Gabriella had planned it all so perfectly. She had decorated her new condo beautifully for the holidays. All her presents were bought, wrapped and under the tree and she was looking forward to hosting her family for Christmas dinner.

She had been dating Tony on and off for about 2 years and he had assured her that everything would go smoothly this year. She described him as irresponsible and selfish, but she looked past his bad behavior, because she was in love with him, and felt unable to walk away.  She described the relationship as tumultuous and said that it always had her soaring and crashing.

Most of us want to have the ‘typical’ family holiday. We want the tree, the presents, a delicious Christmas dinner and to be happy and surrounded by loved ones. We want the occasion to look like it does in the commercials and movies on TV, but quite often it doesn’t.

For many of us, the holidays mean being around people that we don’t necessarily like, or those who make us feel uncomfortable. That could include – your overbearing Narcissistic father, your hyper critical mother, your spiteful, passive-aggressive sister, or that Narcissist you thought you had gotten rid of ages ago.

Many of us have been on the road to healing for some time now, healing from childhood traumas and from our adult relationships. Most of us have gone no contact with our last abusive partner and we’ve distanced ourselves from the toxic people in our lives. Everything is going great, but along comes the holidays and this is when we are at our most vulnerable and when our resolve is severely tested.

There are a lot of misconceptions about hypnosis. Many people believe that they are supposed to be completely unconscious and have no memory of what’s going on and if they don’t get there, it’s not working and they come to the conclusion that they can’t be hypnotized. The truth is that hypnosis is really the place between awake and asleep. It’s a trance like state where individuals are highly suggestable and highly relaxed. If you’ve ever been driving your car and you are just hyper focused on the road and nothing else and it seems as though your conscious mind has shut down and your subconscious mind is steering the wheel and you don’t remember just how you got to your destination, then you’ve experienced a trance like state.

Many people fear that a hypnotist will make you do foolish things. I’ve been asked on many occasions, “You aren’t going to make me cluck like a chicken are you?” I always say, ‘You aren’t going to do anything you don’t want to do, or wouldn’t normally do.’ You never hear a legal defense for murder as, not criminally responsible, because the defendant was under hypnosis. If you wouldn’t kill someone when you’re awake, you won’t do it under hypnosis.

Einstein said that, ‘imagination is more important than knowledge,’ and that’s true, except when it comes to our relationships. When I was young I use to write my name and the name of my crush du jour on a piece of paper and surround it with a big heart. When I closed my eyes at night I was and did so many incredible things, things that never seemed possible in reality. I had a rich fantasy life. And I carried that ability to fantasize with me into adulthood.

As I traveled from relationship to relationship, early on I would create a vision of how I wanted the relationship to be – I’d insert the specifics of the person I was dating, but the reality was always vastly different than what I pretended it was.

In 1977 Colleen Stan left her home in California, to attend the birthday party of one of her friends. She was an experienced hitchhiker and felt comfortable getting into the van of Cameron Hooker, who was with his wife and baby.

Hooker soon left the main highway and traveled down an isolated road where he put a knife to her throat. When they reached his home, he took her out of the van and into his basement. He then put a blindfold on her, stripped off her clothes, and strung her up by her bound hands, and proceeded to severely beat her. After the beating, Hooker and his wife proceeded to have sex underneath her stung up body.

After that first night, Hooker kept Stan locked in a wooden box under his bed, for 23 hours a day.

Willpower, determination, stick-to-itiveness, resolve, whatever you want to call it – discipline is the difference between success and giving in. For me, discipline is self–accountability. It’s an internal standards meter that propels you forward, when your body, mind, or emotions are all signaling, it’s time to give up.

By far, the question I get asked the most is, ‘How do I let go? How do I walk away? I know this is killing me, but I can’t stop.’ My answer is always the same.

There has to be a breaking point – that point where you say, ‘I deserve more than this.’ It’s a cup of pride and 8 cups of discipline. If you’re not used to delaying immediate gratification then this may be very difficult for you, but it is something you can learn.

We’ve all been in relationships and given in dozens of times – it feels good for a short while, but then it fe

Several weeks ago a picture of a Muslim woman, wearing a niqab, was floating around social media with the caption, ‘How does this make you feel?’ More recently, Kim Kardashian’s nude photo shoot with Paper Magazine has been making the rounds and the comments about each were two sides of the same coin.

While the objectification of women is nothing new, Kardashian is setting a dangerous new standard, not just for women, but for media. Ironically, Paper Magazine is an arts publication. It’s a magazine about and for artists, musicians, poets and the nightlife. It’s not a nudy mag, like Playboy or Penthouse, which have age requirements and are relegated to the back of the rack. It’s a mainstream magazine, which has set a precedent for other mainstream magazines to follow suit, or be left behind.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude. I think nudity can be art. I believe the photographer Jean-Paul Goude wanted to create an artful piece of work, but the subject – a seemingly, self-centered, arrogant, talentless, constantly-in-your-face-for nothing, spotlight seeking, self-important, starlet, evokes a lot of negative criticism and this latest work, is seen as nothing more than a feeble attemp