Last week on Oprah’s show they explored how to talk to your children about sex and Dr. Laura Berman said something that provoked a huge response in the audience: that parents should give their daughters permission to masturbate. She went so far as to say that at 15or 16, introduce a vibrator. She asserted that if we teach young girls to take their power back around sexuality, they won’t be dependent on boys for their pleasure and confuse the good feelings they get from being pleasured by a boy with love.

Although Oprah was completely on board with this, Gayle was against it. She asserted one of the most sexist things I’ve ever heard on this show: that it is ok for boys to masturbate because they are more sexually driven as teenagers. Well, I can tell you that as a child growing up in the 70’s where sexual mores had changed dramatically, I lived in a home where I was taught sex was for marriage.  I drove all my chaotic, sexual feelings into food and between the ages of 13-15, gained 40 pounds. I remember having sexual arousal but not knowing what to do with it, my stress management technique was to eat cookies instead. How many girls who aren’t dating is this also true for? In the words of Dr. Toni Grant:  “Food is a good girl’s sex.”

But I digress. Getting back to Gayle and the Oprah show. Gayle has made no bones about mentioning her love for food.  Why is it ok to derive pleasure from food but not from our own bodies? If a teenage girl sat down at a great meal and ate from pleasure, Gayle (and many people in America who agree with her) would be fine with that but it is not ok to have that pleasure come from touching ourselves.  Unfortunately,  Dr. Berman did not go far enough. Although masturbation is part of the pleasure, what we aren’t taught is how to touch ourselves lovingly all over our bodies.

And here’s the irony: Food when eaten to excess produces childhood obesity, diabetes, and a host of other health issues. The last I heard, stroking your own body does not make you go blind! Nor does it produce weight gain.  In Ashley Montagu’s seminal work first published in 1971, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, he shares with the reader the studies that were done that support how critical being touched is to healthy human functioning and as an extension, to the ability to bond with another.  

My take on this is that when we are not touched, food becomes the safe  mother. The mother who gives us unconditional love.

When a teenage girl is given permission in her formative years to have intimacy with herself first, she does not reach out to find it indiscriminately with a boy, another adolescent most probably incapable of giving her what she truly needs. He can’t because he is being driven by the mother lode of testosterone into focusing his desire for sexual release.  If girls had another avenue for nurturing themselves, they wouldn’t be as driven to make food their lover. It is time for us to move beyond this puritan schizophrenia we have that allows kids to see soft porn scenes in day- time soap operas while at the same time making a physical relationship with our own bodies forbidden.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon. Her website address is www.LifeQuake.net. She is also available for consultation at 310-712-2600.

Whether you are already in therapy or feeling the need for a professional to guide you through these rapidly changing times, it can get confusing as to when to see a coach, a career counselor, a psychiatrist, or a psychotherapist.

Here are six tips to assist you in making the right decision:

1)     Do you have insurance?  Those who are career counselors or coaches only, may not also be licensed in California to practice as a counseling professional. However, there are licensed professionals who also do career coaching, life transitions coaching, and crisis management.  If you want your insurance company to reimburse part of your sessions, be sure to ask the coach when you make the call. Even if you don’t have health insurance, make sure they give you an official invoice or super bill that you can write off as an educational expense if it applies to your professional improvement.

2)     Are you depressed or highly anxious? If so, is it preventing you from functioning on the job, managing your children, or participating in social activities? Working with a coach who doesn’t have clinical training can be a mistake if they do not have the skills to assess when they are in over their head. For example, coaches are sometimes trained to interpret the client’s non-compliance with homework assignments as a form of resistance. They are not often trained how to assess clinical depression. I was referred an anorexic patient who had gone to a coach for hypnosis. By the time this patient was referred to me, she needed to be hospitalized. This is an extreme example but a licensed therapist, whether they be a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist spends at least three years in graduate or medical school, two years in a clinical internship with supervision, and then is required to take state board exams both orally and written before practicing on their own.   There are no coaching programs that require this kind of rigorous training and supervision.

3)     If your life is in chaos, are you de-compensating and need medication to function? A licensed psychotherapist (if they are good) will know to refer you to a psychiatrist. What is amazing is that if you were to go to your family practice M.D.  and report being stressed out he/she may prescribe anti-depressants without the thorough evaluation that an M.D. trained in psychiatry would do to make sure they put you on the appropriate psychotropic medication to rebalance your neurotransmitters. A psychiatrist is also going to follow up to see how you are doing on that brand and dosage. There are also psychiatrists who treat these imbalances with nutritional supplements and herbs. These doctors are called orthomolecular psychiatrists.

When I work with my clients whose brains are in overload, I work closely with a holistic psychiatrist who practices near by – Dr. Hyla Cass- CassMD.com. 

4)     Is your life working so-so, but you want more meaning and purpose? Are you just in job burnout and want career counseling?

Traditional career counseling involves elaborate questionnaires to determine your interests and skill set but may not tap into what you are passionate about. There are coaches who do not have academic training in psychology but who have developed their own methodology for helping people discover their life purpose, their mission, or their vocation of destiny. They will give you homework assignments and a structured program to follow and these coaches and programs for the high functioning individual can be very effective.

5)     Are you experiencing a creative block? Some people know they are meant to do something artistically but are going through a dry period or maybe the demands of their day job in corporate America is getting in the way of contacting the inner muse for their artistic needs at night.

This may be the domain of either a therapist or a coach. Choosing which to go to may begin with you exploring how deep seated the issue is. If there is childhood trauma connected to the block, you may need a therapist trained in hypnotic regression that can take you back to the origin of the trauma and provide the healthy adult protection your child self may need to heal the issue.

A coach may work with you more in the present and deal strictly with your conscious beliefs that are getting in the way and give you exercises to re-inspire your creativity. In my practice, I have found that when a client is feeling blocked, it helps to have them close their eyes and breathe into their body bringing an awareness of where the fears are stuck in the body. I don’t necessarily need to go back to childhood because the unconscious trauma is still in the body and when we surrender into these places, it drives the fear to the surface and we can use the breath to morph the old beliefs into a new reality. I also have found that dream interpretation works really well with writer’s block and other creative obstructions.

6)     Are you dealing with an issue that needs the augmentation of group support?  Sometimes we need a community around us such as the Anonymous programs if you are struggling with an addiction. If you are healing from breast cancer, no one understands what you are going through like other survivors who’ve gone through it. Or, perhaps if you are in a spiritual crisis, you may need to attend services at a church or temple in affiliation that is aligned with your beliefs. Also, when people are going through a transition in their lives, group therapy may be beneficial as a cost effective means of having a breakthrough.

In summary, by asking some of these questions when you contact a coach or therapist, you will clarify for yourself who is suitable.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, marriage, family, and child counselor as well as a career and life transitions coach. She also specializes in working with frustrated artists and those wanting a life that is joyfully fulfilling. Her new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times Of Personal and Global Upheaval is available through her website www.LifeQuake.net and the major online bookstores.

Factually, spring is here. Traditionally, it represents the season of change. Unfortunately, this year our country appears to be in frozen emotional paralysis—people aren’t spending money, changing careers, or leaving dead relationships. This month’s column is dedicated to moving out of a winter mentality and the stasis it imposes. Look at it as my version of the stimulus package, one guaranteed to thaw the endless chill, while arousing those emotions in us all that both affirm and support life.

Dear Dr. Toni:
My husband of sixteen years and I have been sleeping in separate bedrooms for about a year. I had an affair two years ago for eight months and it made me realize that I no longer love my husband. I went back to him because we have a fourteen – year old daughter who really loves her father. We went to counseling and it was no use. I am just not in love with my husband anymore. I was planning to tell my daughter but as the economy has worsened, we just can’t afford to get divorced. What should I do—wait three years until we are out of this slump and my daughter graduates?
Georgia in Sedona

Dear Georgia:
First, let me just say that you are not alone in this dilemma. Many people are choosing to stay together for economic reasons right now. You don’t indicate in your letter how your daughter feels about you and her father sleeping in separate bedrooms. Has this been discussed? More importantly, what is the emotional climate in the house? Are you two conducting a cold war or living as amiable roommates? Have you discussed possible alternatives with each other? If you are absolutely certain that you cannot afford to provide two households for yourselves and your child, then I would suggest having a family meeting in which you openly discuss restructuring your marriage and your family.

Be honest with your daughter about the fact that although you are still a family, you and your husband are no longer functioning as husband and wife. Although this may seem obvious, giving her an opportunity to talk about her feelings about the arrangement is a gesture of respect for her as well as role modeling honest communication.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I know that food, drugs, and alcohol are the usual things people can become addicted to but is it possible to be addicted to YouTube? I am bored with my job. It no longer challenges me. I get all my work done, so it doesn’t interfere with my competence or performance and my boss doesn’t care as long as I get the work done. Do I need to be concerned?
Tube Boob

Dear Reader:
The fact that you are asking the question tells me you know something is up here. Addiction has nothing to do with how much we consume or what we consume. The issue is what are you using your addiction to avoid? Arguably, there is some real feeling you are unable to confront. Try this: Go cold turkey. No YouTube for three days. Notice what feelings come up. Write about these feelings in a journal. What are you afraid of that you are not facing? I am not suggesting you leave your job. Just give yourself a chance to address these newly discovered feelings with no judgment about that they mean. To counteract the boredom you described, now take some time to notice what in the course of your day interests you. Jot that down, too. Do this exercise for three days. Is there a connection between the things you do find interesting? They could be a clue to your vocation of destiny. For further information on preparing for change, you might find some useful tools in my blog: LifeQuake.wordpress.com, dated Mar 9-13. I dedicated five articles to this subject. When addictive habits show up at a time when you should be making changes, often the central belief is that change translates as loss; that you will lose your security if you make a change.

However, all addictions, even Internet ones, can be clues to what you are to do next with your career. Perhaps you should be involved in video or film production, for example. Many people who were corporate executives found their calling as recovery counselors after they went into treatment. All addiction has within it the power to create great transformation if we use it as a sign to get treatment and un-thaw the feelings it has numbed out. Embracing our fears both personally and globally will take us out of winter and bring on an “evolutionary spring”.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker, and the author of her new book: The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. The LifeQuake Phenomenon can be purchased through her website www.LifeQuake.net or the online bookstores. For those seeking private consultation, she can be reached at 310.712.2600. To submit questions for Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through DrToni@LifeQuake.net (no period after the Dr).

In September, as I was finishing the final edits on my book, the newspaper headline read,  “Wall Street Quakes!” and I thought, oh, it has begun. For some people, the stock market crashing meant the end of their life savings, for some, the end of a dream to retire, and for others it meant a crossroads.

A LifeQuake is not a mere crisis but an awakening to a new level of consciousness that can come from a crisis.
So for some, who use this crisis to learn how to adapt to change on the spin of a dime, the stock market going up and down can be a lot like our emotions over the course of the day. Do you react to every event that you didn’t expect from fear or do you respond with the attitude that somewhere in this upheaval there is good? If we declare that no matter what happens, we are always winning, it doesn’t matter how the outer events unfold, you will experience your life as a winner. On the other hand, if your happiness is dependent on the DOW instead of the other Dow spelled “ Tao” that teaches us all that peace and security is always available, then your life and your inner state will always be like its own personal stock market: a rollercoaster.

Further, you will get trapped in seeing Wall Street as your Holy Grail instead of discovering the purpose of all this chaos – to know you are safe and secure no matter how life shows up and that love is all that really matters.  As someone who has lost everything a couple times over, I can tell you from personal experience that this economic crisis can take us from loss to liberation.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and the author of her new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How To Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. To order her new book or read her blog, go to www.LifeQuake.net.

So here is what I came up with along with some suggestions for deciding when it is time to put the fino on the vino.  Women who are mothers today represent the largest educated population of women in history. Since the 60’s, we have been given a choice about when and if we even want to have children. Most women have a career and some kind of life after leaving their parents home now for at least a few years. They know what freedom over their lives and bodies are, even if they have a job. In today’s world, when you have children you are signing up to be a chauffeur, a tutor, a teacher ‘s aid in the classroom, a school volunteer, and be responsible for your child’s play dates and social activities.

When I was a child, we lived around the corner from the school so my mother didn’t drive us to school.  I never asked my parents to do my homework with me, and all activities I was involved with usually involved a school bus or was in our neighborhood. My mother did not organize my social life. I had a social life if I could get a ride.  It is a tough job being a stay at home mom. The demands of raising children today are huge but what makes it more difficult than balancing career and home can be found in one word: identity. You lose your sense of self when you don’t have an identity outside of motherhood.  We are after all animals, mammals, but none – the – less, animals. We need reinforcement. When you perform well at work, you either get acknowledgment, a promotion, a raise, or all of the above.  When you’re a stay at home mom, you’re lucky if you get an occasional acknowledgement from your kids.

So how do you know when your “mommy medicine” is a problem?

1) For the most part, quantity is not the main issue. Dependence is. If you have three glasses of wine over the course of a long Sunday family dinner like they do in Italy, it may be fine if your state of mind is celebratory. If you have three glasses of wine every night before and at dinner, you might want to ask yourself,  “are you tired of being the one who makes dinner every night and/ or has to listen to everyone’s complaints about their day?”

2) Do you really, really look forward to that glass of wine at night and if you had to go without it for a week, would it bring up some intense emotions?

3)  Is your wine drinking at night, the only time through the course of the day, that you feel happy?

4) Are you using it to numb out other yearnings, like to go back to school or go back into the workplace?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, perhaps it is time to include more time for yourself to contemplate what gives your life meaning outside of being a mom and what brings you joy. On my website, under the media page at the very bottom is an exercise I did for You Tube called “Connecting the Dots” that can help you discover what gives you energy and passion and perhaps even can lead to finding your other life purpose.

If your alcohol consumption is getting out of hand, perhaps it is time to consult a therapist or attend an AA meeting.  People are out there to help.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and the author of her new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval.  On her website www.LifeQuake.net, she outlines on the “seven stages” page how addiction can be part of the awakening process of a LifeQuake.

Anyway, he contacted me again today inviting me to be a part of the Galardi Family where 30 people all named Galardi were listed. At first, I almost didn’t accept.  Although I do business under the name Galardi, my legal last name is Gagliardi but people don’t know how to pronounce it correctly in this country (phonetically it is pronounced Gaul-yar-dee).  When  I started doing media appearances twenty years ago I shortened the name so it wouldn’t be pronounced Gag -liardi.

But in looking at all these pictures of people with my current last name, it made me think about how the word family is changing. Now with Facebook, we really are connecting with each other all over the world every day and the idea of a global family is no longer just an ideal concept. We are meant to transform our definition of family as we make this global leap in evolution.  The evolutionary biologists tell us that we are all connected to ancestors in South Africa. So I decided that whether my name is Galardi or Gagliardi, I am connected to these people in Torino. The irony is that my grandmother’s second husband John Sorgini was from Torino.  Although we were not blood related, he was the only paternal grandfather I ever knew. Six degrees of separation…

Dr Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and Change Expert.  Her new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon is available through her website www.LifeQuake.net or the online bookstores.  To contact Dr. Galardi for a consult, call 310-712-2600.

For the past three years I have either been working on writing, editing, or marketing my book and have not been entertaining. Given how much time I spend at my computer, I began having regrets this morning that I had planned a luncheon at my house for four friends… on a work day.  As I was rushing around cleaning, I kept muttering to myself I must be crazy to have taken this on in the midst of several deadlines I had for articles. I continued this inner dialogue walking to and from the market until I got in my kitchen and started chopping the tomatoes, pressing the garlic, and boiling the water for the pasta. Suddenly I became a different person, a familiar person, but one I hadn’t met for a while – I call her my “Italian mama” sub-personality.  I was in heaven.  As I played Romanza on my Ipod, I began to feel ecstatic.

My girlfriends arrived. I got up and down a million times to serve them and could not have been happier as we broke in my new Crate and Barrel dining room table. As I was finally sitting and enjoying the meal with them, I had the thought that cooking for others is really therapeutic for me. I had been feeling burned out by functioning so much in the intellectual realm and was out of balance. In spite of the  fact that it added a lot of work to my day, I was so much more joyful at 3:00 when they left.  As someone who believes in what I call “divine coincidences”, I thought it was an interesting omen that as we were finishing, a hummingbird came to the window. In Indian Medicine, the hummingbird brings the medicine of joy. How fitting…

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and the author of her new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive ( not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval.

Let’s say you are ready to accept that change is coming and you wan to use your dreams to get information. Pay attention to symbols that represent crisis: for example, tornadoes are a message of upheaval but,  this symbol may be showing you that if you go to the eye of the storm, you can get the peace you need to hear what steps to take next.  Earthquakes represent a structural change. Either you need to build a better emotional foundation or you may be called to physically move. When I work with a client, I give them several tools for dream recall.  Here is one that can be helpful: keep a pad of paper or blank book by your bed. Before going to sleep, put the date of the next morning on it and write three times while saying it aloud, “ I am remembering my dreams when I awaken in the morning.”

The key with dream interpretation lies in the emotional tone of each scene of the dream. If you have a dream where your house is on fire, for example, but you are very calm or even joyous in the dream, this may be an indication that in spite of a radical change to your foundation, you will experience profound and beneficial transformation. I love working with dreams. I have assisted many people in preparing for their life to change in such a way that they were able to avert disaster.

In my new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon I share with my readers stories of people, like Martin Rutte, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work who intuited from a dream to sell his house.  The Northridge earthquake occurred three days after he and his wife moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Yes, dreams can save our lives if we are willing to listen and begin an inquiry with ourselves on where we need to make changes. Of course it also helps to have a coach who can look at the material with you and determine the meaning that most fits with you and your destiny.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a psychotherapist, author, public speaker, and is the columnist for Vision Magazine’s, “Ask the LifeQuake Doctor”. Her recent book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon, is available now at www.lifequake.net.

There is a feeling in the country of anxiety and emotional paralysis. Everyone is waiting for the next guy to stimulate the economy. Now, I’m not saying go out and spend money you don’t have to get the economy going. What I am saying is that if you feel frozen to take any action in your life, change from within. Go even deeper into non-doing.  Spend 15 minutes a day in quiet. As you inhale, bring the oxygen all the way down into your gut.  As you focus on your breath, put your hand over your heart and imagine your hand is a wand of light that is radiating all the fear you are feeling, transforming it into peace. Now, go to the top of your head with your awareness and set an intention for your crown to open and receive light from the universe – the sun, the air, all of nature, etc. Believe it or not, you can be inside your office or home and still have access to this source. Once you feel calm, ask the question, what is one thing I can do today that I don’t normally do that will support my life?

The temptation when we feel paralyzed is to self soothe through food, sex, alcohol, surfing the net for hours, etc. While in stage two, so much amazing healing work can be done if we allow ourselves to turn within for comfort; simply by partnering universal consciousness with our own breath and heart. Tomorrow I will give you some techniques for remembering your dreams and using the dream recall to prepare for change.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Santa Monica, Ca and is the author of the newly published book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to thrive (not just survive)in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval.

In this blog the focus is on something Americans have an almost phobic fear of -death.  At one time, the three things one never spoke about in public conversation were sex, death, and money. Well, now that you see on day time tv what was only possible in soft porn films, sex is most definitely out in the open. One never discussed salaries in polite conversation and now people talk blatantly about what they lost in their stock portfolio as if they are talking about yesterday’s news.  And yet, confronting death is something people do only when forced to through a diagnosis or tragic loss.  There is death inside of natural life cycles that we also resist.

In the Native American tradition there is a saying “It’s a good day to die.” It was used when a warrior went forth into battle with dignity and acceptance of his fate but I use it as an opening to emotional release work with my clients when the battle we are confronting is the negative ego that is resisting change. Ask yourself the question, “ What beliefs am I holding onto that need to die?”  What needs to be released from my life that no longer supports my growth?  For example, perhaps it’s the way you’ve made your living or if you’re an entrepreneur, the marketing techniques you have used in the past for your product. If you lost your job or sales are down for your company, it may be time to let an old method go. Companies are famous for continuing to put out a product using a tried and true marketing strategy only to find it isn’t reflecting the needs of the consumer. Think General Motors, for example.

Anyway, the next task in preparing for change is to look into your life at what is defunctional – obsolete – and get rid of it. Spring is coming.  Is the soil in your garden made up of elements that can produce an abundant crop or do you need to get out there and weed out the beliefs that are suppressing your fertile soul?  If we make every day “ a good day to die” we can surrender to change and produce a new world where everyone has clean water and goes to sleep with a full stomach. It is possible…

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, phone coach, and author of her new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval.