The Curious Counselor

Codependency is the need to make someone else happy with the expectation they will make you happy. It is driven by the need to feel loved. CoIndependent means living a life full of love and joy in yourself that you can both share with others and receive. Accepting that we are not only lovable but that the essense of what we are is love helps us realize we don't need to seek love from outside ourselves but its already there. When we learn to connect with that love in ourselves and in God (or your higher power) we no longer have a need to seek it outside ourselves. Love yourself well and you will feel lovable. By not trying to get love but just loving yourself well, you will experience more love from the world and others than ever which feels great but is just icing on the cake because you no longer need it. In this episode I attemp to help explain how to love ourselves better, why to love ourselves better and 10 suggestions on how to get from a self-hater to a self lover. As always, thank you for joining me. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]. Also, check out my youtube channel (The Curious Counselor). May your day be filled with compassionate thoughts, kind words and actions, and curiosity in all things today and every day. Alan Pennington The Curious Counselor

Most of the time when we get mad, we immediately can identify the source of our frustration, be it a careless driver, someone cutting in line, a loud child, a less than compassionate friend or coworker or partner or whatever. "That person makes me so mad..." is often our refrane. But, what if our anger is not about the current situation? What if our inability to respond as a kind, compassionate person is not about the other person? What if it is about us? That's good news because if its about us, we can do something about it. In this episode, I interview "Suzie" who's anger is often triggered by her daughter "Sassy". We explore what has been going wrong and how to 1) respond in a more kind compassionate way and 2) explore Suzie's angry response to see if her anger might be related to some earlier trauma messages and triggers. In fact, if we can't be kind to someone, it's never really about the other person. It's always about us and that's good because that means we can all learn to be happier more content more kind, compassionate people. As always, thank you for joining me. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]. Also, check out my youtube channel (The Curious Counselor). May your day be filled with compassionate thoughts, kind words and actions, and curiosity in all things today and every day. Alan Pennington The Curious Counselor

I went through an awful divorce in 2016 to 2018. I thought my wife and I were doing all the right things to save our marriage (go to church, talk, pray, go to marriage seminars, etc) but still, we ended up in a divorce. Since that time I have been doing a lot of my own trauma work, a lot more praying and had, I think, I bit of good insight. Essentially, I thought was doing all the right things (good job, good income, good, vacations, nice house, went to church, prayed and so forth). I didn't do the bad things (yell, drink, smoke, do drugs, have affairs or whatever) but what I didn't know how to do was to create a safe emotional connection. I had no model for that and neither did my ex wife. What is a safe emotional connection? It is a safe space where you can share your feelings, be heard, be validated, get hugged, feel safe no matter what the topic. I was unable to consistently do that for my ex and she was unable to do that for me. In this epsisode I explore more about what that really means and how you can avoid the traps that we fell into. As always, thank you for joining me. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]. Also, check out my youtube channel (The Curious Counselor). May your day be filled with compassionate thoughts, kind words and actions, and curiosity in all things today and every day. Alan Pennington The Curious Counselor

I am divorced. Am I doomed to hell? In the sermon on the mount (Mt. 5) Jesus says if you get divorced except for infidelity you commit adultry. Jesus says several other things that are a sin (including anger) then leads up to the last verse of the chapter to say you must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect (Mt. 5: 48) and if we don't keep the law as well as the pharisees and teachers of the law we will not enter the kingdom of heaven (5:20). But is that the end of it? Shouldn't there be more? What about grace, hope, love, all that stuff? If that's the end, I am totally screwed. Indeed, Moses gave us the law in Exodus but Jesus gave us the law of grace and truth (Jn 1:17). If we carry each other's burden's we will fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). So maybe Jesus was explaining to the Jews (as a Jew himself) how the law of Moses works in Mt. 5 and was really trying to say, "look guys, this is what we got. It's not bad. It just won't work. Like you can't earn you way into heaven by being perfect." If that's the case, maybe asking what is and is not a sin is less important than asking God how we should live if we want to live by the law of Christ. Maybe what really counts is living our faith in love (Gal. 5:6). Maybe we should stop judging ourselves and judging others (Lk. 6:37) and start living a life filled with love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives him them (1 Jn 4:16) because God is love (I Jn 4:8). Maybe love is the fulfilment of the law (Gal 13:10). If that's the case, thanks be to God, I don't have to make a list of all the sins I need to be sure and not do (but will do anyway) and just focus on being compassionate to myself and to others (I can do that)!!!! As always, thank you for joining me. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]. May your day be filled with compassionate thoughts, kind words and actions, and curiosity in all things today and every day.

In the last episode, we talked about the three (3) phases of healing your inner child: self-regulation, working with internal defenders and finally, how to connect with the inner child. In this epsisode, I interview Camilla (psuedonym), a client of mine who has participated in several earlier episodes (thank you Camilla). She has DID (disassociative identity disorder) and has to date, identified 14 internal personalities. In this episode Camilla (with the help of her parts) reflects on the last episode and how those same steps have helped (or, in some cases, not helped) her. In all cases, I found approaching her and her parts with compassion and curiosity is always an effective approach and I recommend the same in approaching your inner parts (whether or not you have DID which about 2% of the population does). As always, thank you for joining me. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]. May your day be filled with compassionate thoughts, kind words and actions, and curiosity in all things today and every day.

This is a summary of a workshop I recently did at PlayThink 2024 (thanks Paige Zen, it was an awesome festival). The three steps to healing are: Spend time learning how to ground yourself through B - Breathing, T- tapping, S - stretching, S - Shaking. BTSS used 2 minutes 3 or 4 times a day will help you establish a calm safe center which will serve as a foundation for a safe space to connect with your inner child. As you being to reach to your inner child, you may have blocks that prevent you from connecting. Those blocks may have protected you from the scary memories or feelings but now keep you from accessing that part of yourself. Those blocks could be a self-critic, an over-thinker, a disassociative part, an tired part (tends to knod off any time he or she feels stressed), an angry part or any of other parts. In this section, I discuss serveral blocks and how to approach them with compassion and curiousity to work with them to safely allow access to your inner child. Actually creating an internal safe place, perhaps a room or a meadow, to being to reach out and connect with your inner child in whatever way feels safe to them. As always, thank you for joining me on the journey of healing. Feel free to share comments or questions at [email protected] May you always be compassionate in your thoughts, compassionate in your words and compassioante in your actions. In all things be curious!

In past episodes, I've talked about kindness, compassion and curiosity. I've had on guests to talk about different aspects of healing through kindness, compassion and curiosity. In this episode, I want to share some of my favorite movies that illustrate healing through, yes, kindness, compassion and curiosity. 1 - Forrest Gump How can an "idiot" (Forrest Gump as played by Tom Hanks) have such a successful life, make such good friends and never seem to be phased by others anger or judgment? His momma taught him the fundamental lessons of life. You are OK just the way you are (self- compassion). Others may judge you for not being normal but if God had wanted us to all be alike, he would have given us all braces on our legs (kindness). And of course curiosity about all things, be it running or ping-pong or shrimping. Forrest just lived in the moment and tried his best to be kind and compassionate to himself and to others. 2 - It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Again Tom Hanks, now as Fred Rogers shows us how to be kind and compassionate to an angry friend (Lloyd Vogel) and eventually sets a path to healing not only Lloyd but also his relationship with his father Jerry. Mr. Rogers just consistently meets Lloyd's anger and skepticism with compassion and curiosity and the results are beautiful. True Story! 3 - Happy Gilmore A movie that is good for laugh but also shows how a very angry person (ironically named Happy) can, through love and kindness (from his grandmother, Chubbs the golf pro that takes him under his wing and Virginia his "watch dog" to keep him from getting thrown off the tour and love interest) all combine to tell a silly but wonderful story of how compassion, kindness and curiosity can diffuse anger to find a happy more satisfying life. I hope you will enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. I never tire of rewatching these wonderful films. Honerable mention should also go to: The Fisher King (Robin Williams), The Green Book (amazing true story of a friendship in the 60s between a very bigoted bouncer, Tony Lipp, and talented black piano player, Dr. Shirley - one of my favorites). Also loved Spanglish (another Adam Sandlers win in my book). Thanks for taking time to check this out. May compassion and kindness fill your heart each day and may you always be curious how to bring more healing into your heart and the hearts of those around you. Alan Pennington, The Curious Counselor [email protected]

This week I am talking to Camilla about how to break out of her current living situation and move to be closer to her children. Camilla has disassociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) so making any change is hard but making a change in living situation to a totally different city is overwhelming. In this episode we explore the logistical and emotional barriers to moving to be closer to her children. While logistically, this seems pretty easy, emotionally, she has fear her husband will not support her. She has fear of rejection of by extended family (based on some broken relationships). She has fear of where to live and fear of financial failure. I am trying to help Camilla explore and overcome her fears and perhaps it will help you explore and help you overcome some of yours. Life is about making good logistical decisions but it is even more about making good emotional decisions. The road to a good life, begins with a good relationship with yourself through kindness, compassion and curiosity. May you always seek to love yourself better and then you will be in a good place to loves others well. Thank you for your interests in being here. For comments or questions, feel free to reach me at [email protected] Alan Pennington, aka The Curious Counselor

How can we build safe connections with others when we often don't even have a safe connection with ourselves? In this episode, I interview a client, Camilla (pseudonym) who has disassociative identity disorder (meaning she has multiple sub-parts to her personality). How has she learned to have a safe connection with herself, her subparts, let alone people around her? Sometimes its just basic self-care (breathing, stretching, drinking plenty of water, getting good food and sleep). Other times it might be finding a safe person to listen a little to see if they react in a safe, non-judgmental way and then maybe share a bit more and a bit more, learning to build trust little by little. What is a safe connection and how do we built them? That's a big topic but one that Camilla helps me explore with her own unique lense. It was helpful for me and I hope it will be for you as well. Thanks for taking time to be curious about this latest episode and may you always channel compassionate thoughts, kind actions and curiosity in all things. For comments or questions, feel free to reach me at [email protected]. For more about kindness, compassion and curiousity, see my book on Amazon, From Crisis to Calm.

We need kindness to thrive but unfortunately many of us did not have kindness modeled for us so we do now what we did when we were children in order to feel safe. We hide. We blame others. We yell and hit. We pretend to be happy when we're not and we try to make everyone around us happy. No wonder we don't feel feel happy. The key to joy is learning to be kind to ourselves and others. By channeling kindness through our bodies, we bring healing to ourselves and potentially bring healing to others. Even if others don't receive our kindness, we still get to feel good for channeling that energy in our bodies. In this episode, I explore what kindness is, why we confuse self-compassion with being selfish and how to release our wounds that keep us from being kind to ourselves and others. The key, as Mr. Rogers would say, is to learn to love ourselves the way we are right now. Well, I love you the way you are right now. Thank you for being here. For comments or questions, feel free to reach me at [email protected]. For more about kindness, compassion and curiousity, see my book on Amazon, From Crisis to Calm.

Imagine having more than one "personality" or part of your personality that is so well developed that he (or she) literally their own thoughts, perceptions, likes/dislikes. In this episode I interview Erin and Camilla, both with multiple "sub-parts" or personalities. Erin has her main persona and 3 sub-parts: Val (short for Valkyrie) that is her protector, Mitigate that is her healthy surogate father and Meltdown, her more childlike part. Unlike Camilla, Erin easily transitions between herself and her other parts. Camilla has her main personal, along with Zena, her angry teenager, Boo her 5 year old, Bonnie, her 8 year old, Stormy who is around 10 to 12 along with Diana (the part that shuts down her perceptions/i.e. disassociates) and Camilla, the Camilian that always tries to show up and meet everyone's expectations. For purposes of this interview, Camilla is mostly in charge. This interview is a look into the perspective of two people with multiple perspectives. While both Erin and Camilla have developed some very speciallized coping skills as a result of their trauma, they are otherwise just normal, intelligent, engaging young ladies that unfortunately, sometimes struggle to fit in. As always, thank you for taking this journey with me. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]. May you always be filled with kindness, compassion and curiosity. Alan Pennington, LMFT - The Curious Counselor

Disassociation can range anywhere from a feeling of being out of our bodies, to being emotional shut down or literally being taken over by a part of our personality (disassociative identity disorder). In this episode, I talk with Camilla (and some of her parts) about her experiences with disassociation, how to heal and how to channel more compassion to her child parts, her defensive parts as well as to herself as a whole. As always, thank you for taking this journey with me. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]. May you always be filled with kindness, compassion and curiosity. Alan Pennington, LMFT - The Curious Counselor

In this 4th interview with "Camilla" we explore her healing journey. What things in and outside have contributed to her healing process? While creating a safe space to be heard is the foundation to healing, we dive deeper into Camilla's experience with healing, the people in her world that are safe (which are unfortunately few) and the many people that have not been safe. By listening, repeating and validating Camilla's experience, she is able to continue to heal and to share her healing journey with me. As always, thank you for your interest. If you have comments or questions, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. Hope you have a blessed healing day. Alan Pennington, LMFT, aka The Curious Counselor "Compassionate thoughts heal broken hearts."

"Lynn" is a friend of mine that has had a hard time finding a good therapist. In this interview, we talk about what therapy is, how it can help, why she might have had bad therapy experiences and we do some exploration of her trauam which began with bullying at the age of 5. As I provided a safe emotional space for her to tell her story by listening, repeating back what I heard, validating her feelings and just exploring her perspective, she was able to move into some deep emotions with her child parts. Where ever you are in your healing, I encourage you to be kind to yourself, treat yourself with compassion and be curious about what your feeling. Compassion is the key to healing. For more information, check out my book on Amazon (Crisis to Calm) or feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. Blessings for a healing day. Alan Pennington, LMFT The Curious Counselor

Many and perhaps most of us have an inner critic, the part that tells us we didn't do enough or we didn't do it good enough or we are just stupid for thinking this or that. Why do we have an inner critic and what can we do to bring healing to that part? In this episode, we look not only at what the inner critic does but why does the inner critic feel the need to criticize us? What if that part is trying to help us using the only tool he/she ever learned. Maybe that part wants us to be more successful, make more money, eat better, exercise more regularly, lose some weight or whatever but has been only marginally successful (if at all). Self-criticism creates negative energy. Negative energy leads to seeing the worst in ourselves and the worst in others. Seeing the worst in ourselves and others tends to lead to poor performance which leads to more self-criticism and so forth. Self-affirmtion can be more powerful in helping us be successful, helping us enjoy life and helping us heal ourselves and others. Perhaps the key is not to get rid of the self-critic but to apprecate your self-critic for wanting to help you. By expressing apprecation to that part, you are modeling the behavior you want that part to have. By teaching that part a new skill, you can use the same energy that went into criticism and redirect that part to for self-affirmation. Imagine what it would be like to affirm yourself instead of criticizing yourself. Imagine how much happier you would be and how much more energy you would to affirm those around you. The result would be to make them and you happier. I hope you will join me on this journey as we continue to find better ways to heal, better ways to find joy and better ways to enjoy this life. Alan Pennington - The Curious Counselor

I am excited to have my client "Camilla" join me in this podcast to capture what an EMDR session looks like. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a well researched processing tool for healing trauma. The major components of EMDR processing include: Identifying a negative message (in this case, touch is not safe) Identifying a positive message the client would rather have (I can trust my judgment) Assigning a level of validity from 1 - totally false to 7 - totally true. One(1) means the client does not feel the positive message feels true at all. 7 means if feels totally true. Identify a trauma event which instilled the negative message (in this case, a trauma at a medical facility at age 3 or 4 where "Camilla" recieved several shots). Use eye movements or "tappers" (two small plastic vibrators about 1.5" square by 0.5" deep that alternate vibrate back and forth; wires connect the vibrators to a controller that controls the speed and intensity of the left/right vibrations) Usually a client would start with a high level of disturbance (typically 7, 8, 9 or even 10) and a 1 or 2 level of validity (how true does the message feel on a 1 to 7). Processing heals the trauma and allows the positive message to feel very true, like 6 or 7 and at the same time reduces the level of disturbance to a 0 or 1. In most cases, several sessions of EMDR are needed to heal the trauma wound and effectively replace the negative belief with a postive belief. In this case, "Camilla's" negative belief is "touch is not safe". She was even getting triggered when getting a hug from her kids. The positive message that we are working on replacing this with is "I can trust my judgement". Special appreciation to "Camilla" for doing this session with me. This was a big ask for her to be so vulnerable and she did a wonderful job. I hope you find this episode helpful. EMDR (developed by Francine Shapiro) is one of the most powerful trauma healing tools available (as you will see when you listen to this episode). Thank you for listening. As always, be kind in your actions, compassionate in your thoughts and curious in all things. If you have questions or comments, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

Have you ever asked or been asked "aren't you over that yet?". It may feel like a helpful question but it's really not. I expect the person asking is actually a caring person and wants to help but to the person that is still struggling, it is anything but helpful. In this podcast, I interview an actual client "Camila" (not her actual name) to talk about this complicated question. Why does healing take so long? It's not like anyone wants to be in pain and yet, some may get comfort by talking about their pain without doing the hard work of getting better. After listening, I hope you will have more compassion for those in pain as well as more compassion for yourself when you are in pain. If you are struggling, my hope is this will give you some guidance on how to move forward. If you are supporting someone that is struggling, I hope my suggestions on how to best support that person will give you some loving healing ways to offer support. Praying healing, kindness, compassion and curiosity on you. Thanks for your interest in this important topic. Alan Pennington, [email protected]

Breathing is so simple. We all do it every moment of our lives and the vast majority of the time don't even think about it. But, what if we did think about it. What if we intentionally took a few minutes just a few times a day to breath fully in and fully out. Would you believe that simple action could reduce your anxiety, reduce physical pain, give you more energy, help you heal faster, protect from getting sick, improve your decision making skills, make you a more compassionate more insightful version of yourself and on and on. The best part is, there literally are no negative side-effects. Unlike anti-anxiety meds and anti-depressants, regular deep breathing can have much the same impact as these meds but with no side-effects and no cost (hence the drug companies don't want you to know this as there is no profit for them. In fact, it will actually cost them money as people learn to breath!). In this podcast, I go into more details about the benefits of intentional slow deep breathing and then, at minute 15 and 10 seconds, I spend the last 10 minutes just doing some simple guided breathing exercises. Special thanks to James Nestor's book Breath, from which I extracted some information for this podcast. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]. May you always be compassionate in your thoughts, kind in your words and actions and curious in all things. Alan Pennington - The Curious Counselor

Most of us think of self-care as things we do for ourselves to make ourselves feel better and/or just disconnect from the stress of day to day life. In this Interview with Lee McMichael, Lee gives some insights on self-care: maybe self-care is not just doing things that feel good. maybe self-care means doing things that nuture the self and nurture the things and people that we place the most value on Often we are reactive in our self-care doing just enough to keep ourselves from imploding rather than creating a system in which we are continually doing what we need to keep ourselves feeling grounded, safe and loved, nurturing ourselves and those we care most about A better word for self-care might be self-nurturing... what is it we need to do to feel healed and cared for? How can we create moments with ourselves and those we care about that create healing, belonging and safety? Maybe a walk in nature, maybe quiet meditation or maybe just reading a book to yourself or to your children or even to your partner. DO THINGS THAT CREATE GOOD ENERGY There is no one good answer for what self-care means for you but if you take time to intentionally ask yourself what things you can do that create energy that best meet your needs and are directed towards your values, you will find them. For questions or comments, feel free to contact me at [email protected] Thanks for listening.

Unfortunately many of us either don't know how to handle a disagreement or even if we do, we fall into old patterns of being pushy, yelling, crying or whatever worked when we were like 5 years old (it's funny but not). In this episode, I want to remind you of the power of compassionte listening (good for talking to adults and children). When you care more about what the person you are talking to wants than what you want, when you work to understand their perspective and search to see if their is a good solution that would make you both happy, talking about hard things isn't as hard. It's more about loving each other well than getting a specific result anyway. The steps I suggest are: Channel kindness and compassion to the other person. Listen carefull. Repeat what you heard. Clarify any areas of confusion with compassionate questions. Validate the other persons feelings (I know this discussion hasn't gone well in the past and I can sense you are frustrated/angry or whatever and I just appreciate your being here). Look for solutions that satisfy both parties Kind words, compassionate thoughts, and curiosity really are the key to happiness and applies equally to life in general as well as to solving hard problems. Blessings on all of us as we try to get along better with each other, especially those we love the most and remember, winning doesn't mean convincing the other person of what you want, it means finishing the discussion in a way both people feel safe, heard and respected.