Grownup Love: Getting It & Keeping It
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About this ebook
Grownup Love is an effective guide to help you examine your relationship patterns and transform them. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic to explore and teaches you how to use two powerful energy techniques to rapidly resolve, release, and heal unhealthy or constrictive patterns that you discover. You can use Grownup Love as your own self-guided relationship-healing workbook; or, use it in your healing work with your therapist or life coach. I think Grownup Love is terrific–straightforward, great stories, and clear directions to help you move into positive action and live the relationship.
Gloria Arenson
Gloria Arenson, MS, MFT, is an author and educator who has been a clinical therapist for more than twenty years. She specializes in Energy and Power Therapies to treat panic disorders, depression, phobias, and addictions, as well as stress and anxiety. A well-known, charismatic speaker, Ms. Arenson has helped thousands overcome self-defeating behaviors, raise their self-esteem, and enrich relationships through her classes and workshops. The author of popular books on eating disorders and compulsive behavior, she has appeared on major talk shows with Montel Williams, Leeza Gibbons, and Gary Collins. She trains other professionals - psychotherapists, teachers, and health professionals in Meridian Therapy, the basis of The Meridian Therapy Revolution. She lives with her husband, fellow therapist Laurence Brockway, in Southern California.
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Grownup Love - Gloria Arenson
GROWNUP
LOVE
Getting It and Keeping It
By
Gloria Arenson, MFT, DCEP
Disclaimer
The information and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for appropriate medical or mental health treatment. Please consult your mental health practitioner when you are dealing with serious problems.
The stories in this book are composites created from hundreds of clients I have treated over the last thirty years. All names and stories have been changed to protect confidentiality.
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Grownup Love
Gloria Arenson, MS, MFT, DCEP
Copyright 2011 by Gloria Arenson
Published by BrockArt Books at Smashwords
Key Words: marriage and relationships, how to, marriage, rapid change, attraction, self sabotage, binge, emotional self growth, energy psychology, self discovery, binge eating, personal problems, counseling, compulsion, new therapy, addiction, eft, emotional freedom techniques, compulsive spending, shopaholic, self esteem, psychotherapy, life-coaching
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Smashwords License Statement
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: I Had To Write This Book
PART 1: What is Love?
Chapter 2: How Did You Learn About Love?
Chapter 3: Your Family Tree
Chapter 4: What Does Love Look Like?
Part 2: My Relationship History
Chapter 5: Do You Love With Strings?
Chapter 6: Stop Me Before I Love Again
Chapter 7: Learning From Your Relationship Mistakes
Chapter 8: How Do You Heal A Broken Heart?
Chapter 9: The Silent Treatment
Chapter 10: How Could You Hurt Me Like This?
Chapter 11: Quarreling: A Problem or An Opportunity?
Part 3: Get Ready to Have It All
Chapter 12: Don't Settle For Less Than the Best
Chapter 13: How to Choose the Perfect Mate
Chapter 14: Ask the Magic Question Before You Say I Do
Chapter 15: Learn The Languages of Love
Chapter 16: Improving Loving Communication With the Phoenix Effect Process
Part 4: Look Before You Leap
Chapter 17: How To Recognize Emotional Problems
Chapter 18: Six Tips For Understanding the Compulsive Person In Your Life
Chapter 19: If You Love a Compulsive Overeater
Chapter 20: Questions and Answers About Compulsive Spending and Debting
Chapter 21: How to Live With a Compulsive Spender
Chapter 22: Understand the Procrastinator In Your Life
Part 5: Other Kinds of Relationships
Chapter 23: How to Get a Divorce From Your Parents
Chapter 24: How to Parent Your Adult Child
Chapter 25: I Want to Help But They Just Won't Listen
Chapter 26: How to Deal with Impossible People
Appendix 1: How to use EFT
Tapping Chart
Appendix 2: How to use the Phoenix Effect Process
Appendix 3: Negative Emotions
About Gloria Arenson
Introduction
Chapter 1: I Had To Write This Book
I had to write this book for a number of reasons. The first reason is because I am a veteran Licensed Marriage Family Therapist with over thirty years of experience. I have successfully counseled numerous couples whose marriage was in trouble as well as clients who were trying to figure out why they had no love relationships or were in an unhappy relationship and couldn’t or wouldn’t let it go. Still others were distressed by the realization that they kept choosing the same kind of unsuitable partner over and over again.
The second reason I am writing this book is that not only have I coached people about finding the right relationship, I have also lived most of the same experiences as my clients and know what it feels like from the inside out. I have been widowed, divorced, been attracted to the same type of dysfunctional partners more than once, and have also been in a harmonious marriage for over thirty years. Therefore, I know what it is like to be miserable in love and what it takes to find true and lasting love.
A long time ago I attended a talk given by a relationship specialist who said something that I have never forgotten. He said that the goal for people who want a successful relationship is to achieve Grownup Love. He said: The having it all
relationship is a relationship between two grownups who have done their own work, and in whom the head, the heart and the genitals are lined up.
What does that mean? What kind of work do you have to do in order to attract your perfect love and live happily ever after? The work I propose will take you on a journey of self-exploration and self-transformation. I will direct you in taking an inventory of your life, exploring what lessons you can learn from all your romantic relationships both positive and negative, your beliefs about love and about yourself as a lovable person, and awareness of common patterns that you repeat although they may be painful.
Knowing your past and understanding what you did and how you felt is not enough to guarantee your future success in love. How you react to a partner and what you believe about the world and yourself originates in a part of the brain called the limbic system. The limbic system has no words, only emotions. Past events, both happy and unhappy are stored in the limbic system and get triggered by present day happenings. The past may suddenly take over and you don’t even know it. Decisions you made long ago about being lovable, attractive, and intelligent, as well as decisions you made about relationships will trigger an instant reaction that may be untrue or harmful to you but you don’t realize it. All of this leads to the over-and-overs
in your love life and the feeling of despair that anything can change.
Today we know that the brain is changeable and that these old patterns in the brain can be altered. I will teach you a self-help technique called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) that can affect the chemistry of the brain and bring about amazing transformation. You can use EFT to heal the past and eliminate negative beliefs that block you from attracting the right mate for you. If you are already in a relationship you will be able to change your reactions to your partner as you see yourself in a new and more positive way. EFT works rapidly and is simple to learn.
Even when you find lasting love, you will discover that the best relationship has its ups and downs. Therefore, you will also learn how to use The Phoenix Effect Process (PEP), another simple imagery method, to clear out the wreckage of your life and eliminate past issues and beliefs that trigger you to keep reacting negatively to partners or lovers. Happy couples can use PEP to keep the road smooth whenever they hit a bump in an existing compatible relationship.
As you read on I will ask you what you think love is, where you learned about love, and who were your models of romantic figures. I will explain why you were attracted to the partners you have chosen, and why you remain in misery. I will offer suggestions for exploring your life and give you tools for eliminating negative patterns. I will share a number of examples based on people I have counseled and from my own path that you may identify with in hopes that these stories will give you courage to achieve your love goals and enjoy the having it all
love relationship.
PART 1: What is Love?
Chapter 2: How Did You Learn About Love?
I once had a client who grew up during the 1940’s and 50’s when movies were much less explicit than they are today. She explained that when she fell in love with her husband, she thought that they would drive off into the sunset and live happily ever after as lovers did in those black and white films. Instead she found herself in an abusive relationship where sex was rape. She endured the marriage for quite a few years until she could stand it no longer and finally got a divorce.
Today, sex is depicted and discussed openly and explicitly in movies and on TV, but what are young people learning from what they see? What are they learning about love? Are men still treating women as objects? Are women allowing themselves to be treated that way? Are only the most handsome men or beautiful women considered worthy of finding love, success and wealth?
How did you learn about love? Who we are and how we see the world results from the decisions we make and the experiences we have as we go through life. Where you were born, the culture you grew up in, the people who reared you, the rules you were taught to obey and the historic era you have lived in have brought you to this moment.
You are reading this book because you have not found the having it all
love you want or you would like to make your present relationship better. Therefore, I am asking you to take stock of who you are in this moment. Is your relationship history helping you or hurting you? Here are some questions to ask yourself about your own life. Exploring them may help you understand how you sabotage your love life and point you toward a happier future.
Love in my family
Did I grow up in a family with both parents present? If not, did I have just one adult parenting me? Were there a series of adults, other relatives or