Happy
Valentines Day!

With February 14th just around the corner, I wanted to be sure to wish you a very Happy Valentines Day. I love Valentines Day! It’s such a great day to celebrate LOVE in all sizes and shapes! 

I’m sure you remember that loving others starts with loving yourself, so please be sure to take some time to love yourself this Valentines Day. That way your deep, unconditional love for your own beautiful spirit will naturally spill over into being sweet, unconditional love for everyone else around you.

Newsletter at a Glance

• News Flash: Kari's Spring 
  Light-Heartedness Workshops
  
  

• 10 Simple Ways to Love Yourself 
  
  

• Creating Emotional Intimacy
  
  

• Book Review: 
  The Verbally Abusive Relationship
  
  

• Light-Hearted Readers Contribute
  
  

• February Humor

Kari is offering two workshops this spring; a one-day workshop Return to Light-Heartedness on March 21^st; and a weekend workshop Light-Hearted Transformations, April 17-19!  

Who will benefit?

• men and women of all ages 

• anyone with poor self esteem 

• anyone with relationship issues

• anyone with depression or anxiety 

• anyone who has experienced abuse or trauma

• anyone who is lonely and doesn't know how to connect

• anyone who wants to learn how to laugh and have more fun in their life

Here’s your chance to work directly with Kari Joys to release the past and become the person you want to be. Kari's workshops are magical and heart warming! 

Learn to transform your depression into joy, your anxiety into inner peace 
and your poor self esteem into radiant self love!

Sign up today at http://www.kari-joys.com/events.htm. You'll be very happy that you came!

10 Simple Ways 
to Love Yourself

By Kari Joys

If you want to be a healthy, happy person, it’s very important to learn to love the person you see in the mirror. Although loving yourself can be very challenging if you grew up in a dysfunctional family, it’s definitely worth the time and effort!

Self-love is the essential ingredient of a healthy, happy life. It gives you the self-esteem to believe in your abilities and pursue your dreams. It helps you make healthy choices. It allows you to achieve satisfaction and fulfillment. It frees you to give and receive love in loving, supportive relationships.

When you honestly love yourself, 
your love overflows to everyone around you and everything in your life 
begins to sparkle and shine!

10 Simple Ways to Practice Self-Love:

I. Say loving, positive words to yourself in the mirror every day. A good phrase to use is “I love you, just the way you are.” You can also compliment yourself sincerely on anything you do well that day.

2. Love your inner child. Take a few minutes to relax and imagine yourself as a child and say the kind, loving words to that little person that he or she always wanted to hear, for example, “You’re beautiful and special and important to me!”

3. Find ways to express your honest feelings and needs. Expressing your honest feelings and needs helps you to know who you really are. If there’s no-one you trust, start by writing in a journal. In time, you’ll learn to express your feelings to others as well.

4. Write a list of everything you value or appreciate about yourself. Start with simple things like your honesty, your caring or your sense of humor. Then let your list naturally grow to include other positive qualities you often overlook in yourself.

5. List of all of your successes. Start with the challenges you survived in your life and then move on to all the ways you’ve learned and grown through the years.

6. Make time in your life to do the things you love to do. Notice what excites you or fascinates you and make time to do those things more regularly.

7. Become the person you want to be. Practice in small ways being more kind, more loving, more generous and more successful. Then watch what happens over time.

8. Set clear boundaries about what you will and will not tolerate in your life! For example, “I’m very happy to listen to your feelings if you use I-messages, but I will absolutely not tolerate being criticized and put down!”

9. Imagine having the life of your dreams! Write in your journal about what your dream life would be. Then read it daily and imagine it to be already true until it manifests!

10. Find ways to laugh and have fun regularly! Your inner child loves to laugh and play. No matter how challenging life is, there’s always something to laugh about!

Healthy self-love will literally change your life from the inside out. It will definitely take work and effort, but you’ll never be sorry for the time you spent learning to love yourself. And whatever you do, don’t forget to have fun in the process!

Transform your life by learning powerful tools for emotional healing with Kari's "Journey to Light-Heartedness" e-course!

Creating Emotional Intimacy
by Kari Joys

Since Valentine’s Day is all about love, I wanted to offer you some ways to bring more love and more intimacy into your life. For starters, let’s establish that intimacy isn’t just sexuality. True intimacy begins with deep emotional connection and then blossoms out into friendship or intimate sexuality, depending on whom you’re connecting with.

It can be just as satisfying to connect deeply with a dear friend as it is to connect with an intimate partner, when you’re both sharing your true self with each other.

The word intimacy can be broken down into four parts “in to me see.” That means in order to have true intimacy; you have to allow someone to see who you really are. Sharing your real feelings with someone in a non-threatening way is often a good way to establish a deep emotional connection with them.

6 Tips for Emotional Intimacy:

1. Share your feelings instead of your opinions. No two people who are honest with each other ever see the world the same way. Everyone has their own opinion, based on their background and their life experience. Opinions are what separate us and feelings are what bring us together.

2. Use ‘I-messages’ instead of ‘you-messages.’ When you say “You should feel like I do,” or “You should do what I believe is right,” your partner will hear it as control and shut you out of their heart. But when you say “I feel sad” or “I feel excited,” your partner will generally open their heart and want to hear you.

3. Ask open ended questions and listen without interrupting. Healthy relationships require that both partners really listen to each other. If your partner starts to talk and you interrupt them or make them wrong in some way, they’ll probably shut you out.

4. Paraphrase back what you heard with feeling words. For example "When you talk about your job, you sound frustrated and overwhelmed." Then let your partner tell you whether you heard them accurately or not. Paraphrasing back what you hear helps you both to slow down and really understand each other.

5. Treat everything your partner shares with you as sacred ground! Never, ever use your partner’s vulnerable feelings against them when you're angry. Your relationship could be permanently damaged by doing that. When someone shares their heart with you, always treat their feelings with the utmost love and respect!

6. Be sure to share your joy and laughter as well as your challenges. No one wants to be serious all the time. If you want a deep connection, it’s very important to share the good things that happen to you and the funny things that make you laugh. Laughing together can be just as bonding as crying.

Why not save yourself years of therapy by reading Kari Joys' enlightening book "Choosing Light-Heartedness?"

Book Review: The Verbally Abusive Relationship

The concept of verbal abuse is still new in our world. Many of us still don’t really know what verbal abuse is or how to deal with it. For that reason, I often recommend Patricia Evan’s book The Verbally Abusive Relationship to my clients.  

As a psychotherapist, what I like about the book is that it spells out the characteristics and categories of verbal abuse, as well as our basic rights in a relationship. Let me list a few of each of them here so that you can better understand the concept of verbal abuse.  

Verbal abuse is a negative way of talking that is disrespectful and hurtful. It attacks the nature and abilities of a partner. It can be overt or covert. It can be voiced in an extremely sincere and concerned way. Verbal abuse is manipulative and controlling. It disregards, disrespects or devalues a person. It’s often unpredictable. 

Verbal abuse often expresses a double message between how the person is talking and his or her real feelings. It usually escalates over time, increasing in intensity, frequency and variation. 

     Often, verbal abuse is the real problem
           in a relationship and the reason
            why issues never get resolved.  

Patricia Evan’s 14 Categories of Verbal Abuse:  

1. Withholding: Unwillingness to share deeply or to support your partner empathetically.

2. Countering: Not allowing your partner to have a different perspective than your own.

3. Discounting: Denying and distorting your partner’s reality and experience.

4. Negative joking: Making put down remarks under the guise of wit and style.

5. Blocking and diverting: Blaming, switching topics or stopping communication.

6. Accusing and blaming: Blaming your partner for your own anger or insecurity.

7. Judging and criticizing: Negating your partner’s feelings of criticizing who they are.

8. Trivializing: Subtle interpretation that your partner’s perception is insignificant.

9. Undermining: Eroding your partner’s self-esteem by implying inadequacy.  

10. Threatening: Controlling your partner by bringing up their greatest fears.

11. Name calling: Overt put-downs or sarcasm.

12. Forgetting: Manipulating your partner by denying previous agreements.

13. Ordering or demanding: Giving orders instead of asking respectfully.

14. Denying: Denying the reality of your partner or what you are doing to them.

Patricia Evan’s 15 Basic Rights in a Relationship:

1. The right to good will from your partner.

2. The right to emotional support.

3. The right to be heard and responded to with courtesy.

4. The right to have your own view or your own perception.

5. The right to have your feelings and experience acknowledged as real.

6. The right to receive a sincere apology for any jokes you find offensive.

7. The right to clear answers to questions concerning what is legitimately your business.

8. The right to live free from accusation and blame.

9. The right to live free from criticism and judgment.

10. The right to have your work and your interests spoken of with respect.

11. The right to encouragement.

12. The right to live free from emotional and physical threat.

13. The right to live free from angry outbursts and rage.

14. The right to be called by no name that devalues you.

15. The right to be respectfully asked rather than ordered.  

My only issue with Patricia Evan’s book is that she writes it as if the verbal abuser is male and the victim is female. As a psychotherapist, I know that verbal abuse is not gender related. There are many women who are verbal abusers as well as men. If you simply keep that fact in mind while you read, I know you’ll find this book very helpful!  

Click here to order The Verbally Abusive Relationship from Amazon.com.

Kari Joys Spokane, Washington Phone: 509-534-7374 Email: kari@kari-joys.com