Dear George: Insights Into Healing Relationships

Dear George: Insights into Healing Relationships is a book of hope and possibilities. I’ve been on a healing journey most of my life. The stories you are about to read are based on my own complicated journey and my years in private practice. Each chapter starts with "a letter to George," a psychotherapist. The letters describe the journey of George and me custom designing a therapeutic relationship. They are my effort to move beyond my past patterns of distrust for the psychotherapeutic system. We co-create something new that drastically reduces the chronic pain I’ve been living with for forty years. All the chapters have three perspectives: mine with George, a novice’s experience—my daughter’s journey healing cancer—and the points of view of veterans of the system. These people choose to work with me. They have been in the system for a long time and often have more than one diagnosis. They are system-weary and system-wise. In my life and practice, I witness transformative shifts, which produce amazing results whether people are dealing with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, cancer, or mental illness. We use less than 10 percent of our brain capacity, and we mostly operate from unconscious programming or habit. This is why we keep doing what we do, even though it may not work. One way to form new connections in the brain is to open ourselves to possibilities through reading about people who experience these kinds of changes. Is your unconscious programming taking over? Are you struggling to overcome it? Dear George inspires hope, challenges conventional ideas and theories, and creates more expansive thinking and learning for those with the courage to question current practices. No hard work — no exercises. Just relax, read, and then see what happens.