This is self-work and I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. At self-work, we'll discuss psychological and emotional issues common in today's world

and what to do about them.

I'm Dr. Margaret and self-work is a podcast dedicated to you taking just a few minutes today for your own self-work.

Hello and this is the 35th episode of self-work. I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. I've been in practice as a clinical psychologist for over 20 years in Fayetteville, Arkansas and I began podcasting to extend the walls of my practice to those who might be in

counseling or interested in therapy but also to the scads of people probably

millions of people who would never consider or would rarely consider

going to therapy or being even open to the idea.

And yet, they're still struggling. So I wanted to give everyone a chance to

listen in on what a psychologist sounds like, thinks, what therapy might be like. So I'm so glad you've joined me today as we talk about

abuse from your past and how to handle it. So many people get stuck trying to deal with their abuse on their own they get stuck

in one emotion or another perhaps stuck in sadness stuck in fear stuck in anger we're

going to talk about how you get unstuck and four seemingly simple but not so simple ways to

heal then our listener email is about how do you handle the intensity of emotion and

vulnerability that you can feel in therapy.

In fact it can be so bad you might even want to end the relationship.

But there is another way of handling it and we're going to be talking about that. Thanks for joining me and we'll get right to it. You know when my dad died I knew something had changed forever. I was one of the

lucky ones. I had really good parents they were solid they were consistent

there were some problems in our family but they weren't severe and my dad was

very open with his love one of his favorite things to say to me when I'd made

a mess of things, which I did, was you can always come home or he'd send me a handwritten

letter when things were tough, often quoting scripture, but always with a supportive guiding message that

reminded me of what was really important in life and I knew that his eyes would

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