Got What You Need To Help Others Create Mental & Emotional Balance?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels 1 Comment

Our everyday lives are transforming at breakneck speed. If you’re over 30, you know the life you knew growing up is definitely a thing of the past.

As the world keeps speeding us into ‘more, better, and faster’, it creates a dramatic challenge for the average person’s mental and emotional balance. The degree of stress, overwhelm, anxiety and depression has increased at a staggering velocity, birthing new addictions, unfamiliar challenges, and unsettling confusions.

The quest for a fresh way to manage this avalanche of new problems has spawned greater interest in religion, spirituality, meditation, mindfulness, conscious awakening, and personal transformation.

To keep up with these emerging issues, it is useful to keep exploring the newest models, methods, processes, and techniques capable of responding to the concerns of today.

In the rush to manage this explosion of stress and overwhelm, we have discovered the necessity of four-pillars-morguefile-1000x751what we call The 4 Pillars. We have found these to be essential for anyone aiming to help others (and themselves) in our new and rapidly changing world.

With some degree of expertise in each of these areas, you can more easily and correctly identify your client’s issues, how they perceive Continue reading →

Want To Be A Healer? But … Is It Really Possible To Heal Another?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels 1 Comment

The best answer I’ve ever found to this question is the word ‘Po’, coined by Edward DeBono, a modern non-Aristotelian logician.

‘Po’ means neither yes nor no. It means you are neither for nor against either possibility. It means moving beyond the no of logic (that leads you to the right answer), and the yes of belief systems (that make you feel you have the right answer).

‘Po’ positions you in the space surrounding either yes or no as the right answer.

‘Po’ deposits you at the home address of true creativity; that point of power where two opposites meet and merge into a new whole, a new insight, or a new guideline.


What Does This Have To Do With Healing?

Well, here’s the thing. The safest position to take on this question is ‘Po’. Let’s take a look at why I say this.

On the one hand, it sure looks like healers heal others when healing is defined as taking away painbutterfly-on-leaves-in-sun and suffering. If it’s physical pain, the release can be accomplished many ways: an aspirin, acupuncture, surgery, repairing broken links between organs, systems and the brain, and many more.

If it’s emotional pain, reducing that emotional challenge is definitely do-able with the newest Energy Psychology techniques such as Callahan Tapping, EFT, TFT, TAT and many others. You can rearrange the configuration of images, sound, and feeling that create the emotion via techniques from NLP or hypnosis in deep or waking trance. And of course, there’s the age old technique of  simply giving someone a hug or just reaching out and gently taking their hand.

If it’s mental pain, releasing fixed points of view that hamper perceptual flexibility can be accomplished by challenging presuppositions, introducing new models of meaning and purpose, or a simple re-education of how things actually work, like relationships or the fact that consequences are the other side of the coin of accountability.

So clearly healers can release pain in a variety of ways. Yet, here’s where a much more important question emerges; a question far more important for you as the healer than for the one being healed.

Who Is Doing The Healing?
 Continue reading →

Are You Offering Pie In The Sky Or A Goal Your Client Can Truly Reach?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels 2 Comments

One of the worst things you can do is inadvertently offer your client a goal they can’t reach.

Well, sure. They’ll probably be able to reach it someday. After all, that’s part of your job, right? To hold the dream of their success, competence, value and worth as inevitable, even when they can’t see it?

But one of the biggest problems I see is coaches who offer too much, too fast; and many counselors and therapists frequently doing the opposite and offering too little, too slowly.
Somewhere in between the two is the optimal goal.

How do you find it?

1st – My suggestion is to always take the time to create an absolutely, unequivocally, beyond a shadow of a doubt, reachable outcome. By that I mean an outcome your client can reach while they’re still working with you – preferably before they leave your office each and every meeting.

2nd – Break down the big goal into the little goals essential to reaching the big one. Goals that entail overhauling a complete life style are not quickly reachable outcomes. The wise coach or counselor keeps breaking down the big goal into the little goals that have to be reached before the final destination comes into view.

We all know that in order to someday dance, you have to start as a baby, rolling over onto your belly from your back. statue-of-dancerThis has to happen before you can crawl; and crawling has to happen before you can stand; and standing before you can walk, and walking before you can run, and running before you can finally dance freely and with abandon.

Most goals are usually reachable, but always in small steps. Your job is to make sure your client is focused on the step in front of them.

And it’s your job to put that step in view and keep it there until it’s reached and the next step comes into view.

The bigger the scope of the change, the more small steps will be required. Here are some categories   Continue reading →

Ready To Learn Something New & Dazzling? Truly Beyond Belief?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels Leave a comment

Any of your clients mentioned what I call the alphabet tools, like EFT, TAT, TFT, EMDR and other energy psychology techniques?

Have you wondered yet if they’re really effective? Have you thought about learning them by surfing the internet? Or buying a few books? Or have you already tried them out but still feel less than comfortable about bringing your knowledge back into the office?

If you’re like me, you probably don’t want to bring a new tool into your work unless you’ve got a good understanding of what it is and how it works. You want to feel like you can answer any questions your client might ask you.

Almost 20 years ago, I found myself pulled into a training for something called EMDR. It took a bit of courage because at the time, it was definitely odd, and assuredly out of my comfort zone. But I was always willing to use anything that worked. And because EMDR did get results, it quickly became a part of my professional repertoire.

Then, one of my EMDR trained colleagues got interested in an acupressure technique called TFT (Thought Field Therapy). Through a series of synchronistic events, I found myself in yet another odd training which led me to another and then another. As a result of this exploration and exposure, my entire way of perceiving my work changed – in a very good way.

orange alphabet 900x602But there was a problem. As a fairly traditional psychotherapist with nearly twenty years of experience, I was seriously challenged on how to integrate into my practice what I knew were extremely useful tools. How do you introduce these valuable methods to your clients?

Somewhere I had the idea that being professional didn’t include being ‘odd’. But if you’re dedicated Continue reading →

Are You Aware of Rapport’s Slippery Reality?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels Leave a comment

Everyone in this business knows that rapport is the bottom line IF you want to get the change the client is asking for. But we don’t always stay tuned into rapport throughout the course of a session – and THAT creates more problems than almost anything else.

Most of us define rapport as something that happens when two folks can relate to each other, connect, or feel safe; in other words, when you like each other. In the world of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), rapport is defined as your connection, or lack of it, with the unconscious mind – not whether the client likes you, or feels safe with you.

Your first job is to create rapport with the client’s unconscious mind – and then sustain it. Or, what I have found to be even more important, knowing when rapport gets broken and how to re-establish it on the spot!

How do you get an unconscious mind to feel safe with you? Not necessarily by being nice and kind, or looking and sounding understanding. The unconscious mind knows that you see it when you reflect back its own patterns.

We all easily relate to people we feel are the same as us. We assume because they are so similar, they can understand us and that creates a feeling of safety – as if we’re in the presence of a member of our own tribe.

NLP is widely known for teaching students to create rapport by mirroring their client’s body postures, movements, eye patterns, and language. But the key is knowing how to assess whether or not you succeeded in establishing rapport with the unconscious mind.

Lemon slice with water dropsHow do you do it? Continue reading →

How Many Shoes Can You Easily & Quickly Step Into?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels Leave a comment

Everyone knows people come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. The question is: “Do you have the flexibility to step inside their shoes and see the situation from their point of view?” I’m known to rant a bit about perceptual flexibility, and here’s the reason why.

After 30 + years of working with others, it became clear this skill was the key to truly helping others help themselves. When you can work from the others point of view, it makes everything you do with your client more efficient and ultimately, more effective and sustainable by them.

It takes a lot less time for you to meet your client where they live than it takes to convince your client to come to where you are.

Helping people shifts into an art form when you master the skill of helping your client discover on their own what they need to see or know or feel – without you telling them directly.

When you discover with your own eyes what you’ve been missing, it impacts much more than when you’re told about it by someone else. This approach invites learning at a much deeper level accompanied by a more rapid incorporation and integration. Continue reading →

Do We Really Have Choice About What We Feel & Think? Or Don’t We?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels 2 Comments

Well, of course, we all have choice. But we may not always remember that it’s not as simple as it might seem. Choice is a popular theme these days. You’re told you have it. You’ve probably even told your clients they have it. But in reality, it’s a bit more complex; and when you’re involved in helping others (and yourself), it’s wise to honor that complexity.

You do have choice, but you don’t have real choice until you’re aware the choice you feel you’re making isn’t truly a choice at all. It’s just the result of a powerful unconscious conditioning

True choice is a higher level option. It requires more awareness than you think. But more importantly, and the point of this post, is that true choice requires the unconscious to actually give you a choice.

Having only one response to a situation, circumstance, or object is called a phobia. Add in the availability of a second response, and you’ve now placed yourself in a dilemma. But acquire a third option of response, and you finally have the freeing sense of a psychological choice – and that feels really good!

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Got A Great Model For Mental Health & Emotional Well-Being?

Ragini Elizabeth Michaels Leave a comment

Ever wish you knew just a little bit more than you do?  Heard someone talking about something and had to pretend you were up on it?  Wished you had the time and energy to take on learning something new?  Felt a little like you’d fallen behind and might not ever catch up with the newest in your field?

If so, our Blog is for you.

The personal growth industry has become quite prolific in its offering of multiple ways to arrive at good mental health and emotional well-being.  There is so much, you can easily feel left behind and a bit confused about what might be best to explore. So how do you decide which offering is the most valuable?

The thing is – every model has something of value to offer – especially if you’re a coach, counselor, therapist, or hypnotherapist. The more models within your grasp, the greater probability you will have something that fits your client.

This is truly important, for it frees you from making the most common, and often the most hurtful, mistake of our profession: trying to fit your client into the one or two models you’ve chosen to learn – rather than finding the one that fits your client best.  And this can happen whether you’re just starting out, or the consummate, seasoned professional.

Our desire at To Help You Help Others is to expand your awareness of all the models in today’s marketplace for both mental health and emotional well-being.  We’ll show you how learning new ways of approaching old problems will not only refresh a possibly waning interest, but increase your success rate and the frequency of seeing your client’s eyes light up with delight and wonder at how they’ve reached their goal.

Here are just a few examples of things there is to learn:  Know How To:pic-context-content-user-660x450

Continue reading →