Core Therapy

CoreTherapyTM: Free to Love

I’m so glad you’ve taken the first step and I’m happy to help you solve the problem that’s bothering you today — but that’s not all.

Whether you’re single and searching for love, in a rocky relationship, considering separation, single again following a divorce or death of a loved one, or scared to reenter the dating scene following a bad breakup, it’s my mission to help you move past your impasse so that you can experience the blessing of loving and being loved to the fullest.

As you probably know, I’m known worldwide as Dr. Love, and through TV, books, radio, advice columns, and my website, I’ve helped millions of people create joyful relationships.

As Director of the Center for Emotional Communication, I’ve spent over 20 years researching what makes relationships fail or flourish. I have identified every pothole on the path to love, and I know how to steer you clear of all of them. Now it’s your turn to benefit from my vast experience and knowledge. You’ve taken the first step. I promise to walk beside you until journey’s end.

Don’t wait to get started. Research proves that a strong relationship will improve your health and make you live a longer and healthier life.

Not having a strong connection with another person or having a relationship that’s full of conflict is deadly. No kidding. Recent research proves that depression, anxiety, and the stress associated with relationship problems releases cortisol and adrenaline as well as other stress related chemicals. These chemicals damage the endothelium in your arteries and lead to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and heart disease as well as cause premature death!

Stress chemicals also cause inflammation throughout your body. Recent research proves that inflammation is the underlying cause of every degenerative illness and disease known to humankind, so it’s no exaggeration to say that your life depends on having a good love life. Don’t kid yourself? no amount of healthy eating, exercise, or supplements can counteract the damage caused by not having strong connections with others, or undo the harm caused by a relationship that’s not working.

Don’t worry — I’m going to show you how to turn your love life around using my groundbreaking approach, which I call CoreTherapyTM. Instead of ‘Band-Aid’ therapies, which offer quick fixes and behavioral tricks that cover the wounds that fester inside all of us, I dig deep to uncover the core of your problem, the buried wounds that actually cause your relationship woes.

Once you uncover and heal your core wounds,  you won’t need to write me in six months, a year, or ten years from now because the same problem has popped up again.

Childhood wounds resurface in our adult relationships in two ways: the partners we choose and the conflict we experience with our partners.Because our childhood relationships are the psychological blueprint for our adult relationships, we are naturally drawn to life partners who emotionally resemble our parents. We are creatures of habit. Familiar pain is actually more comfortable than facing the unknown.

The psyche craves to heal the wounds of childhood by repeating them. Repeating the past helps us to work through our feelings and to hopefully achieve what I call a Happy Ending this time around. The Happy Ending is whatever you yearned for as a child.

We choose partners who resemble our parents because:

  1. We are creatures of habit. Familiar pain is actually more comfortable than facing the unknown.
  2. The psyche craves to heal the wounds of childhood by repeating them. Repeating the past helps us to work through our feelings and to hopefully achieve what I call a Happy Ending this time around. The Happy Ending is whatever you yearned for as a child.

For example, if your dad put you down, you will choose a lover who belittles you — not because you’re a glutton for punishment, but because your psyche wants to help you to heal. If you manage to get love and appreciation from your partner, your unconscious mind will feel as though you are getting what you always wanted from your parent.

No matter how many times you are hurt or disappointed by your partner, you won’t stop trying, because the urge to heal your early wounds is so strong that your unconscious mind never wants to give up. This is called the Repetition Compulsion. Unfortunately, the Repetition Compulsion never works; instead of winning the love and appreciation you crave, you end up heartbroken all over again, precisely because your partner is as limited as your parent was and is therefore incapable of giving you any more or any better than you received as a child.

Quick Test To Determine if You are Stuck in a Repetition Compulsion

  1. You keep choosing partners who you know are wrong for you. YES or NO
  2. You find it impossible to let go of a partner who is wrong for you. YES or NO
  3. You only feel attracted to partners who mistreat you. YES or NO
  4. You find yourself wanting to get back with someone who is wrong for you and/or mistreated you. YES or NO
  5. You are filled with sadness at the thought of giving up your partner despite the fact that you are being mistreated or your needs aren’t being met. YES or NO

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you are locked in a Repetition Compulsion.

There are other ways that your psychological blueprint damages your love life. Even if you manage not to choose a partner like the parent or parents who caused emotional harm, you will find yourself unconsciously driven to turn your partner into your parent in order to repeat the trauma you suffered as a child, again with the hope of achieving your Happy Ending.

Quick Test to Determine if Your Unconscious Mind is Trying to Turn Your Partner into Your Parent

  1. You find yourself pushing your partner’s buttons, but don’t know why. YES or NO
  2. You find yourself accusing your partner even though you know your accusations aren’t justified. YES or NO
  3. You feel a sense of dread, as if you’re waiting for your partner to harm you. YES or NO
  4. You find yourself misinterpreting your partner’s words and actions and assuming negative intentions even when they don’t actually exist. YES or NO
  5. You feel afraid that your relationship will end in disaster. YES or NO

If you answered YES to any of these questions, your unconscious mind is trying to turn your partner into your parent.

For example, let’s say your mother abandoned the family when you were young. This experience left you with a fear of being abandoned. In your adult relationships, you will assume that each and every partner is going to walk out on you, when, in fact, your partner has no intention of doing so. In spite of reality, you are clingy, possessive, jealous, suspicious, or always accusing your partner of cheating, and guess what? your partner gets so furious to be falsely accused that he/she ends up leaving you. Your unconscious succeeded in recreating your childhood, but once again there’s no chance for a Happy Ending.

The wounds of childhood have yet another way of wreaking havoc on your relationships. They add fuel to the fire and cause endless fighting. How? The mind works by association, unconsciously comparing present events with early experiences. This explains why you react with great emotional intensity to minor things that your partner says or does. This is because your mind is making a connection between what’s happening now and what happened to you as a child.

For example, one of my patients was out to dinner with her husband. He kept checking his watch in order to be sure to feed the meter at the right time. She went ballistic and started yelling at him, ‘I can see you can’t wait to get out of here and away from me…’ Since her dad had no time for her, her unconscious mind linked her husband and her father; suddenly, all her buried hurt and anger came out on her husband, adding fuel to her fire. Of course, when she loses it, her partner becomes furious in response, and thus begins the cycle of endless fighting.

Quick Test to Determine if Old Wounds are Fueling Your Relationship Problems

  1. I often find myself overreacting to what my partner says or does. YES or NO
  2. When my partner upsets me, I can’t seem to let go of my hurt feelings. YES or NO
  3. I expect my partner to hurt or damage me the way my parents did. YES or NO
  4. I’m hypersensitive and often feel attacked or put down by my partner. YES or NO
  5. I often interpret what my partner says or does as negative even when in reality it isn’t. YES or NO

If you answered YES to any of these questions, old wounds are adding fuel to your fire.

Because old wounds are the root cause of all relationship conflict, I will show you how to heal your wounds and teach you new and more effective ways of communicating your feelings so that you can grow closer, not farther apart. When you heal your childhood wounds, you not only improve your relationships with others, you also develop a better relationship with yourself. Your self-esteem and self-love blossom when excess psychic baggage is lifted from your shoulders. You are freed to live in the now and enjoy life and love to the fullest. I look forward to working with you.

Rescue yourself from one more day of heartache. Protect your health from the deadly effects of no relationship or a troubled relationship. Create the best, most loving relationship in the world. And since all of us carry old wounds, do yourself a favor and make sure that you have your partner, spouse, friends, and loved ones read this letter and encourage them to take the necessary steps as well.

The best place to start is with my ground-breaking book, Kiss Your Fights Good-bye: Dr. Love’s 10 Simple Steps to Cooling Conflict and Rekindling Your Relationship.

You can buy the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Also, use this site to its fullest and browse my weekly free advice columns which go as far back as 1996. You can search read the latest columns, search by topic or keyword, browse them by year and month, and even browse them by title. All the free advice I have given over the years I have published free on this Web site for the benefit of others. As you will see, you are not alone in your relationship and personal struggles. If you are willing to devote your time to the work, you can break free from your harmful patterns and have the love in your life that your deserve.

— Dr. Jamie Turndorf