May 2008 Archives

Dr. Brian Weiss, a leading expert in past lives and a past-life regression therapist, raised on Spring Street in Red Bank, was featured on Oprah on May 13, 2008.   He started the show explaining:  "Hypnosis gives us a direct line in to your unconscious.  Hypnosis is focused concentration while your body is relaxed.  It usually takes 10-12 sessions to get to a past life before people are open enough to have that clear channel.  About 20% of the population is easily hypnotized."

The show began with Dr. Weiss hypnotizing certain members of the audience who had volunteered.  When questioned, a black woman in the audience said "It weirded me out because I was white and I was a nun.  I am so unlike a nun now."  Another person in the audience reported that this first time she went deep into regression "I thought I was in a swamp.  I looked down and I had men's legs.  I was actually murdered. I was killed with a knife.   Later I saw my Dad and sister who had passed over."

Another female in the audience stated in her regression she was a Native American and she had children.  She was very emotional because in this life she would love to have children but doesn't.  The first life she saw she died and her children lived.  "I have had many women go through this and then get pregnant" Dr Weiss stated.  He continued, "We change race and religions in different lives.  We are all connected.  It's not about color or race.  We have all been black, white, red, etc.  We have been everything."

In the next part of the show Dr. Weiss told how he was not a believer in past lives until one of his clients, an adult child of an alcoholic named Catherine, after more than one year of conventional treatment, suddenly "went back to the root of her problem," which was a past life.  Dr Weiss did what every therapist does.  He took notes even though he was not open to past lives.  "With each new session came new discoveries and more and more past lives.  I was shocked.  I thought it was imagination or fantasy but she was staring to heal.  She was a Catholic woman from New England and didn't believe in past lives either."

Dr. Weiss was concerned because as he became more and more interested in Past-Life Regression Therapy, if this information became known, his license could have been suspended and he could have lost everything as Head of Psychiatry of the hospital where he worked.  "But it was so real and so detailed" that he continued this work and researched this type of therapy.  During one session Catherine gave him personal information about his father and a thirteen-week old son who had both died.  "No one could have told her this information.  You know how you get a feeling in your bones that this is just real?  Past lives are here to teach us about life and death and what happens after that," he said. 

Dr. Oz, a frequent guest on Oprah's show, also received a past-life regression.  He stated:  "It's happened to all of us, getting this direct line. When you're driving alone and missing an exit on the highway because you are in auto pilot is one good example.  Only by observing what's really happening can we begin to get our arms around a new concept.  That's what fascinated me so much about this whole process."

Dr. Oz continued explaining, "As I entered into a deeper state of awareness, I felt it might be tedious.  But I ended up with a memory.  A dream I had before entering Kindergarten.  In this dream, my father is taking me by the hand to these men from the Ottoman Empire.  They are professors in school.  They are writing down my lessons and what I am to learn.  They are not joking around.  It seems to me that they were planning my life. Then I ended up in this space that many of my patients describe as being in a space where they can see lights.  A stream of people was going past me.  They didn't have faces.  They were energy.  It was sixty minutes long and it felt like just a few minutes that I had been under."

Dr. Oz stated that the collective unconscious of Carl Jung is where past lives are stored.  "In this society, we have gotten addicted that the answer will be there.  We are uncomfortable with the mystery of certain experiences.  Sometimes we have to take the leap and deal with the unknown."

A former guest named Leon, a funeral director, was asked to return to the show to be regressed.  He telepathically received the message "They want me to tell people they are OK." "That's good.  Who are they?" Dr. Weiss asked.  "The dead people."  "OK that's good and you can tell them that.  You have your own experience now."  When Oprah asked who was the message coming from Leon explained "It's just a real strong feeling.  I have always felt this energy.  It's more of a spirit thing than a voice." 

Leon continued in his regression to have memories of watching a woman who is his sister in this life be a rape victim whom he could not help.  He explained that he has always had problems in his relationship with his sister now, which he feels have been released by this memory.   He also has had flying dreams since he was young and he experienced a past life where his airplane was shot down because of his behavior. As his own plane crashes, Dr. Weiss stated:  "When I touch your forehead you will leave that experience.  Just float above it.  You are relieved."

Dr. Weiss ended the show by explaining "All of your minds are connected.  I see God everywhere in this.  We are like ice cubes, which are made from water.  The water melts and now there's no individuality anymore.  People are like the ice cubes.  We think we are separate from everybody else but we are not.  We melt into a spiritual sea.  Love is the organizing spirit of it all.  God is in all of us.  We are all souls and we are all connected."

Is there something that's happened to you that you are anxious about telling others? Would you explain this with the words "You're going to think I'm crazy when I tell you and I don't really have the words to explain this to you but...."

Many times what has happened to you is a spiritual experience (an SE). 30-50% of the population in the United States and England have had these types of experiences. Some are: mystical experiences, near-death experiences, speaking with the dead, feeling the presence of someone who has died as being with you, seeing angels, synchroncities, which are at least two random events that happen just to you and are very meaningful, etc.

These types of experiences add meaning to your life; however, you are afraid to share them for fear of being considered "crazy." Our society does not have a place for these experiences. I am hoping that this blog will help to create a consensus that these SEs are happening to many more people than 30-50% of the population.

What do you think?

Dr. Raymond E. Moody, Jr. states: "Karen E. Herrick is a new breed of therapist who is dealing with a vast range of experiences, which have enormous impact on people's lives.  It has been his experience that people who have Spiritual Experiences ( SEs) often tell him that neither doctors nor ministers have been able to help them understand these experiences. Karen's book does just that."

Karen was born premature. Her mother said she was "not finished" because she had no eyebrows, fingernails or toenails.  Thus, the title of her recently published book "You're Not Finished Yet" (ISBN# 978-9769404-9-4) has personal meaning.  

The book begins with a chapter on alcoholism. It ends with two chapters on developing spiritual language by naming different spiritual experiences, understanding them and our purpose in life and in death.  In between, are four chapters more giving information ranging from exploring the characteristics, roles and personality traits one develops in a dysfunctional family, which manifests in anger and the need for drama in one's life.  There are facts about parenting skills, values and class differences that cause disconnection within families.

The unconscious is explained with a story about what her youngest grandson told her a few years ago.  "It's not the unconscious, Grandma, it's the subconscious."  When she asked him how he knew about the subconscious, he went on to explain, "Oh, I learned about it in my Calvin & Hobbes book.  It's scary down there, you need a flashlight to see and all this old stuff is piled up.  People don't like going down there."

Whichever you choose to call it, the book explains some Jungian concepts about how our unconscious affects us in childhood and this chapter ends with "Rules for Therapy and Life."

Chapter 5 explains "What About The People Who Really 'Won't."  Part of a poem that Karen authored during her PhD work with Dr. Raymond E. Moody, Jr., helps us to understand why they "won't"....

"There's a breakdown in relationship at 16-30 months
Their ship is anchored at preverbal
Their pattern is a repeating compulsion of
A dump that's full of refuse (the unconscious)

And, piles and piles keep building up
Around the house to show
Their sewer will be anywhere
To tell Mama, I say, 'NO!'

This power struggle is constant
Now, it matters not who's there
To oppose gives INTERNAL CONTROL!
Any attention winds around their wound

They are the King and Queen of self-contradictions
Their workloads are unassailable
They choose procrastination, pretense, hypocrisy and
Leave us no reward for being so tenacious..."  (p. 66)

The mind/body connection is described in Karen's flashback of a personal incest memory, which was triggered by her chiropractor finally repairing one side of her neck so she could turn it completely to the left.  She continues to explain that many times people who have experienced trauma in childhood learn how to dissociate, which gives them the ability to have SEs easier in adulthood.

One of these types of SEs is a meaningful "Radio Synchronistic Event, which some therapists might call an "idea of reference," - a symptom that schizophrenics exhibit in mental hospitals.  This is one of the lines that will have to be established between psychological definitions and the paranormal as therapists and clients name different types of SEs.

An acquaintance who had just recovered from cancer tells how she was having a bad day and was in her car asking God the "Why did this have to happen to me?" question, when she turned on her radio to hear, "When will you believe in me as much as I believe in you?"  She knew these words were meant for her as an answer to her question."  (p. 95)

Karen finds that in discussing spirituality with her clients she has been told many "weird" SEs.  One such person was Pat Thoms. This is how Pat's book, "Signs of Life," (ISBN 0-9744744-7-9) came to be.  

In explaining how "It's All Consciousness" (p. 124), Karen aid's therapists, clients and lay people to understand angelic experiences, "Praying to Ancestors", and the difference between what is paranormal and what is spiritual.  This book has many headings. It is designed to be read from one to three pages at a time to teach the concept of each heading.

Karen has shared her clinical expertise for the past twenty+ years in her private practice in Red Bank by lecturing throughout the US on dysfunctional homes, grief, loss and dissociation.  She is actively involved in her PhD work researching, writing and speaking on Spiritual Psychology especially since she has discovered that only 33% of the professionals she surveyed believed in the ability to recognize the difference between spiritual and psychotic experiences.


If you're interested in ordering, please call click here.

This article was originally published February 20-27, 1998 in The Two River Times, a Red Bank, NJ newspaper.

Two weeks ago, Little Silver resident Karen Herrick received a call from Washington, D.C. asking if she'd be willing to appear on the McLaughlin Group, a weekend discussion program centering on a current event. The topic about to be discussed was the characteristics of adult children of alcoholics as they relate to the President of the United States. Herrick was asked to appear with psychologist Dr. Paul Fick, who in 1994 wrote a book titled, "The Dysfunctional President," examining the impact of Clinton's childhood on his behavior as president.

Herrick immediately said yes. A licensed social worker and certified alcoholism counselor, Herrick founded the Center for Children of Alcoholics in Red Bank 15 years ago. Since then, she has worked with thousands of individuals and families affected by addiction.

Because his mother was addicted to gambling and he is the stepson and adopted son of an alcoholic, Herrick says, she has taken a particular interest in Bill Clinton ever since he ran for national office. A high-achieving 'family hero,' Clinton exhibits many of the personality traits typical of children of alcoholics, Herrick says. Those characteristics include having difficulty with intimate relationships, judging themselves without mercy, and having a tendency to "lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth."

For that reason, Herrick's clients also tend to cast an interested eye on the Chief of State. "They watch him, because he's one of them," she says. Herrick, too, is 'one of them.'

The daughter of an often violent mother and alcoholic father, Herrick married and later divorced her high school sweetheart, with whom she had two children; then married a former boss, moving with him to Rumson after a job transfer from California. The promise of an idyllic life ultimately fell apart as her husband's alcoholism took its toll on the family.

When the emotional abuse became physical, Herrick took her three children and left the marriage for good. With no self-confidence and no particular sense of direction, she began taking courses at Brookdale Community College. After earning an associate's degree, she transferred to Jersey City State College where she graduated magna cum laude the year her divorce became final. She was 39 years old. She entered the graduate program at the Rutgers School of Social Work. Despite her academic success, Herrick struggled with a deep sense of inadequacy, believing that everyone else was smarter than she; that her admission to graduate school was "a fluke." It was while taking a class on alcohol, drugs and human behavior at Rutgers that Herrick first recognized that the pattern the instructor was describing fit like a dysfunctional Cinderella's shoe. She had found her life's work.

After earning a master's degree in social work from Rutgers, she began work as an alcoholism counselor, leading workshops for adult children of alcoholics through the Monmouth County office of the National Council on Alcoholism, serving as a community counselor in Union Beach and founding her own Center for Children of Alcoholics in 1987. In the years since, Herrick has counseled thousands of children of alcoholics, written numerous articles for professional journals and lectured widely in her field.

In her lectures, Herrick often brings up her own 'war stories' form the emotional battlefield that is the home territory of adult children from alcoholic homes. One story she tells about the old days is how she'd buy a box of ice cream sandwiches when she went grocery shopping, line them up on the dashboard of her car and eat them one by one, all by herself, before going home. The behavior had little to do with liking ice cream sandwiches and a lot to do with a need to deny uncomfortable emotions.

To Herrick and other alcoholism professionals state that the key to President Clinton's present predicament has its roots in his family pattern of addictive behavior. Referring to a recent newspaper headline, "President in Crisis," Herrick comments, "Why would you expect any other kind of headline for a child of an alcoholic? Untreated, they keep causing it.. ."The "bimbo eruptions" that have shadowed the president's career are evidence of what Herrick believes is sexual compulsion as strong as other kinds of addiction. Herrick sees a connection between Clinton's mother's penchant for heavy makeup and flamboyant clothes, and his alleged attraction to women with similiar styles.

Herrick says she is inclined to believe the latest allegations. "That's how compulsion is," she says. "You say you are not going to do it anymore, then the anxiety builds up, then you start to think about it, then you plan it, then you do it. Then you feel guilty. You feel bad and then you are "good" for awhile. It's also a thinking addiction. You need help to stop."

Transcripts from the divorce hearing of President Clinton's mother, Virginia, and stepfather, Roger, in 1959, hold evidence of a family in crisis. An article by Paul Elovitz in "The Journal of Psychohistory," quotes the 14-year-old Bill Clinton's testimony from the transcript: "I was present on March 27,1959, and it was I who called my mother's attorney, who in turn had to get the police to come to the house to arrest the defendant. The last occasion in which I went to my mother's aid, when he was abusing my mother, he threatened to mash my face in if I took her part." Though granted the divorce, Virginia Clinton remarried her husband three months later--an act which Herrick and others in the field interpret as betrayal of her son.

Hillary Clinton's strength during the most recent flurry of embarrassing publicity is classic 'enabling' behavior, Herrick believes. "Her identity is all tied up with keeping him and them looking good. As bright as she is, she hasn't done it for herself. Her identity is making him look good so she still has a job...they are the closest when something like this happens. That's when Hillary would feel needed the most."

Herrick's appearance with Dr. Fick on the McLaughlin Group brought a flurry of criticism from radio personality Rush Limbaugh, who interpreted their contention that the president has an addiction that requires treatment as a way of excusing bad behavior.

"It doesn't excuse his behavior," says Herrick. "He has to take responsibility for it. I don't know why people think if you say you have an addiction, that excuses it. It's just the opposite. That's when you have to take responsibility for the first time."

Source: Two River Times newspaper, Red Bank, NJ 2/98

Carl Jung stated that the unconscious was 80% of our psyche, called THE SHADOW, which is positive and negative repressed content from our childhood, daily lives and our potential aspects. There is also a collective shadow, aspects which society does not to wish to claim. The shadow is emotion almost always accompanied by physical manifestations. Jung stated your body was your shadow. The shadow represents energetically charged autonomous patterns of feeling and behavior that simply cannot be stopped by an act of will. What is needed is rechanneling or transformation. Therapy provides this.

Shadow usually is shown when we have someone in our life we are compulsive about (either positive or negatively) - our thinking becomes addictive about this person, about what we're going to do with them, about them, etc. We usually use PROJECTION or blaming - the attribution of one's faults to others in order not to own our shadow qualities.

We have islands in our unconscious of feelings that keep popping up. The shadow also contains the voices of the people who raised us saying, usually, negative messages that we allow to be repeated over and over to ourselves in our mind. Some other shadow characteristics are denial, repression, cynicism, masochism or sadism, ruthlessness, suffering martyr, guilt-ridden behavior, enabling behaviors, inability to commit, pride, jealousy, envy, self-destructiveness of all types, creation of negative circumstances, control, rigidness, tyrannical behavior, judgment (positive and negative), laziness, gluttony, irresponsibility, etc.

We have positive shadow also - for ACOA's some characteristics are the ability to play, sense of humor, risk taking, and having good things happen to us and accepting them. Also, the knowledge of positive things about our personality is sometimes in our shadow.

The shadow is shown in stories and myths as meeting "the other" (remember that nothing is so opposite as "the other person" who contains your shadow qualities and that you WON'T and DON'T see in yourself). You meet this other and then descend to the underworld to wrestle with the ogre or animal, battle doubt and temptation and expose and beat the evil one. This is the dark night of the soul battle and YOU ARE THE ENEMY WHO MUST BE LOVED - BY YOU. This moment when you begin this battle is really when your core issue stage of therapy actually begins! (Please see Stages of Therapy for more info on core issues).

This is a partial reprint of an article entitled, "Learning the Languge of Spirituality" that was published in the Journal of Religion and Psychial Research, Vol 28, #1, January, 2005.

Since I am running two spirituality groups per week, among my usual six, I am finding with my PhD work, that I have some "spiritual" clients, who have completed a few years of extensive therapy on their core family-of-origin issues and have returned ready for a stage where they use spirituality to keep peace in the middle of some chaos that is still in their lives due to the age of anxiety in which we live.  We have discussed the work of some of these scientists and others who have worked on this film in these groups.  

Most members, as reported in the book, The Next American Spirituality by George Gallup, Jr. & T Jones (2000) are not "religious" now and do not attend church regularly.  The actual statistics from this book stated that 96% of the population said they believed in God while nearly 60% saw religion itself declining in influence.   

In particular, one spirituality group is finding that a dialogue between them is setting something in motion and is making the un-manifest, manifest.  After forty weeks, members have found profound differences in the quality of their lives and how they are seeing the world.  A flow or spirit has and is working between them.   

Part of this is because we are discussing and investigating quantum physics of which one theory is that of Rupert Sheldrake known as "morphic fields" which he defines as "regions of influence in space time."  It's a kind of memory bank of information that all species tune into.  It is what Jung called the "Collective Unconscious."  It can also be called the Life Force, Energy or Love that surrounds all living things that is shared among plants, animals and humans.   

For instance, about two-thirds of widows who loose a spouse have the experience of having them appear afterwards which they experience as a reunion.  51% of dogs and 25% of cats in the United States, show anticipatory behavior approximately ten minutes before their owners arrive home.  Plants, hooked up to instruments, show positive signs of response when their caretakers decide to return home from a trip.   

The term "Giving Up the Ghost" was discussed and learned for the first time for some.  This term is mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 25:8, Mark 15:37-39, John 19:30 and Luke 23:46.  It is quoted from a 1929 book, A Curious Life by George Wehner, "Then, like a shadow, the spirit-form of my beloved mother glided rapidly upward through a corner of the ceiling."  So, this is how a ghost becomes a ghost.  Some people give up the ghost easily and others don't.  I can't tell you how many clients stories, friend stories, acquaintance stories, etc. etc. I have heard about ghosts.  So many in fact that I now xerox the web site of the South Jersey Ghost Research Association http://www.sjgr.org, who have been in business since 1955, and give it out to people.  This association has been featured  on Channel 13, in newspapers and magazine articles.  This association has many talented volunteers who will come to your home with expensive equipment and give you a valid report about understanding ghosts that you may have in your home. 

 Just knowing this information about ghosts or spirits and the other aspects of the language of spirituality seems to help the members believe that there is a greater force around them that they can tune into.  So for them, practicing meditation or prayer is something that they are now doing on a regular basis and it is having results because their belief system is now stronger knowing the above facts which I present using Power-Point Presentations. 

One member now prays the rosary daily for herself and her family members and all have more positive life styles as a result.  One member is attending college, something that was supposedly an impossibility last year.  Another member is starting another career, also an impossibility last year.  One member has found a book publisher.  One profoundly, negative client, is now positive and uses her pleasant sense of humor, without sarcasm, in a group where she has a genuine sense of belonging.  These rational goals are not really discussed in the group.  The spiritual concepts are, along with other spiritual stories and language.  The goals just happen in their daily lives.  This is the fascinating part. 

Also, the stories that they have told during the weeks together have validated their faith in what they before considered "weird" and this too has increased their faith, not necessarily in religion, but in spiritual things.  Much that appears paranormal, at present, looks normal when we expand our ideas of normality.  This expansion increases our sense of connectedness and spirituality for ourselves.