Self Healing - Difficult Emotions, Mindfulness, and Meta Thinking 

Hello Subscribers: Thank you for checking out my videos and posting such thoughtful comments. It's inspiring to read your self-reflections and insights. I love how we grow from each other's sharing. One thing I have learned after years of reading comments is that we are not alone. Many of us have the same experiences when it comes to relationships. We are all trying to make sense of attachment trauma and learn better skills of relating. Great job everyone - keep going and keep learning! As I'm sure you can understand, I'm not able to respond to all the comments and questions here on RU-vid. I know this can be disappointing sometimes. Please forgive me. It is challenging to find the time for the careful consideration that is needed in order to respond to your heartfelt reflections. Even so, your vulnerability shines through. I know behind each comment is a real person with real feelings who's hurting or who’s reporting a triumph. I know you are doing the best you can while trying to make sense of life’s suffering. We are all grappling with what it means to be human. I’m sorry that I’m not always able to respond to your comments directly. That being said, I'm sharing this post to offer you a few resources in an attempt for us to stay connected. Keep in mind that I do read most comments here on RU-vid. Your words are received. I review comments daily, which serves as a way to organize content for future videos. If you have a question or an idea for a video that you think is important to explore when it comes to learning about relationships and healing attachment trauma, then I want to hear about it. Please submit your questions and ideas here: www.alanrobarge.com/questions ____ Many of us want to know how to heal, how to change, how to be more secure in our relationships. This is why I created the course The Four Attachment Distress Responses. Many of our behaviors in relationships are habitual - meaning we act out of autopilot. Our autopilot Response comes from past conditioning of negative experiences. When attachment injuries go unaddressed, we become insecure in our relationships. The Four Attachment Distress Responses Course describes each specific type of guardedness, which is how we try to protect ourselves from getting hurt again, while also attempting to get our attachment needs met. While we cannot change the past, we can change how we respond in the moment and in the future. This course offers you insights and tools as new ways to respond in your relationships. The Four Responses are Poking, Running, Hiding, and Submitting. You’re invited to take the quiz to learn more about your Response. Take The Four Attachment Distress Responses Quiz: www.alanrobarge.com/adrquiz ____ I created an 8-week program and membership community based on the guiding principle of Self-Directed Healing Work #selfhealers that I want to share with you. The community is called Improve Your Relationships. The focus is about healing attachment injuries in the context of relationship repair in all areas of our lives. When we look at the big picture of how attachment injuries and attachment trauma occurred in our lives, we are able to begin seeing our relationship choices from a whole new perspective. We gain access to inner resources that shift how we relate and respond to old hurts. It's a process. It's layered. It requires commitment. This is what the community is all about - committing to your healing work. You are invited to join us. The community members are kind and supportive. We are an established group. The feedback and testimonials have been overwhelmingly positive. Please check out the link for more information: www.alanrobarge.com/community ____ Also, in addition to checking out my course and/or joining us in the Community, please consider becoming a Sustaining Supporter by making a financial contribution. Your contribution helps guarantee continued quality and accessible content. If you benefit from my videos and want to show your support for the value offered, then please make a donation: www.alanrobarge.com/donate ____ Thank you for being a channel subscriber and watching my videos. And remember, we invest in our healing work because “Emotional Connections Matter!” Best regards, Alan Robarge Attachment-Focused Psychotherapist www.alanrobarge.com/

These videos are a life raft in an ocean of sorrow right now. So grateful.

Profound spiritual quote: “You will get bored, Your mind will get tired. All of a sudden another physiological function takes over, like you’re hungry. And now you’re thinking about a sandwich. Oh I don’t have time to think about jealousy. I have to figure out how to get this sandwich”.

I’ve been reading and watching everything- and I mean EVERYTHING on the internet about break ups and trauma and healing. And I got to say, Alan is the best resource I have found. Thank you SO so much Alan for putting these videos up. Much thanks 🙏🏼

Listening to this is making me realize that, unknowingly, this is the skill I used to manage my suicidal feelings. Something inside me knew that there was no way to get rid of these feelings, only ways to manage them when they come up. And I've been very successful in doing so ever since; when those thoughts pop up I can work with them to see what exactly is causing them rather than sink into the loop of suffering, making a plan, becoming increasingly depressed and isolated. Now I have to work on all my other feelings in this way. It makes so much sense!!

I realized recently from another healer that depression is inwardly-turned depression. I was not allowed to express anger or disapproval outwardly as a child or I was punished. Now that I've realized that my subconscious had adopted this internalized-anger as the only way to exhaust my angry feelings. Now, I do "Plan" to be angry. I allow myself to feel the anger, but not act on it. I even had a friend say, "You shouldn't be angry at so-and-so, they didn't do anything/are a good person." and I replied, "I know that, but I feel very angry at them because I feel like they disrespected me and they didn't take the time to talk to me or ask how I feel. So I choose to feel this anger and express it." He thought I hated this person, when I was trying to allow the anger to come out. Its annoying that other people think I'm trying to start a fight, but riding through the feelings and expressing them outward without feeling guilt or self-disgust is one of the greatest gifts of healing for me personally. I just need to deal with others who may interpret my emotions as plans to execute revenge or something.

So deep that i almost found fossil fuel 😋! Thank you, Alan!

This is so different from the milieu I grew up in! Where I came from, the answer was to lose yourself in service of the Church, and it would provide you with an identity. That was the hope, anyway. In reality, the Church would hold up standards you could never meet, and it was another thing to be codependent on besides family. It's such a challenging road to walk, making this map of inside yourself. So loving to do that. Thank you.

thank you Alan. your videos are truly enlightening and I like the examples you give. they make it much easier to picture and grasp what you are talking about. Thank you for your work and grateful for the Internet that makes it possible that I can watch the videos even here in Germany.

Your videos are really helping me right now, thank you

Thank you for this. I will start journaling my thoughts and how they make me feel. I want to capture the patterns. Awareness is the foundation for fixing anything in life, especially our minds. We are so used to going through life kind of in auto pilot mode, we are so distracted with everything else going on, that we forget our “plane is not flying well because we never made the necessary adjustments and trims to make it fly smoothly.”

Brilliant explanations and supremely helpful suggestions. Thank you! From the bottom of my heart.

42:12 "I hope this video was helpful." Are you kidding? No, of course you are not kidding! I think I actually listened to this video way more than the 43-minute length by constantly rewinding to catch a point that you had made or to listen to something you said more than once. Thank you for the extremely helpful insight, Alan.

I had to watch this video twice before I started getting it--so deeply profound and wise is it. Thanks again.

Eloquent speaker with brilliant intelligence 'n heart Thankyou for being you and helping me grow and be a friend to myself. 😝😓😕😑🤓🙄☺😊🤗

Thanks Alan for your very generous sharing of your expertise. Blessings!

Alan the information in your videos is life transforming but it's the way you present it that makes it so engaging. People can't use what they can't understand and you make the complex concepts so incredibly clear. Thank you so much for your channel and all the hard work you put in here!

Really glad I've discovered you! Thank you for your compassionate and insightful approach and information, very helpful indeed!

The best stuff here Alan. I think this is a good tool to use for addiction. Addicts have a much stronger obsession in their thinking. It is so nice to have a healthy description of how are thinking and body work but we can control or stop it. Thank you Allan. We are not powerless and we dont have to label ourselves for life with a negative description. Recognizing the postive thoughts are we can control our actions, feelings, but if a negative thought make the Shift!! Notice and move away from it. Thank you.

meta: Thinking about thinking. A skill of insight. Here's how.

Alan, thank the world for you! So grateful to come upon your channel. Everything is nail on the head. I'm currently in DBT. I am really enjoying adding your videos into my path to healing. So helpful thank you!

Very useful information, Alan! I'll be listening to this a few times.

I love this man. I really do love his words, thank you!

This talk is absolutely amazing!!! Thank you!!!🙌❤️❤️❤️

I love this concept!!!! This is life changing!! Thank you!

You’re absolutely brilliant. Thank you Alan.

A big red rose to you Alan for this content of great wisdom🌹

Alan, your message is both powerful and empowering! Feeling excited to start building a relationship with myself ;)

God Bless You 🙏🏽 Thank you so much for the wisdom !!!

Your amazing! So clever! X

This video is SO insightful! Thank you 🙏🏻

Such a wonderful way to approach healing!

Beautiful! God bless you!!

this is so deep. so deep. a wealth of insight. thank u!

As always extremely helpful to my insight and healing path. Thank you!

Alan thank you so much from the bottom of my heart!! I feel like this video has been a complete light bulb moment for me. I am going to start taking myself and my mind out and we're going to get to know each other better and we're going to learn about what I can do to help myself rather than thinking about what others can do to help me! Thank you!!! Sending you lots of love!!!

Thanks for this video, its been a great insight for me, I've had an intruder in my apartment with vandalism it's become a pattern of getting my locks changed to somebody intruding again, my sadness, loneliness of being a disabled senior has become overwhelming, with the resident manager blowing up in her temper at me because I wouldn't be personal friends with her, Her lack of concern of this crime was the utmost disgusting I've seen in a person (in which I've had thoughts she could be apart of this crime,,) I've had much emotion to sit with that thought I'd go crazy!! I'm planning to get security cameras and with prayer this horrid manager whom also told me the bad guy will follow me if I move, has left we have a new manager.

Brilliant!!!!!!!! Thank you! Thank God!

Alan I just your videos. So insightful which always help me understand myself! Absolutely love your work!

Love it. Lots of work, but well worth the time and energy. Thanks for all the time, effort and info for us. You help with so many problems in my head that I never realized I had. May God bless you, Alan!

love this stuff, good work

Great video, it made me cry! You helped me get in touch with my sadness...thank you

Excellent video! Thank you.

Great video

Amazing content!!!!!

I really like some of his suggestions

I'm going to have a date with loneliness today.

BRAVO!

I know exactly you're talking about..thanks for putting it together for me

Love this. I needed this for long time. I am so grateful for this.

Thank you so much for these 🥰 Truly appreciated 🙏

very good 👍🏾😍

WONDERFUL

Amazing video

I finally get it! I never understood when someone would say lean into your feelings. Thank you!!

I'm listening to this to get away from my looping, worrying mind. What you say is so relatable it's as if you're my own counsellor.

Thank You. :)

This is amazing!! Thank you.

Incredible. Tried that today and indeed, there were many emotions stored inside, but instead of taking it out on others, I felt it in a calm moment by myself.

Excellent information… thank you! Much to absorb but much clarity 😇

Thank you Alan, I have become addicted to your videos and It s Medicine to me. Trust me I am learning so much and understanding myself through your videos.Your videos tells the exactly whats running in my mind and happening to me.. I had tried lot of ways to come out my bad situations and nothng worked out. Your videos are very promising to me.Thank you so much for helping and your valuable time.

Brilliant video Alan, the content is what I struggle with, allowing myself to sit with the feeling sadness, vulnerability, loneliness, loss... without getting lost in them consuming there is no space.

Thanks for this Alan, I have studied all the spiritual traditions and found that they have profound wisdom but express in very hard to grasp ways. Your perspective is very in tune with those spiritual traditions but I feel it is very helpful for the western mind

Thank you for this video. It’s going to help me handle my recurring self-destructive thinking. What you have said makes perfect sense to me. 👍

Another excellent video! 💫

This was really enlightening, going to have a date with my sadness this weekend. ❤

Thank you

You explain this so well

Thank you Alan, have heard other sources on mega cognition but nothing explaining how it applies to the healing process, quite so well. And thanks for bringing to light that we are in charge of our healing, that was another light bulb moment! Not a therapist or any other person is going to take care of that for us. I don't exactly know or understand where I'm headed except I'm heading somewhere!! How does one know this? What exactly does one need in order to be better?? How do you know when you never have experienced it? Another words I know my experiences have lead to this place in my life, but really all I know is I would like to heal. Getting there is a big question mark! Thank you for helping me make some sort of sense. I'm going to try this. Love all your videos btw. Thanks for all your help.

Hmmm this is so thought provoking. Man yes make a date with self and feel the feelings.

It's not so much that my mind keeps replaying the anger/abandoned loop, it's that everyday keeps providing evidence of the same.

You're right the "broken record" is awful... Wish I cud reprogram it 2 say somethin nice. ☔

This is fascinating. I am really amazed by how clear and spot on your explanations and methods are.

I really needed this advice today thank you

Love you Alan!! Come to Australia!

I'm retired in Danbury, CT. I was married at 19, and divorced at 29. My grown daughter lives in.LA. My family is shrinking, due to.deaths in my family. I have siblings in different states. I'm kinda stuck.now, feeling more alone. I'm working at getting out of isolation now. I'm taking line dancing and zumba gold. I realize, its no good to be alone all.the time.

Hi Alan, Can I do the same with core beliefs (not good enough)?

I like what you have to say about thinking. The Bible says, as a man thinketh, so is he.

Alan Robarg thankyou thankyou thankyou (:(:

Alan six years later thank you so much I'm gonna take on anger in the pool :)

Hi Alan, great video as always. I have a question about emotional feelings that make us feel good? Such as a past relationship that ended and yet when I am stressed or upset, the thought of this person/relationship pops into my head, and start to feel better? I don't think I do it conscientiously? I have been aware of the thought for about 3 years only recently did I connect with how I feel when I have the thought. I like that the thought works for me and not against me. I am struggling now to figure out if whatever this is, has played a sub conscientious role in the failure of relationships that came after? Interested in your thoughts. I have considered many times reaching out to you but stopped myself for reasons I do not understand.

Would you do the same for positive states of mind? For example, feeling peaceful?

resonate

Meta 💚💚💚💯%!

Hi i am 48 years old. Divorced 10 years ago. I never knew that I've never get engaged with my grief. Never have I spend 1 second mindfully with my pain. So after 10 years I am stil single. How does this be possible? Me a beautiful loving woman. So I start searching. Went to therapy. Read books. Joined the Toni Robbins event for 4 days. It helped yes it did. But it did not touched my trauma. And suddenly yourube suggested this video from Alan Robarge. And in first time in 10 years I started to cry. I felt the pain. I felt the grief. So i watched more video's and began to write with pen and paper. And here it comes. I never knew that I had the judgement over myself: I am a failure. I am no wotrh to be loved. I am an ugly woman who deserved to be alone. OMG. Thanks to Alan I start an online course love yourself for singles in the Netherlands. I realize the grief the pain the judgements will never dissapear. But I can learn to tools te reconsile. Thank you for making this video's 💜

I was ignored by my whole family except for my primary caregiver, who did indeed engage my true self always. We had limbic resonance, secure emotional connection and mirroring and everything. She died when I was five. The rest of the family continued to ignore and sometimes verbally abuse me, but I already had a stable sense of self. I continued being engaged in school a lot, admired, praised for being talented, I had a lot of close friends and my parents would always provide me with lessons and materials for anything I showed a talent for or interest in. So do I have a true self despite the shame based family system? As a teenager I figured I won’t be able to get attention from boys unless I up my sexy game, which was a mistake and I reversed that. So am I true dr Alan?

Alan, You talk about grieving a sense of loss (from the past) and lack of connection (if that's how one experiences a current relationship, in the present). What does that grieving look like? How exactly does it help? Thank you.

I was interested in joining the The New Love Addiction group, but I just see a page, not a group.

👏🏾

Why do some thoughts seem to quiet and dissolve pretty quickly when I just get curious about them and why do others seem much stronger and louder and harder to be curious about?

I have a strange observation about my reaction to this clip. I find it really difficult to listen to it and I attribute that to experiencing Alans voice expression as very tense, monotouness and colourless. On the other hand I find the cognitive content and the intention to be uniquely and extraordinary valuable. Only the one who has spent time in the landscape can make a map worthwhile. Thank You!

I try to do this when I journal, but then I find once the floodgates are open I find I can't turn it off when family abuse, collusion, betrayal and just complete denial etc are on going. Any ideas? I've gotten to the stage where I have decided to cut myself from them completely.

I have one reaccuring pattern and that is that I am in relationship usually only two weeks. Then I have such strong worries of everything in relationship that the relief is to break up, after couple od days I am sorry that I broke up and want to try to be in relationship again. Then I am in relationship for another 2 weeks and I break up again. I was once in such relationship for 2 years , that means I broke up with my BF aprox 53 times, I was completely devastated from this. Now I saw with new bf that I started to do the same. After one month I told him. Sorry I am not healed and I cannot be in relationship. So now I am trying to be in relationship with my feelings 😅😅😊

there are friends of my brothers and his wife who like to verbally harass me in public in a very covert way. I freeze. What do I do to get myself to stop Freezing. I don't know how? Any Answers? I don't want to smack them with a comeback? I Freeze... HELP!

Puppets!!!! YES! Ha

Spending a day with FEAR 😐

How do I make time for loneliness when its literally all I feel all the time.

Samsara and nirvana are inseparable

meow

"...and now you're thinking about a sandwich..."😄