Kimberly Key

Contest Results: It's a tie!

Thank you to all of the participants that submitted feedback in the "Want to be a Shrink" contest posted last month. We selected a winning "problem" (see post on April 4th) and received advice from various readers. Our participant selected among the entries and picked two winners (who wish to remain anonymous).

One winner is a sales trainer and suggested that our participant may have some "hidden beliefs" that tell him that he will not find love if he is sensitive and caring. They go on to suggest that he uncover his fears and replace them with a new belief that a sensitive and caring man can have "even better, truer love with a woman." He said that rang true for him and was moved by the insight. Congratulations! We'll see how it works for him.

The other winner that tied was chosen because they advised reading a book to help our participant replace fears with improved beliefs (sounds like the same advice, huh?). The book, Attracting Genuine Love, is by Drs. Kathlyn & Gay Hendricks and has an enclosed CD with various exercises to help unlock fears and unconscious beliefs by re-programming emotions and thoughts. The co-winner is a nutritionist and spiritual healer.

My thoughts on the feedback? It's solid. We often create our own reality through our thought processes and belief systems. It reaches to the deepest core and often gets passed down through generations. Think about your work ethic. Do you believe you only get rewarded if you work really, really hard? Do you have conflicts about child-rearing, where part of you says to nurture children while another part (sometimes hidden part) believes children should obey, be seen and not heard? These conflicts are abundant and pervasive. They also tend to be at the heart of a problem when difficulties arise in life. Taking an inventory of your beliefs and looking back on past experiences in your life when those beliefs were reinforced can be powerfully transforming. Counseling or coaching can help guide you through the process...or self-help books like Attracting Genuine Love.

I'll post feedback on our participant as he goes down his journey of love-discovery. Please feel free to try this out at home...and post your comments to share how it's working for you! You can also email me directly at [email protected].

Thank you again & CONGRATULATIONS to our winners!!

CONTEST ENTRY: Can You Help this Man?

I received a flood of emails from interested people wanting to help someone out after posting the "Want to be a Shrink" contest last month. Thank you for all of your interest! However, it was a little more difficult for people to submit an issue to receive help. That doesn't completely surprise me. People need to feel trust before they can open up and they're just not sure who they're opening up to on this blog. Nonetheless, we have a submittal from someone willing to take a chance with your help. Ready? Here goes...

We have a Latino heterosexual male in his mid-40's who is a professional that is highly educated and lonely. As part of his professional and personal growth, he has done a lot work on developing emotional sensitivity and awareness through the course of his adult life. He is strong, passionate, readily shares his feelings, and communicates with empathy. The issue is that he's lonely. He's been divorced for about 10 years and has one grown child. He has dated, but feels he scares the people he likes away. In addition, he has expressed feeling that some women only tend to reach out when they want emotional help and guidance. This frustrates him because he feels he has worked so hard at shedding a lot of his former macho male behavior that he believed kept him from achieving true intimacy with a female, yet now the women seem to run away from him. What should he do?

Please respond to this post directly in the comments section below this entry and/or email me directly at [email protected] with "CONTEST HELP" in the subject line. Deadline is April 20 for your entry. His choice of help will be posted on April 27 with regular feedback results posted over the following weeks.

CONTEST: Want to be a Shrink?

Let's try something together! Remember the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child? Well, researchers and philosophers throughout time have emphasized the importance of community and belonging for people of all ages. With that in mind, I'm reaching out to the online community to try something a little different. While realizing that chat groups and self-help gurus with answers are in abundance all over the Internet, I began wondering about the effectiveness of these processes for the people seeking help. Simply put, was the help any good and did it work for the person? That's basically what empirical-based treatment is all about--does research support that XYZ really works? Instead of getting so heady, I decided the old-fashioned contest might shed some light (for you and me) on what's helping folks in our online community...

First, I'm going to ask that people write in with a genuine issue that they're experiencing in their life right now. Write to me at [email protected] and tell me (1) the problem, (2) your age and gender, (3) where you live, (4) your cultural influences/preferences (e.g. religious preference, cultural identity, sexual/gender identity, etc.), (5) your career, and (6) whether this issue represents any patterns form your past or your family's past.

I will go through the submittals and post an issue (with your permission!). Then we will ask the online community for their thoughts. Your feedback can go directly on the blog or you can email me directly at [email protected]. The feedback will be shared with the person with the issue and we will see which piece of advice they want to implement. Then we will find out if it worked or not. At the end, I will share what the theories and research say about the different feedback we received along with why or why not the selected feedback was/was not effective. So, stick around and let's see what unfolds.

PLEASE HELP--In order to get a good feedback response rate, please copy this post and send it to as many of your online community folks as you can (the more geographic coverage we get, the better!). Remember you can email me directly at [email protected] and this post is on my blog--www.KimberlyRobichaud.com.

Did you know? While images of headshrinkers come to mind when hearing the word "shrink," modern interpretation means that one is simply "shrinking" an issue down to its lowest common denominator.