Hidden Barriers to Happiness Blog
Have you always wondered about the invisible forces that affect your health, wealth, relationships and happiness?
For over 25 years, first as a neuroscientist, then epidemiologist, and now as a Holistic Brain Health Practitioner, I’ve been passionate about identifying underlying causes of mental and cognitive health challenges. This blog reveals my discoveries from my academic training, my passion for functional medicine, psychology, sociology, energy medicine and what I’ve learned from identifying secrets held by the subconscious.
If you want more health, wealth, better relationships and more happiness, find out what could be getting in the way! When you sign up to get my Top 10 Tips for a Happy & Healthy Brain, you’ll also get 2-4 newsletters per month featuring my blog, “Hidden Barriers to Happiness”.
What are you waiting for? Knowledge is power!
Seven Tips for a New Year’s Mood Makeover
2017 has been a rough year for so many reasons. I was and still am terrified by the outcomes of the last election, and regularly grieve for everyone whose lives are made more difficult as a result. For me personally, it has also been a difficult year with my relationships. This admittedly has put me in a very negative and pessimistic frame of mind. After hours of release work, I’m feeling more grateful for the lessons learned, and am accepting the changes, but feeling happy feels like a stretch at this point.
Happy is not my natural state of mind. I grew up with a very negative and pessimistic father, and that was my default state for decades. Recent research shows that there is a genetic tendency to depression, and well-being. I suspect given my family and personal history that I did not fair well these genes. Never-the-less, a gene can be expressed in 3000 different ways, so our environment, and what we do matters a lot.
I have had to work at being happy. When our environment spirals negatively downward, being happy requires more work.
Here are some simple tips that you can do to give your mood a makeover for 2018: (more…)
How to Stay Calm Despite the Family Drama
My client had a particularly manipulative member of the family who was extremely critical of his work on the family property. My client and other members of his family were concerned that this family member was trying to acquire the property by making life difficult for everyone else who shares ownership. In preparation for a difficult extended family meeting, we cleared trapped emotions, belief systems and other subconscious barriers to help him stay calm regardless. Upon returning, he (more…)
The Biggest Reason Why You Must Leave Abusive Relationships
While we all know that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be abused, leaving an abusive relationship is not always an easy choice.
Why it is so hard to leave
Sometimes, the relationship is with someone you still love. Maybe staying with this situation means financial stability, or a lifestyle that you’ve become accustomed to. Maybe you have children that you don’t feel like you can support on your own. Or maybe you just can’t imagine a happy life beyond the confines of your current reality.
I know what it feels like to be in abusive relationships. I lived with 2 (more…)
From Feeling Unloved to Hugged
I have a client whose mother died when she was still a baby, and her dad remarried a woman who constantly berated her and made her feel unlovable. Her father was distant and never filled the void and abandonment that she felt after losing her mother. Consequently, she has struggled all her life with feeling unlovable, and desperately craved affection. Whenever I talked with her, her pattern was to criticize herself.
From Feeling Unloved to Hugged
We were working together to release subconscious barriers that made her feel unloved when she suddenly felt (more…)
How to Talk to Someone with Alzheimer’s Disease
Have you ever tried to talk to someone with Alzheimer’s disease and ended up feeling awkward or frustrated? Communicating with someone with Alzheimer’s disease can be challenging especially if the diseases has progressed to advanced stages.
Alzheimer’s disease usually attacks the brain in a way that it makes it difficult for the affected person to communicate effectively as well as remember past events. This is challenging especially for caregivers because they have to adjust the way they communicate to their loved ones. The good news is that there are effective ways for dementia caregivers to communicate with loved ones impacted by this disease, as discussed below. (more…)
Letting Go of Holiday Loneliness
Right before the holidays, my client’s boyfriend dumped her. She did not have family or close friends to spend the holidays with. This caused distress for her. In addition to the heartbreak she felt, she had feelings of being left alone and abandoned.
Releasing feelings that cause loneliness is the first step.
Our first step to address holiday loneliness was (more…)
The Dangers of Vitamin D Deficiency
Most people are deficient in vitamin D.
The current recommended dose of vitamin D is 600IU daily for adults, but many experts in nutrition and functional and natural medicine say that the optimal dose ranges between 1000-4000 IU per day.
Depending on the study, Vitamin D deficiency has shown to range between 30 -75% in the general US population!
Why are so many people vitamin D deficient?
Help Others More Effectively
Do you have someone in your family who just can’t seem to get their life together? You might have family members who won’t engage in healthy behaviors, are depressed, and are often addicts.
Do you find yourself worrying about them so much that it is taking away from your enjoyment of life? Do you feel compelled to help, yet frustrated, hopeless and helpless about the situation?
If so, you are not alone. I regularly talk with anxious caretakers who want me to help their loved ones. Some realize that they would be more effective as caretakers if (more…)
How to Get From Conflict to Understanding
When we get frustrated with others, we can get mired in our stories and locked into repeating patterns of behavior. It’s easy to get stuck in the blaming game.
I went to a workshop with dementia care expert, Teepa Snow, this week. She gave a perfect example of why so many of us can get stuck in frustration mode with members of our family.
The biggest mistake we make in relationships is this:
From Trauma Drama to Ease in Relationships
I have a client who had 2 difficult housemates and didn’t feel like he could move. He called them entitled, and he felt like they regularly demanded far more from him than they were willing to do themselves. He often felt enraged, like a seething volcano about ready to erupt! He didn’t feel like he knew how to react to these kinds of stressful relationships!
He felt resentful because he was doing a large majority of the shared responsibilities. He was very concerned about saying something because he felt that, no matter how respectful he tried to be, they had a pattern of lashing out, being vindictive, or undermining his needs.
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