On Sunday night, March 27, I watched a fascinating psychological program on Dateline called “Breakthrough.” This program helps people with psychological problems have breakthroughs so they can move forward in their lives. They help addicts, as well as people who have suffered traumas, and people whose childhoods are holding them back from loving relationships. A young male was featured who didn’t know how to connect, love, or be loved. The program involves exercises in expressing anger, facing and ridding your self of guilt, pain, and humiliation from your past, self-esteem exercises, and writing letters to family members, as well as group camaraderie. This man and other members were able to change their lives in only a few weeks in this intense environment.
Although we know that addictions and traumas like sexual abuse can destroy or hinder our interpersonal relationships, we often don’t realize how much our somewhat normal childhood frustrations can keep us from having healthy relationships. It’s not about simply blaming our parents for what went wrong, but instead resolving the pain from those years. It’s only then that we can let go of it and not carry that pain and bad behavior into our love relationships. If our parents were never there for us (no matter what the reason), we may not trust that our mate will be there for us. If we had critical parents, we’re likely to choose a critical mate and keep the pattern going. With a controlling parent, we either become like that parent or live in fear playing victim to our mate like we did with that parent. We often live out the dysfunctions of our parents in some way when we don’t confront our childhood issues.
Many people think that we can just choose not to let our childhood issues affect us, but we can’t “think” our way out of them, they must be worked through. Change not only requires facing those issues, but also doing more than talking passively about them. It requires action—exercises like the ones I mentioned above. Once the breakthrough has happened, you no longer need the bad behaviors and defenses you play out in your present relationships. The “breakthrough” allows you to change and relate to others in a totally different way.
I offer the same therapeutic work shown in this program, but in private sessions that can be conducted over several months or handled in a more intense and fast way. I also step you through this program in my book Loving Him Without Losing You, Eight Steps to Emotional Intimacy Without Love Addiction. It’s common for people to attach to their mate and give up their identity, which creates dependency. Then we transfer the dependency from our childhood to our mate, playing out those same old defense mechanisms that were necessary when we were children. The point to my book and this therapy program is that one must know themselves and resolve their childhood issues so that their identity will be strong enough to be in a relationship.
My Denver client Jackie called the other day and said she finally realized that her father’s unavailability was still holding her back in her relationships. She hadn’t been in for therapy for a year and at the time had refused to confront her father as I had asked her to. After a couple more boyfriends who were unavailable (married or with girlfriends or living in another state or even just emotionally unavailable), she confronted her dad and had what she described to me as a “breakthrough!”
I created the program to break love addiction when I had my own “breakthrough” years ago and worked through my childhood pain. I have been in a happy, healthy 23-year relationship with the man of my dreams since that time. Let me help you do the same.
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