"May you sleep deeply as if lulled by ocean waves."
"May you feel uplifted by every decision that you make."
"May you never tire of being alive.
"
~Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein
~*~
Last Week's Blessing
"May you be proud of yourself for responding wisely those
that seek information or help from you. May you be able to go to sleep
knowing that you did not thwart, but were helpful and encouraging in
whatever ways accessible to you."
"A charming and insightful addition to the Truth series." -Cheryl C. Malandrinos, The Children's and Teen's Book Connection
"This is a recommended easy read, a good resource for school libraries and as an enjoyable worthwhile gift for girls." -Sandra Levy Ceren, Ph.D.,Psychologist and author Essentials of Premarital Counseling, and Look Before You Leapso
"Your new book (SECRETS) sounds lovely! I'm so glad that you're continuing the (Truth) series; your books are so important for teenagers that feel out of place in the world. In a way, you are giving them someone to turn to and something to hope for, a miracle in itself. :)" -Jamieson Wolf, Author.
"i LOVE this book i'm ten i read it in one day! thank you for making me smile!!! :)" -Maya
"My 10 year old daughter did not put this book down. In the first 10 minutes she said to me, 'Mom, this girl is just like me! She's my age, she has a crush, she wonders when she'll have to wear a bra, and she's a smart kid!' I knew right away that this was going to be a great book for her." -Lori Carscadden
"Whether you were a girl in the 1950s or 1980s or a even a girl of today, this book has something for girls of all ages." - Mom of Three
"This book is deeply touching. I went right into my 9-11 year old self awareness, and recognized a tinge of her feelings in my recent womanhood life. I have wondered about 'her'. Who was feeling those feelings? She healed as I read the pages. The Truth by Dr. Barbara Holstein loves the young girl, which is all the 10-11 year old really needs. Every woman who has ever been 9 to 11 could read this book and heal that part of her life in 112 pages." -Barbara J. Semple, Best selling author of Instant Healing - Accessing Creative Intelligence for Healing Body and Soul
--- More Reviews can be found sprinkled throughout the Enchanted Self website at www.enchantedself.com
Dear Enchanted Self Readers,
Dreams and technology do they coincide? We all dream, whether we remember
them or not. Interpretation of dreams arrive in several different
forms. One could take it as joke or a sign or simply hope
for life. Craig Sim Webb is a
professional Dream Analyst/Author/Researcher and acclaimed speaker, and has
served for over sixteen years as Executive Director of the non-profit
DREAMS Foundation. In listening to
our talk, much can be learned, one may be surprised at how dreams and
technology do coincide.
WRITING FOR PSYCHOLOGY, CASE BOOK, FICTION, WHAT’S NEXT?
The famous novelist, Proust stated, “The real voyage for discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes.” In the 1990’s as a psychologist, I sought new landscapes, and was blessed instead with new eyes to se past the disease model, to the world of human potential that was right in front of me all the time. I had been researching, via case study methods, women outside of my practice to see how women handle childhood messages carried inside them, such as, “you’re dumb but beautiful” or “Make sure you get married before your beauty fades.” These are discouraging, judgmental messages, if they are not spoken, still ’heard’ clear as a bell. All the women I interviewed concurred with the above premise, giving me many personal examples. However, they had more to teach me. They showed me their strengths, capacities to grow and change, and what most amazed me, their capacities for happiness. These capacities were far beyond what the clinician usually discovers when she is looking through a lens that is primarily sensitive to pathology.
With my new ‘eyes’ I became certain that women, and I am sure most men, have greater capacities to restore themselves and enjoy themselves, than previously documented. I also realized we are not given enough signals in our society to help us feel positive about ourselves, or to recognize what makes us happy. We are not taught how to hold on to positive feelings, or how to bring them back again and again.
My work appeared to be cut out for me. With my new awareness of what was right about my clients, rather than what was wrong, I was excitedly looking anew at the treatment room. I began to examine how we interact with our clients, how we set the stage for change, how we interview for information, how we teach our clients to view their past behaviors, how we listen, and how we encourage a sense of well-being. I developed techniques for all of the above that could be used as a positive overlay for psychologists, regardless of their formal training and orientation. For example, when interviewing a new client, one can easily build in questions that encourage the client to talk about their earlier talents, strengths, lost potential and resilience. All of these treatment changes in questioning, listening and processing with the client took shape as “The Enchanted Self, a Positive Therapy.”
Soon, I realized I had a casebook in the making.
The Enchanted Self,a Positive Therapy, was published in 1997. I state in the introduction, “..in all my years as a psychologist, I have come to believe that most people seeking psychotherapy are unhappy not only because of earlier hurts and traumas as well as present frustrations and problems; but because they cannot access earlier happier moments often enough resulting in not being able to experience enough positive states of well-being. Much
contemporary psychotherapy, no matter how well-intended and how well delivered, often minimizes the accessing of earlier states of well-being and the joys associated with it.”
The book, utilizing case studies, personal insights from my own life, reader exercises and even poetry, allowed the reader to explore positive aspects of herself. If she is a therapist, she also learns how to make long overdue corrections in the treatment room. Many readers, therapists, and lay people, wrote to me thanking me for the positive paradigm shift I had so clearly outlined in the book. One psychiatrist from Sweden wrote to me that she had waited for years for someone to finally have the courage to make this long overdue correction in therapeutic model. Many ordinary people who had therapy wrote to me, saying that they wished they could have been exposed to the treatment model I wrote about, when they were seeking psychotherapy.
In summary, I had made explicit our understanding of our past in positive and useful ways, not becoming discouraged by the past and learning how to reinvent ourselves in the present in ways that bring us pleasure unique to each of us, while attending to our needs, be them personal, educational, or professional.
This book came not just from the women I interviewed, nor my clients. It came also from me. I took the same journey in self-development that I asked of my clients, and the therapists and others for whom I wrote the book. I also retrieved a lost Enchanted Self from deep inside of me.
On page 169, I share my poem with the reader: “Come to me, Innocent that I was, I’ll join you and we’ll melt into a new dawn of me. Come my friend, my nurturer, my shadow-My knowledge of how whole I can be”.
The Grandmother of Herbal Medicine
Read her "new" book - Gypsy in New York !
Dear Friend,
I'm inviting you spend a week reading a wonderful book by Juliette de Bairacli Levy, the
Grandmother of Herbal Medicine - A Gypsy in New York. You'll love sharing her wanderings among the Gypsies in New York as she discovers and learns of many natural cures.
AGypsy in New Yorklaunched July 12th, in this richly detailed memoir, Juliette de Bairacli Levy - one of the founders of American herbalism
- offers us a rare and compelling documentary. It is at once an herbal, a travel
book and a compendium of Gypsy lore and Gypsy ways. Juliette gives us river
winds, strange characters in the streets by day, rats scurrying by at night, and
legions of cockroaches in the apartments, against whose window the blossoms of
apple and pear trees toss, even in the great city's cement heart. Buy the book
and download dozens of amazing free gifts!
You can also listen to my TV interview about The Truth, it is being rerun again. You can watch it
here.
Stories & Blessings are the property of Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein. Reproduction is prohibited.
We grow by "word-of-email" so please feel free to forward this to anyone whom you think might benefit from and enjoy it.
Thanks so much!
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