My clients range from 20 somethings to 60 somethings, the one thing they ALL have in common: Somewhere they heard and swallowed the message, "I don't want to be too needy," and that fear of being labeled needy has translated into having no needs at all.

Somewhere along the line, we convinced ourselves that we are polite by not sharing our suffering, and I will call BS on that. We aren't polite; we are silently suffering. We are hiding our pain, fear, and sadness in the guise of polite.

The minute we start noticing we want to make some changes, or that life isn't what we want it to be we hammer ourselves with thoughts of being ungrateful and unworthy.

Fill in snake with any fear, shame, or doubt we had as a child, and the more our experience was ignored or dismissed, the less likely we are to be loyal to ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that we couldn't trust ourselves. Whether it is a need for approval, the desire to 'do it right,' or fear of hearing our Monger goes off on us, we have learned to take our decisions to the committee.

I read all the articles: 5 Ways to Reduce Stress or the Top 10 Ways to Gain Happiness. Inevitably I am disappointed because I am reminded that the answer is not OUT there. It is internal.

Too often, in the quest for personal development and change, we forget the importance of self-love and compassion.

I see it with my clients who know some self-help principles and try to implement them into their lives, only to feel discouraged that it isn't working.

Recently, I realized that I had been ignoring the body part of body, mind, and spirit.

We haven't chosen to examine the answer because we have falsely tied our productivity to feeling worthy and good enough. Much of our society is fed by the rule: The more productive you are, the more worthy you are.

On the one hand, we know to engage with life, we need to disconnect, and on the other hand, we know that society and our Monger are telling us to keep up, get stuff done and be successful

Anytime we are learning something new, practicing something different or trying to improve ourselves–we need room to make mistakes and correct them–thus the do-over.

I recently had someone say to me that there are days she feels like she has a Ph.D. in quieting her anxiety, and there are days she feels like a Kindergartener.

We all have stories. We all have stresses and anxieties in our lives. Too often, rather than feel the emotions tied to these anxieties and stresses, we talk ourselves out of them with four simple words “Someone has it worse.”

Clients often schedule an appointment because they are tired of being tired, tired of feeling like they will rip someone's head off, tired of running from thing to thing in their lives.

Unfortunately, many of us weren't taught how to speak up for ourselves growing up, so we learned a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms to get around speaking our needs.

How often do you decide to do something totally 'normal' totally within reason, and someone close to you has a strong reaction that takes you by surprise, so you change your mind?

I have figured out that in this process of separating your voice from the Monger’s voice, you not only need to recognize the Monger’s voice but you need to recognize your voice too. I refer to this voice as Your Biggest Fan

I see my clients and myself get stuck when we beat ourselves up for needing more help. Because we believe that we should have fixed ourselves, we see a tune-up as a failure.