. The basics include a healer who has the building blocks of love and trust, at a minimum; the advanced listening skills needed to create a loving, responsive atmosphere; knowledge of certain powerful statements that can help create a new mental structure; how to respond to needs in different stages; and skills in emotional release work. (The basics are in chapters three through nine in this book.) A year later I found that indeed, it was useful and helpful to the other healers whom I had taught, and  who had added the crucial elements of this type of healing to their work for a year. I documented the proof as a part of the thesis for my masters degree, which I completed at Goddard College in 1987.

POSSIBILITIES FOR HEALING OUR CULTURE

Opportunities to use this work abound in many fields of endeavor. Creative people in churches and temples, education, and psychology will find countless ways to address and truly heal the child within. Loving and giving people in many walks of life will find new ways to express their love.

Childhood is no longer a part of life that cannot be altered. Our personalities do not need to forever accept and adjust to conditions as they were imposed upon us. We have a birthright of emotional health, and a natural inclination to move towards greater health. The psychologist Abraham Maslow describes the human drive to progress from meeting basic needs such as food and sex to the highest needs of self-actualization, when we fulfill our greatest human potential. For the first time in history, we have the opportunity to right the wrongs from our childhoods. We all now have the possibility of having a good childhood under our belts, and then reaching our potential. Our ages do not matter. Time and space mean nothing to the child within.

I believe that the world will be a better place. M.Scott Peck, M.D., Ph.D, the author of The Road Less Traveled, teaches an awareness of love, psychological development, and spirituality. He notes that those who suffer from great voids in infancy, very dependent people, are frequently unaware or unconcerned with spiritual growth. That was true for me. I needed the experience of human love in the core of my being before I discovered God. M. Scott Peck further states that "the only true end of love is spiritual growth or human evolution." I believe that we will have human evolution as more and more peoples' voids are filled. Also, who knows what genius will be offered to the world as the most damaged are brought to health? Each person has a unique and special gift to contribute to the world. These gifts will be uncovered as more people heal. What if all were healed? How many latent Helen Kellers, Einsteins, Mahatma Gandis, and Martin Luther Kings would be set free from the confines of their missing building blocks, and make their contributions to the world? With commitment and giving from many loving people, we can halt, and then eradicate, the famine of the heart that has hurt so many.

After I began to heal with Sam, I began testing him. Once I got beyond my tremendous fears of rejection, the fun began for me. It was not so much fun for him. After some time my demands got out of line. I gleefully filled his whole answering machine with messages. No one else could leave a message for him because I had filled the whole thirty minute tape. He responded with new limits; he told me to stop calling him until he said I could call again.

So then I had fun writing to him. I wrote postcards and letters to him. I teased him unmercifully about his shortcomings, many of which I saw. I also sent him a check for a million dollars, because Sam truly gave me a life worth living. Luckily he didn't cash it, as I only had two dollars in my account!

People and animals that do not feel loved wish to die or do die. Sam saved me with his warm arms and loving ways.

I used a postscript in the letters I sent him that I will share. It fits my dream of seeing the famine of the heart ebb. It matches my dream of seeing people's eyes shine as they heal and grow. It fits my dream of seeing leaders of the churches perceiving all religions as sisters, appreciating the core beliefs they share, while acknowledging the beauty of the differences. It matches my dream of political leaders working with integrity for the benefit of all. It fits my dream of responsible people caring for and healing the planet. It corresponds with my dream of a world that works for everyone, with no one left out. Here is the postscript that I sent in those letters to my healing partner. Don't you think that it fits these dreams?

P.S. I believe in Magic (love)

Bibliography and Resources:

The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck

A beautiful book about people who are committed to heal.

Each of us has had some building blocks filled and some left empty, on the vast continuum that begins when we are in the womb and stretches until we leave this life. There are many educational and psychological theories that explain our state of being, from many a viewpoint.

Little attention has gone into the study of healthy and happy people. If successful, healthy mothers and fathers had been studied and heard, perhaps the simple truths would have been discovered years ago. We learn truth from simplicity. Don't we humans complicate simple things?

One way to describe the continuum where we all reside is to use a metaphor of a skyscraper to represent our completed or empty building blocks of emotional, spiritual and intellectual development. To build a skyscraper, first the foundation is prepared. The foundation represents the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual thoughts and atmosphere that lead to our conception, and then our fetal life. The first few stories of the skyscraper portray our first year of life. We can think of some rooms on these bottom floors as being lovingly furnished and attended, while others remain vacant. Some rooms may show battlescars of traumas that occurred in this first year of life. Some rooms may have only the bare skeleton of the steel framework to hold the building and the upper floors intact.

The conditions of the conception, fetal life, and first year of life vary enormously from one person to another. This results in the continuum of well-being that is the foundation for either a stable and happy life, or the misery that we call chronic mental illness. These are the most important times in the life of a child for creating this firm foundation and strong basic structure.

The ideal caretakers are at least one loving male and one loving female. The ideal result after conception, birth, and the first year of life are all of the rooms lovingly filled in and attended by loving male(s) and female(s). This rarely happens in our culture. Babies frequently have to adapt to over-busy, over-stressed parents. They are born and handled to adapt to the doctors' and hospitals' needs. They may be drugged and separated from their mother at birth, interrupting a nine-month continuous contact. Then when they are taken home, the conditions vary from constant warm, loving care to almost total abdication of care. According to T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., pediatrician and the author of numerous books on infant and child well-being, in his new book Touchpoints, says on page 235 that "our present culture does not adequately nurture and protect new parents." When parents lack adequate support, they can give less to their children. The children feel the strain.

The following additions to the skyscraper are very important also, with the completion and filling in of the lower floors paving the way for better completion and filling in of the upper floors. We can think of five additional levels of our skyscraper representing the five stages of development beyond infancy. Our completed building, representing us as the adult, is unique in our particular combination of filled rooms, vacant rooms, and rooms possibly battlescarred or in skeletal form.

Each of us is raised in an emotional atmosphere, deep in relationship to our main caretakers. We are not mechanical beings that just need a little food every so often, as a car needs gas and oil.

I formulated the following ideas regarding bonding energy during my healing process. The major emotional energy that enables us to fill in our building blocks with our main caretakers, usually our mother and father, a term I call "bonding energy." It is an energy with which we are born, and has us form tight bonds at the first opportunity. When the opportunities to bond closely to a warm male and warm female are not there, this bonding energy remains in wait, available to use whether we are one year old or fifty years old. My theory is that the unused bonding energy is what enables us to recreate experiences from infancy to adolescence, fill in the missing building blocks at a later time, and heal. The unused bonding energy is also what enables us to survive when those building blocks are not satisfied. It helps us block our awareness of those needs and go on the best we can with our life. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton speaks of just how rapidly an infant can begin healing. On page 247 of Touchpoints he describes an eight month old infant hospitalized for environmental deprivation. With no nurture in the home, even when food is given, these little babies do not gain weight. With a nurturing hospital staff giving it attention, this infant began to gain weight, learn trust in people, and learn cognitive lessons in ten days!

Our entire growth and development thrives with our ability to bond with our caretakers. The bonding energy changes form in the six stages of childhood. It is most intense in infancy, and, if enough needs are met, changes more and more to independence and interdependency in each succeeding stage of childhood. When people are not available for bonding, the infant might bond with objects. The objects might be anything at hand that offers comfort, such as a bottle, stuffed animal or blanket. When little or no bonding with caretakers is available, this causes a complete lack of building blocks in the first year of life. My parents were so unavailable physically, when I was left alone for long hours, that I bonded to a stuffed animal. That gave me some comfort in the long hours I was left alone.

There is nothing wrong with a normal baby attaching to these comfort-giving items in addition to his bonding with caregivers. They can be important means of the baby learning to nurture itself. However, in my case the human bonding was mostly left out of the picture. In the book by Harlow called Learning to Love, baby monkeys were separated from their mothers. They were offered a wire or cloth substitute mother. They clung to the cloth substitute. Some comfort is better than none.

One of the most intensive studies of bonding was undertaken by John Bowlby. In his book Attachment and Loss, Bowlby describes the bonding that instinctively happens in many animals and humans. He points out that we take it for granted that we see cows with their calves, ducks and ducklings, and that we assume that they will stay together. As humans mature more slowly, we need an extended time with our caregivers.

Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist well known for his self-actualizing theory, theorized that each person has a hierarchy of needs that must be satisfied. These range from basic physiological requirements to love, esteem, and finally, self-actualization. As each need is satisfied, he theorized, the next higher level becomes conscious. For example, people who lack food or shelter or do not feel safe are unable to express the higher growth of self-actualization.

Maslow based his theory on healthy people who used all their potential rather than studying disturbed people. This ties in well with my theory that basic building blocks must be filled for people to function, and that filling those building blocks in many people in our population will help empty our jails and mental hospitals, and enable many more of us to contribute to our culture.

If all of our needs were met, and our metaphorical skyscrapers were full of lovely, completed rooms (completed emotional building blocks), I believe that we would grow up to be very loving people, equally balanced in our abilities to feel emotions deeply and passionately, and to think clearly in all situations. We would be able to contribute in a positive way to others. However, most of us fall short of this ideal. Each of us has a unique combination of thinking and feeling. Some people, early in their formation, learned to think clearly. Other people perceived thinking to be a danger to their survival, and decided (when they were only two feet tall, and knew almost nothing about the world) that they would not think, to one degree or another. Other people decided (when they were only two or three feet tall) that they would suppress emotions.

We all are somewhere on the pendulum of thinking versus feeling when we have gaps in our development. Have you ever met people who function superbly in the work environment, and are at a complete loss in their home and social life? Or vice versa? Someone who is a master of social skills, has tremendously loving personal relationships, but is unable to function well in the business aspects of life? Blame it on those missing building blocks again! As we fill in the gaps, we can think more and more clearly in more and more situations, and feel deeply in more areas without being overwhelmed by our emotions.

Our perception of reality is tremendously affected by gaps or filled building blocks in the six stages of development. People who have great gaps in their foundation and first year of life will perceive the world as a dangerous place. They will not trust others, as they never had the basic building blocks of trust in that first year of life. They will have a great sense that something is wrong with themselves, that they are fundamentally wrong, and should not exist. This is the natural result of not having these all-important basic needs met, and why suicide is always an issue in their lives.

People who have more of the building blocks filled in infancy, but lack those immediately following will perceive themselves as unworthy, and see others as more worthy than themselves. Or they might flip this the other way, and see themselves as the only worthy one, the only right one, and everyone else as untrustworthy or wrong.

As more and more of the building blocks are filled in, people will feel good about themselves, and will have a growing circle of others who they trust and love and accept.

I will share a beautiful example of someone who had many of these building blocks filled in all of the six stages of development. There was a woman who called herself Peace Pilgrim. She saw something good in even the worst person. Video tapes of her speaking engagements are available, as well as a book and pamphlet. In particular, a video entitled "Peace Pilgrim speaking to college classes at Cal State Univ. of L.A." is pertinent. In it she mentions many of the well-known leaders in psychology, such as Freud, Maslow and Erick Fromm. She points out that their theories and methods address the different stages of development.

Severe gaps or traumas in the building blocks of the foundation and first year cause chronic mental illness. These problems are described with multi-syllable labels. Some of those labels are psychosis, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, borderline psychosis, manic depressive disorders, and "chemical imbalances."

Another way to describe these problems is that they are simply variations of building blocks of the 'foundation and first stories' of our metaphorical building which are unfulfilled. The bonding energy that is not used to bond closely to caretakers is then used in various creative ways to survive with those particular missing building blocks.

Hallucinations and delusions can also be viewed differently. They can be seen as the safe expression of fear and other emotions, created with the unused bonding energy in order to survive. These emotions or thoughts are not safe for the person to experience in his body or mind, due to the home situation and gaps in his foundation building blocks. So they are experienced as "outside" of the body or mind.

Suicide is always a part of the makeup of someone who is mentally ill. This is because they were unable, for a wide variety of reasons, to receive love as an infant. They are therefore unable to receive love from others in grown-up ways. In addition, they are usually not receiving the infant love experiences many of them are missing, and often lead loveless, miserable lives.

What then, is needed for healing minor to major voids in our building blocks? First needed is the awareness that we have voids, and that it is possible to fill them. The second step is desire to fill our voids. The third step, and perhaps the most important, is the belief that you will succeed. Finally, with this belief of success, you can create a vision of the pleasure that you will feel and the life that you will lead when these voids are filled. My belief and the vision of a life filled with love was what sustained me through the years of failure and harsh treatment. I still hold that vision in front of me to aspire to more and more love in my life, and more and more satisfying work, growth, and healing.

I believe that the world works on love. I think that it is only our errors or lack of knowledge and understanding, and choices that we make that prevents humans from living lives of love. In the beautiful book, Beginning to See, the author Sujata says that it is hard to be constantly loving. Then he points out that it is harder not to. What do you think?

Bibliography and Resources:

a video entitled "Peace Pilgrim speaking to college classes at Cal State Univ. of L.A," c. 1982, Friends of Peace Pilgrim, 43480 Cedar Avenue, Hemet, CA 92544. Peace Pilgrim speaks of how different well known psychologists addressed different stages of development.

Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1, John Bowlby, c. 1969, Basic Books, Inc., NY.

A well-referenced book, honored among scholars in the fields of human sciences, regarding attachment behavior in human children.

Beginning to See, Sujata, c. 1987 by Stillpoint Institute, Celestial Arts, P.O. Box 7327, Berkely, CA 94707.

A book teaching love of self and others, and beginning meditation.

Learning to Love, Harry F. Harlow, c. 1971, Albion Publishing Co., San Francisco, CA. This book describes how primates relate with affection or the lack of it.

Peace Pilgrim, c. 1982, Friends of Peace Pilgrim, 43480 Cedar Avenue, Hemet, CA 92544. An inspiring book about a woman whose entire life became a prayer for peace, beginning in the 1950's. She single-handedly may have inspired the widespread peace movements that we have today.

T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., Touchpoints, c. 1992, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, Massachusetts.

A book written by a loving pediatrition regarding important moments in the lives of new babies and parents, and pediatrician interaction.

CHAPTER FOUR

A VISION OF LOVE IN ACTION

THE HEALING PARTNER'S QUALITIES AND SKILLS

THE POWER OF THE HEALING PARTNER'S WORDS

DANGER OF DENIAL IN HEALERS

"Stranger in a strange land

Filipino maid

Scrubbin' someone else's floor

On her knees she slaves"

"Who will hold her when she cries

Who will understand

Who will see the child inside

Her tired aching hands"

"Who loves the least of these

Servant all alone"

from musical recording, Who loves the least of these "Stranger in a Strange Land, Stranger far from home" by Andy Landis

THE HEALING PARTNER'S QUALITIES AND SKILLS

Certain qualities are very desirable in the healing partners. These qualities are most important when dealing with people who are missing the building blocks from birth to one year. They are going to be the most sensitive and the least trusting of those who seek help. Those who need the building blocks in the rest of the childhood stages will be correspondingly less critical of the caregivers' shortcomings, stage by stage.

The most important qualities in the caregiver to fill the voids in the early stage are warmth, understanding, gentleness and the ability to listen and observe very well. A new relationship must form, and the healing and the effectiveness of the techniques all take place within the boundaries of this new bonding, this new relationship. This may mean a dedicated hour once a week, or more time for those who have more to give.

If there is no new bonding in the relationship between the healing and receiving partners, the statements that can create a new mental structure (defined in chapter six) will be powerless. They are not magic words. The magic comes from the healing power of love in the new relationship.

People can only give what they have to give. Sam was unable to give me some of the building blocks I needed. But from our relationship, I grew from never having trusted anyone to trusting him. I gained the ability to distinguish trusting, loving and trustworthy people from others who were not trustworthy or loving. Also, I regained the ability to feel hunger and almost all of my emotions, except hurt. I began to feel good most of the time, and acquired a skeletal structure of health with which to relate to the world. I learned many problem solving tools. With this progress I was able to go to college, at long last. I acquired the ability and the opportunity through Sam to give what I had gained to others. Sam wasn't perfect, but I gained a life worth living, and an ability to give to others.

My next major healer, a woman, also lacked some of the building blocks I needed. She was also unable to fill all of my voids. But I gained a wonderful sense of being loved and being special, and much healing in regards to women. I had a great increase in my long-term loving relationships with women friends.

All of us are human and imperfect. I encourage people to do the best they can, and give what they can give. Intent and a commitment from the heart go a long way. People can accept your shortcomings if you are honest and open.

A good model for the basic atmosphere for this healing process can be seen on the listening expert, Carl Rogers. He is no longer living, but tapes showing him giving sessions are available. Just add holding, feeding, emotional release, and statements that can create new mental structure to Carl Roger's style of lovingly listening, and that is the healing environment needed.

I have purposely omitted the names of those who have been my healing partners. It would be easy for healers reading this to forget that the original answers for this healing came from the people needing healing. When Jacqui Lee Schiff asked her schizophrenic client what he needed, he curled up on her lap and cried like a hungry baby. He provided the clue. She was smart and daring enough to listen and recognize his need, and got a baby bottle and fed him! Sam had great skills in listening. He observed and heard how important I believed being held and fed were for me. My point is, after learning the basics, your clients will be your best teachers, if you are very open, and look at them and listen to them!

The most important step you can take before offering this type of healing to others is to experience it yourself. If you want to hold other people, find someone to hold you first. If you want to feed others, find out what it feels like to be an adult "getting little" and getting fed. Ask for the statements that can create new mental structure (see chapter six) to be said to you. Let your vulnerable feelings out, with a safe healing partner. Then ask to be held. Let warmth from another person replace the feelings you just let go.

The ultimate keys to opening each person to health are within that unique person. Each person had a different childhood, and closed himself a little differently. Although you can learn techniques from other healers, the real expert on his own healing is your client. Help him learn to listen to what is within him, and draw it out.

Expert listening is where the relationship begins. Skilled listening is where emotional learning and healing begin. The details of the advanced listening skills required for healing partners are in chapter eight. This information would also be helpful to anyone wishing to relate more closely to a spouse or child, or to lower stress on the job by learning new responses to the boss and fellow employees.

THE POWER OF THE HEALING PARTNER'S WORDS

Dr. Thomas Gordon, in his book Parent Effectiveness Training, taught the use of "I" statements. This is a crucial skill for this type of healing. Incorrect "you" statements can undermine the healing process. They can cause incorrect new mental structure to be formed. If the caregiver trains herself to use only "I" statements, with a very few and specific exceptions described in chapter six (creating new mental structure), it will help her avoid many a pitfall in this healing method.

Here are some examples of "I" statements. The judgmental aspect of saying "you did this" is avoided.

I feel uncomfortable when I am lectured.

I feel sad when I hear that.

I am unwilling to be around criticism.

I am feeling pushed by the demands I am hearing.

Words have power! This is an incredible discovery, and one of the most important keys to this healing. Many healers are unaware of the incredible power exchange that occurs when one person is dependent on another. When doctors tell terminally ill patients that they are going to die, their words, if believed, become the death sentence.

The words of a caregiver in this healing process can be tremendously magnified in power for some people. The power of the healing partner's words can vary from one receiving person to the next. For some clients, your "you" statements may have tremendous power. For others, they won't at that time, and may or may not have power at another time. This is a very important key to the caregiver's effectiveness. This phenomenon of words sometimes having power, and which words, is absent in all of the literature on healing that I have found, with the partial exception of Jacqui Schiff's work.

Some examples of "you" statements use the imperative, or the 'you understood' form:

Have a nice day.

Stop that.

Do this job for me.

Other "you" statements contain "you" itself as the subject. Here are some examples:

You should not go to that part of town by yourself.

You should think for yourself.

You shouldn't clean house for her.

For this type of healing, I discovered that certain specific "you" statements are helpful. I found out that others can cause harm and delays in healing. They are listed in Chapter Six.

In her book, All My Children, Jacqui Schiff tells how she became aware that clients became "bound" to her words, and would take her words literally. She discovered the first part of the power of words, that some people are tremendously affected. She learned not to tell jokes or tease, unless it was specifically identified as such.

The further discovery that I made was that these original pioneers overused the "you" statements, and did not discover the harm or impediment to progress that was caused. One of the most important aspects of training to be a great caregiver is to avoid the use of all "you" statements except those that are absolutely needed for functioning. They will be listed below.

For all people who strive to relate in the most beneficial, rewarding, and positive ways, it is best to avoid "you" statements. "You" statements are needed with children, and some are needed in this healing process. But in other adult relationships they can cause discomfort or resistance to your input. If you wish to be heard, my suggestion is to frame your input as a request or a suggestion. Before making a suggestion, you might first asking if the person would like your input. In a nutshell, here are the steps to take:

1. Ask if a suggestion would be welcome. Example: Are you receptive to a   suggestion about your project?

2. Or, make a request.  Example: I'm feeling scared driving this close to the car in front of us.  Will you please move to the other lane or leave more distance between our car and the one in front?

Avoiding "you" statements is not as easy as it sounds. "Take care of yourself," and "Have a good week," are mistaken "you" statements for this type of healing process.   (The "you" is understood in the imperative.)

This lack of awareness of the power that healers have with their words reminds me of the situation in medicine a hundred years ago. Doctors and midwives didn't know that dirty hands spread disease. When they were first told that cleaning hands was important, many scoffed in disbelief. They couldn't see the germs, and didn't believe that their unwashed hands had the power to do harm.

This is a parallel situation. Many healers do not know or believe that their words have power. They may not have experienced this power themselves. Their lack of awareness does not mean that their words lack power, either to help or to harm.

With awareness, openness and true listening, and being open for and asking for feedback from the client, the healer can steer the course with more precision. This is also the only way the profoundly damaged can be healed in any numbers. They are too fragile to withstand many errors, or the burden of any extra "you" statements.

Caregivers who want to offer the full power of these healing experiences will need to discover the power of their words. It is difficult to believe something that you have not experienced. We often accept the value of an experience when it has meaning for us personally.

A caregiver who is able to follow the instructions about the "you" statements and the "I" statements diligently will be able to see the results in his receiving partners. I am not asking healers to believe this, but I am asking you to test this for yourself. When the basics of this healing process have been in place, with careful listening, diligence in avoiding "you" statements, and a gentle, understanding, safe atmosphere is in place for a period of time, you can test.

After offering the statements that can create a new mental structure, you can ask your clients if they remember any of your words, and ask which ones. Then you will have proof. Some of the receiving partners will list the new "you" statements word for word as they were given.

During my internship, I once asked a client what his previous psychologist, whom he had seen for many years, had told him he "should" do. He spoke for about thirty minutes, reciting everything the man had told him he "should" do. He was bound to those words, and tried to carry them out. He was greatly relieved when I told him to forget all of those words and his parents' words, and to only remember the less burdensome ones I would tell him.

When I interviewed a woman who received this type of healing from someone I had taught, I was stunned at the results. I had given the facilitators a one-page typed list of the healing "should" statements, the statements that can create new mental structure. This particular healer read one statement a week to her client, until she got to the bottom of the list.

I asked the client, who had progressed wonderfully in a year of treatment, what words of importance her healer said to her. Luckily I had a tape recorder playing! She repeated the words from the page I had given her healing partner verbatim, word for word!

These few "you should" statements can create a new internal mental structure for the person being healed. They are leaving behind a more limiting mental structure, which needs something to replace it.

I was tremendously sensitive to the "you should" (imperative) statements, which is how this discovery came about. In addition, Sam almost never used "you" (or imperative) statements. I asked him to tell me "should" statements as it occurred to me that I needed to hear them, one at a time.

When I asked for a "you" statement from Sam, and it was a mistake, I would have immediate strong reactions. One such simple mistaken "you" statement was "Take care of yourself." My body became very uncomfortable, and I lost the new ability I had just gained to feel my emotions.

I only had to call Sam, and ask him to tell me to forget the specific words he told me. That "you forget" statement worked! Within a few minutes I felt better! I was the original guinea pig, and suffered from our mistakes in this pioneering effort. I hope to share the hard lessons I learned so that others will not have to suffer.

Other people may not overtly show the signs of stress that I did, but in the presence of too many "you" statements, they may simply never open up and grow.

An attitude of "not knowing" will keep the caregiver attentive to the receiving partner, who knows her reaction to what has transpired. Virginia Satir left a beautiful legacy of honoring the receiving partner. She realized and communicated by her attitude in taking new clients' histories, that they were the true experts on their life and their history. Caregivers would benefit by reading some of her books, such as Conjoint Family Therapy, and learning this lesson.

If a caregiver notes an adverse reaction to a healing session, it may be helpful to ask, "Did I say something to you that had special impact?" The receiving partner may be able to say specifically what was said. The caregiver can then say, " Forget the words xx yy zz that I said." If the words were the problem, the receiver will feel better within a few minutes.

I always knew that the words that I asked for were important. They seemed to be written in my brain. Later other people were to use the same words, that these words were written in their brain.

This phenomenon is not only seen with very needy people, as I was. I gave a session to a healer who had a good childhood. At one point I told her, "You don't need to take care of me." She sat up straight and looked at me, and said that it felt like her brain was being re-wired! She said, "I needed to hear that!" This may have been the only one of the "you" statements that she needed.

Some people find these words powerful immediately. Some never do. Others find them helpful only during a certain time period and not in others. I suggest giving the client all of the information about these words, so they can be alert to any discomfort at an inadvertent statement, and call you to correct it.

Some receiving partners will have only a minor empty building block in the first year of life, and your use of "you" statements may not affect them unless they are particularly sensitive. However, those who have a greater need or sensitivity may react visibly to incorrect "you" statements. They may draw their body in tightly, showing distress in their body language. Their eyes may stop shining, if they had been.

When the receiving partner who has many missing building blocks begins to trust the healing partner, a tremendous transfer of power occurs. The words and treatment given by the healing partner will assume magnified importance. The receiving partner is now as fragile and vulnerable as the hurt infant they once were. Because survival has always seemed questionable to this person, he may experience this as having his life in the hands of the healing partner. This is why he may experience mistakes as life-threatening. To him it is life-threatening, because his life of health may truly be beginning. Mistakes plunge him back into his old nightmare of a life. People with less of a need might just feel and express anger towards the healing partner for a mistake, or not even be bothered by it.

DANGER OF DENIAL IN HEALERS

Sometimes people don't recognize the damage and fragility in people who have been terribly hurt as children and who are missing major building blocks of love and trust. This is a denial of reality, simply because it is not that person's reality.

It hurts to be missing huge building blocks of love. And it hurts to be an emotionally or physically battered child. Those hurts don't go away by themselves, even if years have gone by.

Doctors of accident victims recognize the fragility of their patients' conditions. They can see the broken bones. Healers of emotional wounds need to realize that their clients are just as damaged.

Having traveled this path myself, I can often spot emotionally damaged people by the tight muscles around their eyes, the lack of shine in their eyes, chronic shallow breathing, tight chest and stomach muscles, and rigid body movements. Other times I get clues by what the hurt person says or does.

When eyes and ears and hearts are open, the hurt can be seen. I was sometimes told by healers that I was strong because of what I survived. I cannot agree. Those hurts were healed by telling new parent figures about those hurts, and having their sympathy that I was treated badly. It was like being a small child and having my hurt finger "kissed better" by a loving mommy or daddy. Denial of hurt never made anyone stronger or healed anything.

A healer's ability to see and comment on a healthy area, or the beautiful, childlike aspects of the receiving partner can help these areas grow. An appreciation and acceptance of the receiving person's state of being by the healing partner will help the receiving partner begin to honor himself.

The healing partner can acknowledge the intelligence of the childhood decisions that led to the present state of dysfunction in the receiving partner, since those decisions helped him survive or adapt. Then the receiving partner can begin acknowledging that they did the best that anyone could have under their circumstances.

The healer can point out the differences between this new environment and the childhood environment. These acknowledgements honor the person for being just as they are. When both partners honor how the person is right now, then it is time to add new areas of growth to appreciate. This helps build an atmosphere of mutual respect, gentleness, understanding, and caring.

When I became a co-healer with Sam, our goal was to give the receiver the best hour of his life by means of our attention and feedback. I overdid praise and compliments at first, and had to learn to give them at the level of the receiving partner's ability to take them in.

M. Scott Peck has a wonderfully sensitive ability in this area. He manages to see the highest and the best in people. Then they can begin to see it in themselves. I suggest reading his book, The Road Less Traveled, for examples of this.

The healing that I describe occurs within the new bonding of an ongoing relationship.

The main ingredients in this type of healing are a loving, caring,committed, bonded relationship, expert listening skills, the new mental structure provided by the new "you" statements, correction of mistaken "you" statements, emotional release of past hurts, and the opportunity to receive the baby feeding and nurturing and other childhood experiences that are missing. If any of the ingredients are missing, the healing will be correspondingly less powerful and profound.

Later in this book are journal excerpts showing my perception of this process as I began to heal, trust, and feel good for the first time in my life. I needed to learn all of life anew, as a new child within me was born.

Having my childhood as an adult was a very lovely thing to experience, and in a way I am lucky. Not everyone can remember as much of their infancy and childhood love, play and learning experiences as I can. My childhood happened when I could read, write, and remember.

Bibliography and Resources:

"Stranger in a Strange Land," by Andy Landis, from her cassette album "Stranger," c. 1993, Star Song Communications, P.O. Box 150009, Nashville, Tennessee 37215.

Carl Rogers , The Carl Rogers Institute for Peace, 1125 Torrey Pines Rd, La Jolla, CA. Telephone: (619) 459-3864

All My Children, by Jacqui Schiff

Conjoint Family Therapy, by Virginia Satir, c. 1967, Science and Behavior Books, Inc., Palo Alto, CA.

The primer of family therapy. Virginia Satir discusses the changing relationships of clients and professionals from one where the professional has a superior attitude, to one of respectful equals.

Parent Effectiveness Training, by Dr. Thomas Gordon.

The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck, C. 1978, Simon & Schuster, NY.

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