Blog Tour & Guest Post: Living Like You Mean It by Ron Frederick

I would like to welcome Mr. Ronald J. Frederick, Ph.D. to Morbid Romantic! 

About Ron Frederick 

Ronald J. Frederick, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and life coach, with over 15 years of experience helping people get the life they really want. A long-time proponent of the transforming power of emotion, he co-founded the Center for Courageous Living, which offers innovative therapy, coaching and consulting. Noted for his warmth, humor, and engaging presentation style, he lectures and facilitates workshops nationally. Frederick is a senior faculty member of the Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) Institute, as well as the Clinical Supervisor of Park House, an outpatient program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in 

About Living Like You Mean It: Use the Wisdom and Power of Your Emotions to Get the Life You Really Want

So many of us long to feel more alive, connected, and secure in our lives, particularly now, in these challenging and difficult times. Why is it so hard? Part of the problem, says Dr. Ronald J. Frederick, has to do with a fear of our feelings a "feelings phobia" and the consequences of expressing our feelings to others. It's this fear that keeps us stuck, detached from the wisdom inside us and distanced from the people around us. And yet positive emotional experiences can actually "rewire" our brain and free us up to experience ourselves and our lives more fully. LIVING LIKE YOU MEAN IT: Use the Wisdom and Power of Your Emotions to Get the Life You Really Want by Ronald J. Frederick, shows how we can overcome our feelings phobia in order to enjoy more satisfying lives. Drawing on cutting-edge science, many years as a psychotherapist and his own personal experiences, Dr. Frederick advocates that we understand and express the broad range of our emotions so that our feelings actually become allies in our search for fulfillment. His proven four-step process for tapping into the hidden power of our emotions includes: *Recognizing the signs of fears in ourselves, and the defenses we unknowingly use to cut ourselves off from our potential power. *Understanding how to tame our fear and exercise control. *Learning how to experience our true emotions and make use of their many resources. *Developing effective, measured ways to express and share our feelings. A master storyteller, Frederick interlaces therapeutic techniques with stories from people who have learned to recognize and deal constructively with the emotions that have kept them from living their best lives. The trick, Dr. Frederick shows, is in being able to navigate and diminish the fear that is so entangled with our feelings, so we can progress in a healthier, less encumbered direction, and get the life we really want. 

Guest Post by Ron Frederick

Most everyone is born with the ability to have feelings but as infants we don't know what to do with them. We're not quite sure how to handle or make sense of them. We're utterly dependent on our caregivers to teach us how to navigate this new world of emotions and help us cope with and manage our emotions, especially when these feelings are intense or overwhelming. When our caregivers help us regulate our emotions, we develop the ability to feel and experience our feelings fully and to express and deal with them in a healthy way. And the broader the range of feelings we experience as children, the larger and more flexible our emotional range will be as we grow and develop. When our caregivers are emotionally open and skilled at attending to feelings, this whole enterprise goes off without a hitch, and we become emotionally competent ourselves. But therein lies the rub. Many caregivers don't have these qualities. Many of us grew up with parents who were more or less uncomfortable with emotions-- their own and those of others. This is precisely why and how things go awry. If our caregivers react poorly when we get angry, sad, or even happy, we sense their discomfort and become anxious-- we're so afraid of losing their approval, of having them pull away or abandon us. We come to associate a sense of danger with our feelings and this fear gets wired into our brains. Our development as emotional beings becomes thwarted, and our emotional capacity is constricted. We end up cut off from our emotional self and cut off from others and, unless we do something to overcome this fear as adults, it stays with us. Although we've been shaped by our early experiences, we don't have to remain prisoners of our past. Even though our brain is wired to respond in a certain way, it can still change and grow. Although we can't exactly erase our past programming, we can create new pathways that are able to override what's already there. In other words, we can "upgrade our wiring" so that fear no longer needs to be entangled with the fibers of our feelings. The key to changing lies in having new experiences with our emotions in which we allow ourselves to be more fully present with our feelings and eventually come to experience them free from fear. I wrote my book, Living Like You Mean It: Use the Wisdom and Power of Your Emotions to Get the Life You Really Want, to help you overcome your fears and be able to use the wisdom and power of your emotions to get the life you really want. I share with readers what I learned and developed over the years, and what I teach my clients every day: a proven four-step approach to overcoming fear and becoming more emotionally present in your life. Ultimately, you'll come to realize your true potential to feel fully alive, vital, and deeply connected to your experience of yourself, others, and the world. To learn more about Living Like You Mean It, please visit: http://www.livinglikeyoumeanit.com/index.html