Real Hope for Real Healing

When we encounter abuse, whether in childhood or later in life, it has profound effects on our identity, core beliefs, and unconscious thoughts and emotions. Having been a victim of domestic violence myself, I know how being a victim of abuse can make us into proverbial frogs in the kettle. The heat gradually goes up and we get used to it along the way, allowing us to deny, ignore, or even not recognize we are being abused.

If you have encountered abuse and are doing pretty well despite it, I tip my hat to you. It takes a lot of strength and frankly, some less-than-ideal coping mechanisms to keep going given the weight abuse develops deep within our hearts. I know for me it gradually robbed me of all the confidence I had, impacting my life, self-worth, and even my career. More important, it deeply impacted relationships both inside and outside the family.

Whether it be physical abuse, emotional abuse, or sexual abuse, they all create unconscious walls, trust issues, and confidence drains that rob us of life, joy, and who we were created to be. Having been molested when I was 11 and hiding that fact my whole life, believing it was my fault, only to turn and face it many years later, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was completely unaware of the significant impacts that day was having on my life decades later. I can also share that healing and freedom are possible for abuse victims. In fact, the most difficult form of abuse to heal from according to the research is not physical abuse - it's emotional abuse.

This is why our belief in stored trauma as well as emotional or heart wounds allows us to help people not just deal with things mentally but emotionally as well. Did you know that 70% of the cells in your heart are identical to the cells that make up the brain? This is the reason depression can feel like a weight or pain in your chest. People actually go to the hospital thinking they are having a heart attack only to be diagnosed with depression.

If you’re seeking genuine healing and freedom from abuse, it will require an integrated process that addresses all four of the facets of healing I found I needed to find freedom. If you’re a victim of abuse today or in the past, please consider scheduling a call with me. I’ll be happy to share my story and healing journey to give you hope and answer any questions you have. If you’re not ready for a call quite yet, please get my book Is Real Healing and Change Even Possible? for free right now. Get to know me better through the book and we can talk later.

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Addictions and compulsions can take many forms, from socially acceptable things like work, to things that are clearly counterproductive. When we look at compulsions, they may even seem helpful or normal, but are still destructive to our confidence and motivation. Compulsions hamper parents and kids lives in significant ways including:

• Negativity
• Being hard on oneself
• Escape behaviors (binging, screen time, scrolling, food)
• Intimacy
• Withdrawal/isolation

Whether your kid or a family member is dealing with compulsions and/or full-fledged addictions, trying to handle them through being hard on oneself, confrontation, or pressure will backfire in one of three ways:

• Retreat, hiding and denial
• Increasing conflict
• Trading addictions/compulsions for something more acceptable

None of these lead to freedom and healing that bring peace, contentment, and color back to life for a person driven to escape into anything from work to gaming, social media, pornography, or worse.

I know this from my own personal experience and journey to find freedom from drivenness that led to escape behavior that took on multiple forms - as I sought to beat one it emerged in another way. I kept seeking freedom from the emotions within. Whether it be our kid, a spouse or ourselves, compulsions and addictions have very real effects on those closest to us. Like when my oldest son began to escape into video games due to his dyslexia, and difficulty making friends in a new community. His younger brother felt like he lost his brother and struggled with loneliness in the new community as well. Of course, when we see such things with our kids our societal beliefs would tell us to limit his gameplay, turn off the internet, and to pressure him to play less, which typically results in either further retreat, hiding the gameplay as much as possible from parents, and/or increasing conflict. This does not address the root cause of the compulsion. Like in my son's case, given my original parenting style and his challenges in school, he had developed negative core beliefs that caused him to feel unsuccessful, not good enough, or like a failure much of the time. Video games gave him a way to constantly receive positive rewards and validation that he was missing deep within.

Without targeting the things driving his desire to escape in order to feel better about himself, pressure tactics and limitations would only increase his displeasure with himself, increasing his compulsion or need to escape.

Addressing addictions requires a fully integrated approach that targets the roots of the addiction or relapses. Otherwise trading for more acceptable compulsions is virtually guaranteed to occur. Let me share a story that a client wanted me to share to help others with addictions. He grew up in a neglectful and abusive home. When he found his niche in life after leaving home, he threw himself into his work as it gave him the sense of value he was robbed of as a kid. The challenge stemmed from his core beliefs left him vulnerable to people who would appear to care and often took advantage of him, leading to more hurt and self-loathing. All this left him insecure in relationships. His drive for success and hard work only partially filled his personal tank, leaving him still feeling empty and alone. When he was taken advantage of time after time he relapsed into drug use once more, ending up in yet another treatment facility. While they did good work, two pieces were missing from his treatment that left him vulnerable to relapse, which was why he ended up in rehab three times before he was 45 years old.

To truly be free, an integrated healing process must systematically draw things from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Ryan had stuffed and forgotten much of his childhood, requiring a process like we developed over the past 20 years to understand what was at the root of his self-deprecation and drive to escape. This was vital to uncovering his true set of core beliefs that caused his manic episodes and drive to escape life leading to relapses into drugs.

Once he understood the true roots of his issues and was able to address the stored trauma, cognitive reprocessing, as well as heart wounds that had him trapped his entire life, he found the change he tried to manufacture on his own came without much effort at all.

If you want to understand more about our process, or to discuss a compulsion that you or a loved one struggle with, we have several possibilities. Please consider getting my free book “is Real Freedom and Healing Even Possible” or schedule a call with me or another one of our certified coaches.

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If your child, spouse, or yourself are struggling with anxiety, my heart goes out to you because it is such a drain upon our emotional resilience, energy, and the ability to enjoy life.

Anxiety is a growing issue across our society especially among kids and adolescents. The common answer is medication, but a growing number of people are rejecting medication to address struggles such as anxiety because of the side effects and long-term risks of such solutions. Medication mutes the emotional response to anxiety and depression but does not fix the underlying cause. Over the years of helping kids and adults struggling with anxiety, we have discovered a number of underlying or root contributors to anxiety including:

• A breakdown of trust in others and oneself
• A core belief tied to safety
• A decrease in the threshold of fight or flight responses

The good news is that once the root of anxiety is identified and understood, freedom is not far off when an integrated approach to healing is applied to the underlying cause.

One of the common issues we found working with people struggling with anxiety was that they had lost confidence and trust in others and in their own ability to make good decisions in life and/or relationships. This led to their overthinking everything they did and said, often being hard on themselves in response to perceived mistakes. Typically, this stemmed from unconscious thoughts and emotions as well as negative core beliefs adopted in childhood, which is why addressing anxiety can be difficult apart from an integrated healing process that has an effective way of bringing things from the 95% of thoughts and emotions that are unconscious. It is virtually impossible to overcome an issue that stems from our unconscious mind without addressing the roots.

Another source of anxiety we have found is when someone possesses a negative core belief that they are at risk or unsafe. This can lead to a need to have all the information in advance, or a plan for every contingency. Others may perceive these things as a control issue or feel micro-managed by the person struggling with anxiety as they tend to consciously or unconsciously seek control due to feelings tied to not feeling safe. Like with trust issues, this can lead to overthinking things unless involved in some form of escape behavior. Often such safety concerns are tied to past wounds from parents and/or traumatic events that left triggers in the amygdala and were not processed, and the emotions tied to them were not released in a healthy way. Given this, we found that it often requires all four facets of healing to find internal freedom from the draining impact of anxiety.

We have also found anxiety is driven by regulation issues that lower the threshold of fight or flight responses. Having personally encountered a loss of the ability for my body to regulate fight or flight responses due to a long-term situation that left me feeling emotionally unsafe, I know personally how the heightened state of alert and self-protective thinking can result in exhaustion, and compulsions to escape to mute the effect. It often results in racing thoughts, sleep issues and of course anxiousness given all the senses being on high alert. Fight or flight regulation issues require addressing the body's ability to regulate and retraining it to raise the threshold of fight or flight responses that are part of the integrated healing process we have developed over the past 20 years.

Living with anxiety and/or the muted feelings from medication has impacted our ability to enjoy life, relax and encounter the depth and meaningful relationships we all desire. If your kid, spouse or you are struggling with anxiety, please consider scheduling a call to get your questions answered related to the integrated process for healing and how it would help the anxiety you are encountering in your family.

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Childhood Trauma has a tremendous impact on our lives as adults via both stored trauma in the amygdala as well as through our unconscious mind. I know this personally given that I was molested when I was 11. As I pursued freedom from patterns of behavior, I ended up doing an intensive with someone who believed in the heart and heart wounds like I do, and had experienced helping kids, families, and marriages. As a result, I dove in headfirst. I had not even thought about the encounter for 15 or more years, but we dug into it and took the second step to bring healing, it became abundantly clear how much this encounter had damaged my view of myself and impacted my relationships with men.

Childhood trauma can come at the hands of well-meaning parents, family members, extended family, sometimes even babysitters, or third-party experiences with things like car accidents. It can be rooted in things like being left behind or forgotten somewhere. When we look back as adults what may seem inconsequential can in fact be very impactful to a kid who depends 100% on their parents for their lives, safety, and identity. Kids are emotional rather than logical, so relatively small things from an adult perspective can lead to stored trauma in the amygdala and unconscious mind and core beliefs that significantly impact how we view ourselves, our lives, safety, and relationships.

To experience freedom from childhood trauma we often have to bring things from the unconscious to the conscious mind and address the stored trauma in the amygdala, along with any stuffed emotions that were not released following the trauma. Apart from this, we will be trapped in the struggle or behavior pattern, as I was without having a clue that it stemmed from my childhood trauma.

The integrated process that Revive Family has developed over the past twenty years is bringing deep healing and freedom from childhood trauma. If you have questions about your child, spouse or regarding your experiences and how they may contribute to the struggles or behaviors you are seeing or encountering, please schedule a call. I or one of our other coaches, all of whom have been through the healing journey and recovered from childhood trauma, will be happy to share their stories and help you better understand how you can find freedom and the organic change that results when we address the multiple facets of healing.

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If you are encountering control issues with a child or spouse or you feel it is your weakness, I feel your concern, frustration, and pain. Why? According to a national study on love, the number one act that Americans feel is the most unloving is controlling others. Being controlled, or having a compulsion that drives us to need control, puts up walls in our families and leads to self-protection and isolation which creates loneliness for both parties. Looking below the surface to the roots that drive the compulsion is vital for all involved. When we see below the behavior, we can find insights, and understanding that this issue is neither intentional or our fault, no matter which side of the control issue you find yourself on.

Control is a compulsion like many other compulsions or addictions driven by unconscious core beliefs and past experiences that have not been healed. Often compulsions stem from unconscious, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings which is why we try and fail to overcome them. To escape the roots that drive our kid, spouse, or ourselves to control requires us to identify the unconscious thoughts and feelings that move us to control. Often the roots stem from things like:

• Deep trust issues
• Core beliefs tied to safety and or being unprotected
• Fear of the unknown

Unresolved issues with people who were important to us, associated wounds, and core beliefs that developed as a result typically drive our need to control information, our environment or those close to us, because being in control unconsciously makes us feel safe, protected or able to avoid being hurt again often at an unconscious level.!

Identifying the toots below the control and their source often makes a significant difference in the compulsion that drives one to control their situation. Complete freedom comes when we turn and face the wounds that created the fears and core beliefs in phase two of our integrated approach to healing.

Frequently control issues pair with childhood trauma and will often contribute to fight or flight regulation issues that can trigger control-related frustration, defensiveness, reactions, and or anger. This is deliberately addressed through specific exercises, along with bringing things from unconscious to conscious. It requires addressing each of these elements to be completely free from the motivation to control. We have seen clients, given their background and situation, achieve substantial freedom and change from completing phase one of our mentoring and healing process.

If you have questions or want to get to know us to determine if we are the right fit for your situation, please schedule a call. We’ll share our stories and answer your questions to help you assess if our process offers you the hope and answers you are looking for.

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A recent CDC report identified that 2 in 3 adolescent girls and 2 in 5 boys suffered from deep sadness or depression. Feelings of emptiness, sadness and depression are hard to understand but much harder to experience and live with. In fact, the ache depression can cause in one's chest can be so acute that people have gone to the ER believing they are experiencing a heart attack only to be diagnosed with depression.

I know this all too well. I started a company and had a team of employees that was amazing. One of the hardest days in my life was the day I told them, “If something doesn’t change in two weeks I am going to have to let you all go,” after a bridge loan for our IPO on the NASDAQ fell through… Things only got harder after that. Why? Because I fell into depression. The heaviness and ache in my chest were real, the sadness, loneliness, loss of motivation, and energy were so foreign and inconceivable to me since I had been moving forward and succeeding since I started a lawn company when I was 10. This fact only made things worse since the root cause of depression is being deeply unhappy with or angry at oneself, which I was.

If you have a kid or spouse, or you yourself suffer from symptoms of depression or carry sadness and a sense of emptiness, or feeling lost, understanding that the root cause is being down on oneself is vital. Why? Because the tendency of people around a depressed person is to give them advice that often adds to the pressure the person is already putting on themselves, because they know they used to be able to and should be able to get up get moving, and accomplish things like they used to, but they simply can’t, and they don’t understand it either. Advice, pressure, and nagging only worsen the frustration, making the problem worse. Kids in this place and often adults will be easily frustrated and/or defensive given all the pressure they are under and their system cannot handle more negativity. Often, people and kids with significant depression have suicidal thoughts or may be self-harming in some way, physically or emotionally.

We have found significant depression often includes elements of the following issues:

• Negative Core beliefs
• A loss of Trust in self and others
• Some level of emotional shutdown and inability to release pain, anger and/or hurt

The loss of trust makes it hard for parents or spouses to help and why the approach in our mentoring and healing process is so important.

Depression stems from negative core beliefs formed in childhood that are activated by a series of small perceived failures, or a big one like I encountered. These deeply held unconscious beliefs flood us with negativity, frustration and/or anger at ourselves. Apart from doing the work to uncover the unconscious beliefs and the wounds that caused them to develop, escaping depression permanently will be elusive as it often comes and goes in waves over time. While medication can alleviate the feelings, kids tell us it also mutes their other feelings, things like happiness, fun, and even sadness. Several suicidal kids confessed to me that their second and third attempts were due to the loss of feelings. They both said there is no point in living if you can’t feel anything.

The good news is that we have seen incredible success in freeing adolescents, teens, and adults from depression, sadness, and emptiness with the integrated mentoring and healing process we developed over twenty years. Our integrated and highly effective process brings the roots of depression from our unconscious to conscious mind. A vital first step to defeating the clutches of depression. Apart from a defined and tested process that helps one identify the roots, there is little hope of escaping depression. I know because I tried for some time to be completely free of the heaviness and negativity that are associated with depression, even after I was lifted out of clinical depression through the efforts of my first counselor who did not help me identify and address my core beliefs.

Treating and helping a child, teen, or adult that has depression is a bit tricky because our society is so performance, success and/or task-based that it’s easy without realizing to let things slip that only add to the pressure, sense of frustration or failure our depressed loved one is already encountering. This is the reason only coaches who have encountered depression and escaped it through our mentoring and healing process are empowered to help depressed people. Unless you have experienced depression, it is so hard to understand.

If you want to better understand it and how to come alongside a loved one with depression or are seeking help yourself, please schedule a call. We’ll share our story, and how things have changed and answer your questions as you get to know us and understand the process so that you can determine if we can help with your situation.

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If you are encountering defensiveness and overreactions, do not overlook regulation issues as a possible cause. Especially in your adolescent whose emotional regulation is already diminished due to changes occurring in the adolescent brain or in younger kids, spouses or yourself. Why can we say this with such certainty? Two reasons:

1. Since COVID we have seen a much higher instance of regulation/fight or flight issues in kids. Not long ago a family was out for a family reboot retreat and the daughter, during a session, literally dove headfirst off her chair like a soldier diving into a foxhole when a muted thump occurred behind where we were meeting. The good news is she has seen a dramatic improvement in her system's ability to regulate, concentrate, and the ability to enjoy life as a result of working with one of our coaches.
2. I lived in fight or flight for probably seven years without even knowing it until some huge life circumstances hit that I’m happy to share with you if you schedule, a call. As a result of these circumstances, I was blessed to work with a highly specialized trauma therapist who works with law enforcement, who quickly helped me recognize my body had lost the ability to regulate, something I was completely unaware of until that day, even though it was having significant impacts upon my life, health, attention, and energy.

Over time in repeated challenging high-stress situations, our system loses the ability to regulate as it begins to anticipate negative things occurring. The problem is this means our system can be in a heightened state of alert much of the time. This results in all our senses being heightened, making us more sensitive to sounds, light, movement, and more. We find that kids struggling with regulation issues are often diagnosed with ADD or ADHD because the symptoms related to attention, focus, and even activity are so similar.

When the threshold for fight or flight response diminishes or is gone, like occurred with me, we live in this heightened state where cognition, the ability to think rationally and clearly, drops by 30-40%. This is is why when our kids or spouse are triggered, what they may think, believe and say can make no sense but seems completely logical to them. Often if you try to get them to see their irrational thinking they simply can’t understand, leading to an escalation in their emotional state because they are not feeling listened to, heard, or understood.

The good news is that our integrated mentoring and healing process incorporates techniques that have proven to train the body to regulate and address stored trauma triggers, and can increase the threshold for entering fight or flight back towards where it should occur - only in life-threatening situations.

If you would like us to assess what you or a loved one are experiencing and learn how we address these issues in the context of our healing process, please schedule a call. We’ll share our story of healing and answer your questions to help you assess whether we are the right answer for you, your child, spouse, marriage, or entire family.

When we have a frustrated, angry, or reactive kid, or struggle with these things in our marriage and family, it affects everyone, altering the culture of our home in profound and destructive ways. One 17-year-old I helped described her family as, “Four individuals living on four different emotional islands.” Frustration and anger were at the root of the breakdown.

It is vital to realize that when we are dealing with repeated anger, reactions, or defensiveness the issue often lies just out of our grasp and understanding in our unconscious. In fact, according to studies only 5% of thoughts and feelings are actually conscious. A behavior that returns no matter how hard we try to resist typically has strong roots that reside below the understanding of our conscious mind, tangled up in the 95% of thoughts and emotions that are unconscious!

It’s no wonder we are frustrated, because it just doesn’t make sense that they can’t stop, until you realize they don’t understand why they can’t stop either. This is the reason addressing repeating behavior issues requires a different approach and a real and effective process that uncovers unconscious roots and/or can address stored triggers that reside in the amygdala. Until the root is exposed to our consciousness there is no way to address the frustrating behavior and/or triggers.

If you would like to understand more, have questions, or are just looking for some hope, please schedule a call. All our coaches have been through their own healing journey and come out the other side in a better place than they thought possible. We love sharing our stories and answering questions to help you determine if we are the best answer for you, your situation, your kid, your marriage, or your family.

Self-harm and suicidal thoughts are more common than we may believe and are often hard to see, admit, and/or seek help for. This is the reason we share our stories of healing and change on the first call so that people can get to know us and build a sense of comfort before they share anything with us. Each of our coaches, including myself, has hit low periods in our lives where depression, self-doubt, and anger with ourselves led to dark days that included either elements of self-harm or suicidal thoughts. So we get it. The great news is we also found freedom through the mentoring and healing process I developed over the past 20 years.

Whether this is for yourself, your spouse, or a child there are answers that actually make sense and work.

As a parent, there is nothing more concerning than self-harm, as it is often associated with suicidal thoughts. I have had the privilege from the very first kid I worked with to have seen tremendous turnarounds in both self-harm and suicidal ideology in a relatively short time, often as little as six months, especially when parents engage in understanding the heart of their kid and the root causes that are relating to their kid’s struggles. Parents are a vital part of their kid's journey to freedom.

The very first client I worked with was Sara. Her parents begged me to help after she had been to several counselors and a psychologist. I can share this story because this family did a live radio interview related to their work with us that you can listen to now if you like. She is the student I worked with who was the closest to the edge I have encountered as she had already made one attempt and had two letters written and three plans. In our first 8-hour session, she told me everything that was really going on in her life and it was a lot, much of which her parents had no idea about in spite of the numerous things they had discovered. During the first session with this 13-year-old wiz kid….a grade ahead, with a. 4.4 GPA due to AP classes…, if I mentioned the future or college she would become angry and insist she would not be alive to see another year, let alone college. It may be hard to understand why a successful and actually genuinely beautiful girl such as Sara would be so suicidal and have double hatch marks up and down the side of her thighs, but it actually makes sense once you understand the roots going on below the surface in her unconscious thought and emotions. That was a hard but powerful day for both Sara and her parents given how we approach mentoring and healing, but it was a turning point for her especially. The great news is she got past the self-harm and suicidal ideology within 6 months and had plans for the future that came true when she went to Florida State University three years later.

Self-harm and suicidal thoughts are driven by several factors including:

• Core beliefs
• A loss of Trust in self and others
• Some level of emotional shutdown and inability to release pain, anger, and/or hurt

The loss of trust makes it hard for parents or spouses to help and is why the approach we use in our mentoring and healing process is so important to see dramatic changes take place. Apart from a defined process to help them, identifying the roots below their struggles, depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts can take years to address. If you have questions and would like to hear our stories of going through the same process and the changes we saw organically in our lives, please schedule a call to help you determine if we are the right answer for your situation. Or read my short insightful book Is Real Healing and Change Even Possible? and then schedule a call.

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