“I’m headed to California in a few days, so I just wanted to know if you could feed and water my cat while I’m gone,” my friend asked.

“Sure. What’s happening there?” I replied.

“I’m interviewing someone for an article I’m writing and then I’m headed to Joshua Tree.”

“What are you doing in Joshua Tree?” I asked.

“I’m going to an Ayahuasca retreat,” she said, as if I knew what that was.

As she started to explain it to me, it sounded so out of this world and I couldn’t help but wonder – why I hadn’t ever heard of this before?

It’s a provocative headline for sure, what I mean by “family shit receptacle,” is that often, within toxic families, there’s that one child, that one sibling that receives all of the family’s disdain and disrespect. They are spoken to like they are irrelevant. Treated like they are the lowest form of life and they are never made to feel welcome or that anyone is happy to see them.

Congratulations, you’ve done it. You’ve travelled down the path of healing and eliminated all those toxic people from the front row of your life. Those friends, lovers and family members who all played a role, creating and encouraging your dysfunctional feelings and habits, who caused you trauma, who consistently busted your boundaries, triggered you, gas lit you and persisted in crazy making behaviors, are gone. You did it.

Much of my Skype sessions with clients revolve around teaching people how to reprogram their thinking and to create a happy, healthy and loving relationship with themselves.  I’ve listed two techniques I use to help people deal with their thought distortions and challenge their perceptions.

Clinicians have had a hard time defining Codependency. Dr. John Friel and his wife Linda define it as, “A dysfunctional pattern of living, originating both in one’s family of origin and culture, that leads to arrested identity development.”

No one does self-preservation better than a Narcissist and perhaps it’s for this reason, that Covid has really disrupted their “supply” chain.

I recently read Gary Chapman’s best-selling book, The 5 Love Languages. In it, he lists what he believes are the ways people give and receive love and affection.

He says that some people need to receive ‘Words of Affirmation,’ such as, “I really appreciate you taking out the garbage, babe,”or, “You look beautiful in that dress.”