Rev. Karen E. Herrick, PhD, LCSW, LMSW, CADC is a Jungian psychotherapist who has lectured throughout the United States about dysfunctional and addictive homes, disassociation, grief, and loss. Since 1995, Karen and The Interfaith Ministry and Karen have been actively involved in Spiritual Psychology, specifically in naming spiritual experiences and working with chronic grief. This has led her to study the bidirectional system of the vagus nerve, through which we receive intuitive and spiritual messages. Karen is also the author of three books titled: You’re Not Finished Yet, Grandma; What is a Soul?; and her third book that just came out, The Psychology of the Soul and the Paranormal.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- How Oprah Winfrey, the Vagus Nerve and Intuition are connected.
- The mystical experience that gave Karen a spiritual rebirth.
- How a person can find his or her soul.
- How Jungian Psychology is different from other forms of psychology.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS KAREN:
- What is disassociation and what is chronic grief?
- What is the difference between mental illness and a spiritual experience?
- How does the spiritualist perspective help to overcome a fear of death?
SHOW LINKS:
Website: http://karenherrick.com/
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Email: Karen@karenherrick.com
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Listen to the podcast here
Karen Herrick— Jungian Psychotherapist, Reverend In The Interfaith Ministry
Our guest is Reverend Karen E. Herrick, a Jungian psychotherapist who has lectured throughout the United States for many years about dysfunctional and addictive homes, disassociation, grief, and loss. Since 1995, Karen’s interfaith ministry has been actively involved in spiritual psychology, specifically in naming spiritual experiences and working with chronic grief. This has led her to study the bidirectional system of the vagus nerve through which we receive intuitive and spiritual messages. Karen is also the author of three books titled You’re Not Finished Yet, “Grandma, What Is A Soul?”, and the third book is called The Psychology of the Soul and the Paranormal.
Karen, what a true pleasure to welcome you to the show. We met at a party and followed up by having a delightful dinner together. During this, we both agreed that your wisdom and expertise would be invaluable on the show and now here we are. There are so many things I want to chat with you about, especially your three books. Before we begin, can you please briefly explain what all those initials after your name, which give you your tremendous expertise, mean namely PhD, LCSW, LMSW, CADC, and ACMHP?
Yes, I can tell you what they mean. PhD means I have a Doctorate in Spiritual Psychology. Most psychologists specialize. After I had my spiritual experience and people started coming, I decided to get a doctorate in naming spiritual experiences because that’s one of the problems. People have these weird things happen to them and don’t know what they are, and if we can name them, it will help people normalize them a bit. LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the state of New Jersey, and LMSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York because some people who come have New York State Insurance. CADC is a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and ACMHP is a spirituality organization that has said that I know about spirituality. That’s what they all mean.
You are a true expert. Can you briefly tell us about what you do as a reverend in an interfaith ministry? What sorts of issues do you help people work through?
The reverend in interfaith ministry started when I had a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. I was raised Protestant, but all my other relatives on my mother’s side were Catholic. I was a little confused about which one God approved of so I decided to go to the interfaith ministry in New York City and learn about the different religions of the world. I found out there’s only one God and met a lot of lovely people. Interfaith helps me, I could marry you and bury you, but I don’t do that. I help people who have questions about their religion, maybe guilt about how they don’t feel like being so much of their religion anymore, how much they can handle, and how much they want to push to the side.
Also, in chronic grief, many times religion doesn’t help them. It tells them they have a soul or their soul departed, but then what does that mean? I do help them that way. It gives you more compassion for the world and different religions. I can always talk to other ministers if I have a client who needs to go to someone else about more depth in a religious problem.
I know that a lot of people question their faith and some people change their faith and you are a perfect person to talk to about that when a person is having those feelings. You are also the director of the Center for Children of Alcoholics in Red Bank, New Jersey. How do you help children and their families at this center? Are the participants mainly from New Jersey or other states as well?
Children of Alcoholics is what I named my private practice several years ago and I saw kids a lot then. Now they have alcohol and drug counselors in school systems. Mostly, the kids I see now are adolescents, but I have seen kids as young as three to explain to them what’s going on in their home and what drinking means.
Mainly, who I see now are children, wives, spouses, and husbands of people who are addicted or who were addicted, and the leftovers of that in their family. I know I was married to an alcoholic whom I had to divorce because I couldn’t stand it anymore. Some people who get someone in recovery wake up and think, “Now our problems are all going to be solved because the person doesn’t drink anymore.”
There were a lot of underlying problems in that marriage and in that home. To begin with, drinking exacerbated them so stopping the drinking is not going to make everything wonderful. Those are the kinds of people that I see and a lot of relationship problems. They come to me because they have never seen how a good relationship should work and what compromise and negotiation mean. After all, control is the biggest issue if you have been raised in an alcoholic or dysfunctional home. You want control and that doesn’t always lead to fairness or being able to compromise with the person.
That’s fascinating to know. I know a lot of different people and the issues that they have are connected to a need for control, but I didn’t know that was also the case for alcoholics. You taught me something significant. Thank you, Karen. You give webinars on Jungian psychology, the vagus nerve spirituality, and finding your soul. How does a person find your webinars and how does a person find his or her soul?
The webinars are probably easier. You go to www.CEYou.org, and there you will find their schedule. I teach about once a month, and what this is about is for social workers and psychologists who need continuing education credits. A lot of people have problems getting credits in Jungian psychology because usually, you have to go to an institute in a big city. It’s very expensive to travel and all that. I find that they like to come and talk about Jung and that’s my favorite subject. For anybody, it’s $39.95 to take a 2-hour class and you get 2 credits. If you don’t need the credits, you can pay your $39.95 and learn.
That leads me to ask you exactly how is Jungian psychology different than other forms of psychology.
Jungian psychology believes in the altered states of consciousness. There are some people in psychology, which psychology want to know how you behave every day and know you are happy. They don’t go into dreaming or altered states if you have an out-of-body experience or a near-death experience. They have no way of explaining that to you. It looks like mental illness to them.
Jungian psychology accepts all types of experiences because Carl Jung believed that in the mind, there was a realm of nuclear physics and the space-time continuum was at the bottom of our unconscious. All these wonderful things could happen to you. The basis for psychology in the future was to be able to understand these psychic things that were going on and how mediumship happens. His mother was psychic and his father was a minister so he was confused about God. He has a lot of spiritual advice that most psychologists don’t have. It’s very different but it’s very wonderful because it encompasses the whole person.
I’m learning a lot. Thank you. I appreciate this. Can you tell us about the mystical experience that inspired you to become who you are professionally and spiritually, and how you finally figured out what had happened to you?
I was going to a conference where they said that I would have to breathe to music, which I had no idea what that meant. It was after I started my practice and they were giving it in Connecticut, and it was a week that my daughter was going to be at camp. I drove over there and decided I was going to learn about this breathwork technique. They taught me about Jungian psychology, which was the first time I had those classes. About Wednesday, it was 5 or 6 days, we laid down and breathed to this music. The music was to activate your chakra system in your body, which is an invisible system of energies that you have that go up and down the vagus nerve. I laid down and they gave me these instructions, “Don’t think. Just breathe.”
It was probably the only time in my life when I was taught not to think. I follow instructions. I breathed in and out and the music was activating. The first music was African drums for the fear base chakra. All these wonderful things are happening inside my body. You are in an altered state and have no idea how much time this is taking or anything. Anyway, I’m doing this, I’m lying down on some blankets and a pillow, and I pull up my legs in a birthing position. This breath comes into my vagina and out my mouth, and I’m like, “What is that? Who is that?”
I thought, “Don’t think. Just breathe.” I’m breathing and this other breath is breathing. It seemed to me that its other breath was in me for about twenty minutes. I don’t know, but that’s what it seemed like. After that, I experienced my real birth as a baby. As I was breathing, I was thinking, “Where’s my mother? Why do I need my mother?” The trainers came over and I held on their wrists. They kept telling me to push and that was my birth. I will tell you. It must be easier to die than it is to be born because that is exhausting. What we were supposed to do was get up and not talk to anybody and then draw a mandala, which is a picture in a circle, which is a Jungian thing.
It must be easier to die than it is to be born. Click To Tweet
I went over and I drew a flower, the sky, and the sun. When I stood up, I knew there was a God. Before that, I hadn’t because I thought, “In this alcoholic home, it’s too messy for God to be in here. I’m sure he doesn’t like this because I didn’t like it.” I didn’t believe there was a God. I believed something about the wind like the American Indians and I believed in nature that we all should be kind to each other.
There, I knew there was a God. The awe I felt, the beauty, and the awareness of these 21 people that when I first started on Sunday, I thought were all pretty weird. They believed in things that I didn’t even know about yet, but I knew we were all connected and that all of us were connected to everyone in the world.
Is that how you described God as that universal connection?
It’s a being. I believe in what Abraham Maslow said, “God is being.” We have to live this life and we have to do it together, and we have to try to be understanding to each other and as kind as we can be. The golden rule doesn’t hurt.
It is in keeping with when they pulled me out of the car after my husband died next to me, and the message I received that came into my head was to be loving and kind to everyone.
Yes. Now what happened with this experience was we went to lunch to ground our bodies and then we went to the group to understand our mandalas. The teacher says to me, “You had a rebirth.” That’s all she said. I watched everybody else and I listened to their stories. Nobody had a breath come into them that they didn’t know who that was. I was like, “I’m not talking about this.” It took me about 1 to 2 years to figure out that was the Holy Spirit, and that it had been a rebirth that I now knew there was a God, which I didn’t know before.
That’s a wonderful story. For people who are saying, “What is she talking about a vagus nerve and spirituality?” Could you define that? We also talked about finding your soul if you’d like to comment on that.
We find our soul from the roles we take on in our family, and then what happens to us in life, and we grow from that because our job is to develop our soul in this life. Every religion tells you to have a soul practically, but they don’t tell you what to do with it. Number one, you are supposed to find your soul purpose in life, and when you do that, you are the happiest. You are doing what God wants you to do or the higher power.
Psychology Of The Soul: Our job is to develop our souls in this life. Everybody in every religion tells you to have a soul practically, but they don’t tell you what to do with it.
Tell them about the vagus nerve.
That’s the tenth and longest nerve in your body. It comes in at the top of your head. It goes around your neck and touches your amygdala, which is fight, flight, or frozen, and frozen is what happens to you when you have trauma. It goes down your spinal column into your heart and down into your stomach. Your stomach tells your brain 80% of what happens in your body. If you have had trauma say something happens and now you are afraid of cats. You are 40 years old and you come into my office and you say, “I’m afraid of cats. You have to help me. I don’t have any memory of what a cat has done to me.” What happens is that when this person sees a cat, the stomach triggers the brain danger and his heart rate goes up.
How are we going to calm this down, especially since he doesn’t know what happened? As he’s telling me the stories and we are trying to figure it out, what I tell people to do is vagus breathing, which some people call yoga breathing, and they probably have many other names for it. You breathe into the count of 4 and you breathe out 6, 7, or 8 as far out as you can go. It’s a longer out-breath than an in-breath. As you are doing that, the nerve will calm down.
You can calm down your panic and anxiety, and then it would be good to have a positive thought in there like, “I am safe. I’m in Karen’s office. There’s a cat in the lobby but the cat isn’t hurting me,” that type stuff. That’s what the vagus nerve is. There’s been a famous researcher who has written a book called The Polyvagal Theory, Dr. Porges. He talks about the vagus nerve, life, and all of that stuff about how it causes you to be nervous or anxious. What I talk about is what it does to your spiritual body because inside of our physical body, we also have a spiritual body like St. Paul said in the Bible. He said, “You come in the physical and you go out in the spiritual.”
Your spiritual body is housed in your solar plexus down past in the back of your stomach. When you have an out-of-body experience and near-death experience, that spiritual body that houses the soul comes up the vagus nerve, and the silver cord is then connected there and goes out the top of your head or your top chakra.
We all have this little inch hole at the top of our heads. It’s where your soft spot used to be and then people say, “I was out there flying around, and then I felt something pull me back in,” which is the silver cord pulls you back into your body. Also, in a near-death experience, people go over to the other side and see their loved ones, and then they are also pulled back in. You have a spiritual body and a physical body, which is what my third book is about. It has all kinds of illustrations showing you about that.
I would also love you to tell us all about that mystical experience. You spoke about how you figured out what had happened to you, and then you also have an inspiring story about the ghetto house in Little Silver, New Jersey.
Yes, I do. The title is No Way is Reflective of the Lovely Town of Little Silver where I lived after I got my divorce. My teenage daughter called it this because we moved from a very big house to a smaller house. Fate is sometimes what we name what happens to us in life. It’s important to know that you are the hero of your own story, but that you can’t be heroic on your own. You need your ancestors, family members, and friends to help deal with both positive and negative happenings, and this is how you develop your soul. This is a fun story. The year was 1982. Interest rates were 18% and realtors in New Jersey had started auctioning off houses to stimulate business. I was rather a naive female coming out of a dysfunctional marriage with two daughters to support.
In a sadistic sociopathic move, my alcoholic husband had forged my name on a company document and received all the monetary reimbursement of our marital home assets. He stated to the company that we had been divorced, which had not been. He gave me $10,000 to buy something in a very expensive county in New Jersey. As I was waiting for the court date to come up to receive my half of the marital home assets, a good friend asked me if I looked at this certain house in a town very close called Little Silver. She’d been telling me about this house for almost a year, and I wanted to stay in the town I was in so the kids would be able to keep the same friends, so I’d been ignoring her information.
A nice little house in my town was coming up for auction in two weeks. To keep my friend happy, I decided I’d finally look at her house. It was being placed for auction that very Saturday, and I then decided I was going to practice bidding for the house two weeks from now, especially when I discovered that all that you needed to do to bid was $10,000. This is one of the first meaningful coincidences in my story, which are very important in your life to develop your soul. Five of us showed up at the auction on that lovely Saturday morning in June, and we were sitting in this drab living room when the auctioneer came in. He looked at the surroundings and suggested we all go out on the lawn. The house was on the market for $129,000 and it was appraised at $89,000.
Previously, I’d asked about this procedure of bidding and was told that the auctioneer would begin at $100,000. It didn’t make sense to me because, at an auction, you are supposed to get a deal of some kind, but I shrugged. I was only practicing, so what did it matter? The auctioneer did start at $100,000 and he stated it 3 times and no one answered. We then went to $50,000. Now, this was a deal. The bid started flying at $55,000 and $60,000. I thought, “If you are going to practice, you better get started,” so I bid $65,000 and somebody else said $70,000.
When another person said $75,000, I thought, “No one had said you had to bid in $5,000 increments.” I said $76,000. I said it twice and the auctioneer kept repeating $80,000. I don’t know where this twisted, aggressive, and almost demonic voice came from, but I said $76,000 so loudly that my voice scared me, and he then quietly repeated $76,000. At that moment, it was like everyone realized that we were all bidding as if this was monopoly money and it didn’t count. Another bid of $77,000 and I said $78,000 then my mind went completely blank and the yard took on a surreal perspective as if I was going to lose my equilibrium. I heard the auctioneer say sold.
I looked around at our group and no one looked happy. I wondered who had bought it. I was speechless and shocked, to say the least when they congratulated me. However, there was a saving grace. The owner of the house had three days to accept or reject the offer. When I thought about that, I breathed a sigh of relief because my bid was lower than the appraised value so of course, he won’t accept, I decided.
Three days later when he called, I didn’t even recognize his name when I should have been waiting with bated breath for this wonderful deal. I thought, “How nice I’m going to get my $10,000 back,” but instead he congratulated me on the fact that I bought this house. “Do you want to bring your daughters over to see it tonight?” I said, “Not tonight.” “Would Wednesday night be better?” Yes, I said, but I knew Wednesday wasn’t going to be any better. Upon seeing the house, my then fifteen-year-old told me she wasn’t living in this house and that it was a ghetto house. Her empty threat was that she wasn’t moving there.
Though important, she was the least of my problems because court dates had been canceled and moved so I wouldn’t have any money to purchase this house until the moving day in August, two months away. Luckily, when I signed the contract with the mover company, I was not asked for any money because I didn’t have any. The day of the move and the day to appear in court ended up being the same day. On this day, I had the mover start the 2-mile move and then told them to keep the boxes coming, set up the beds, put the boxes in the correct rooms, and I would be back. The daughter who said she wasn’t moving with me helped the movers.
My lawyer proof fraud won the case and we both received certified checks. My husband’s sociopathic move had cost me dearly, but I now had money to pay the movers and to put a down payment on the ghetto house. A lovely surprise awaited me at closing. The owner’s realtor told me that there was a 5.75% original mortgage that I could assume. He said, “Do you want to assume it?” I said, “I wanted to assume it.” With that money, I could afford my tuition for graduate school. Two years later, I finished my degree and I was ready to start a career.
One of the things that Carl Jung says is chance rules. My friend had been the angel that was sent to me to keep prodding me to look at this house because, for some reason, I was meant to buy this house. Be careful about your assumptions as you are developing your soul. I assumed that my bid would not be accepted because it was lower than the appraised value, but you never know somebody else’s situation.
That was my very first spiritual story because that was not my voice that said $76,000. It just came to me. That little voice you hear in the back of your head, that was that little voice that I heard, “You don’t have to bid in $5,000 increments,” but that was also helped from the other side because I could tell. It didn’t come through my ears. It came through the back of my head. There’s an illustration in the third book about how you get clairvoyant intuition through the back of your head.
Psychology of the Soul and the Paranormal by Rev. Karen E. Herrick PhD
I can’t wait to read that book. I know it’s going to be wonderful. Tell us what is preterm depression, which you say is the purpose of the paranormal and sometimes comes out of mental illness.
Pre-depression is a Raymond Moody term. He was the creator of the term near-death experience. He wrote that book in 1975. Now so many people are having near-death experiences and it’s become part of our culture. He said that pre-depression came from an awareness and aided in lifting somebody’s symptoms like depression.
This woman came to me. She was Catholic and was very depressed. She came in one night. It was after Christmas. I was running spirituality groups at that time and they were wonderful. 7 or 8 people together and they grew. All we talked about was spiritual experiences and different things that they wanted to talk about that you don’t usually talk about in the real world. Anyway, she came in and said that she had been so depressed and she had this list of things that we had given her that she was supposed to do. She had meditated finally and decided to breathe very quietly and to get through this depression.
In her meditation, the three kings appeared to her. They came, brought her gifts, and told her that she was worthy. Now, one of the things that her parents and family had said to her was that she was born on Wednesday and Wednesday’s child was full of will. She heard that her whole childhood. She was uplifted by this feeling that the three kings gave her these gifts that she was worthy of when they bowed in front of her and her depression was lifted.
This is a story of an image, which is Jungian psychology. We have to pay attention to the images that we get in meditation and dreams because those symbols are sent to us for a reason. It was sent to her to finally say, “There’s no reason for you to be depressed. You are worthy.” This came from her spiritual background of being Catholic. I probably came on Three Kings Night when I think about it because it was in January, the first week or so, but I haven’t been able to put a date on that experience. I love it because it’s the purpose of the paranormal. Why we have these different experiences is to help us develop our souls.
The purpose of the paranormal and why we have these different experiences is to help us develop our souls. Click To Tweet
There are so many things in this interview that call for another interview sometimes to explore more. I was once a member of a spiritual group, and that sounds wonderful that a lot of people would be interested in forming those.
That’s the key to the future. I do group groups.
It’s like what we are doing here with the show because we have a healing community and all of that. It’s all part of this community and this raised awareness. Now I’d like to talk about your three wonderful books. Your first book is called You’re Not Finished Yet, and it’s for adults raised in alcoholic and dysfunctional homes. Tell us about the book’s premise and anything else you’d like to add about it.
You’re Not Finished Yet by Rev. Karen E. Herrick
It lists the characteristics that you get coming from an alcoholic or dysfunctional home. You are either overly responsible or under-responsible, and you have problems sometimes telling the truth. You don’t have to lie but you do because that’s what you are used to doing. It’s different that you have problems with intimate relationships and those kinds of characteristics.
It also talks about the roles in the family, the hero, the scapegoat, and the lost child, the mascot and the play kid or kids. Usually, we are a combination of two of those roles and we play those in our lives and then also as adults. Mostly too, in coming out of an alcoholic or dysfunctional family, the dysfunction that you bring into the next generation is your communication skills or lack thereof. That’s a lot about what you need to learn as to how to communicate with other people.
Your book must be so helpful to people. The title of your second book is called “Grandma, What Is A Soul?” What age group is this book meant for and please tell us about it?
It’s probably for six to adulthood because my grandson was six when he said in the car one day, “Grandma, I don’t like to talk about this very often but I didn’t want you to die.” I knew he was afraid of something. I thought, “We never talked about that. You have to be old to die and I’m not that old so I fibbed a bit. When I do die when I’m old, my soul will come back and watch over you.”
He said, “Grandma, what is a soul?” Luckily, I have a PhD in Spiritual Psychology so I could tell him what a soul was. We had the whole conversation, which is what the children’s part is, and then there’s a part for parents about what is a soul. You read that first part and the story before you decide if you are going to read it to your kids. It could be for any age because some kids are more precocious than others. Kids start worrying about death around 5 or 6 and who are they going to lose.
When you talk about the soul, can any person from any religion access this book? It’s not meant with a Christian perspective, is it?
Charles Tart is a very famous person. Jungian is a transpersonal psychology. He writes deep books and he said that my premise was the same as some of his scientific books, but it comes from a spiritualist perspective, which is universal. You believe in life after death and love continues and we are happier when we know that love continues.
If there's life after death, then love continues. We're happier when we know that love continues. Click To Tweet
I can state that from my own life. It’s so wise. Now the new book you have is called Psychology of the Soul and the Paranormal, which sounds fascinating. Tell our readers all about that and where will they be able to find it in addition to where can they find your other two books.
The other two are on Amazon at the moment, and this one will be on Amazon at the end of September 2019. It teaches you how to harness the deeper levels of consciousness in daily life. It describes various kinds of paranormal experiences that have been widely reported. People have these experiences and then they don’t tell anybody because they are afraid that it would indicate mental illness. I describe that in the book also.
The difference between mental illness and a spiritual experience is that a person who is mentally ill and has some hallucinations cannot stay with the same story over and over again. They are very grandiose about, “I talked to Christer. I did this.” They make no sense usually but somebody who’s had a spiritual experience is humbled by the experience and it’s brought some peace to their life.
Even if it doesn’t do that right away, it does eventually when they understand what it means. All of that is described, and then I explain the nervous system with the vagus nerve coming from a clairvoyant spiritual perspective. As I said, we have this spiritual body inside our physical body. People throughout centuries have left their bodies and come back in. I talk about some of those people and what they wanted you to know and be able to leave their bodies. Some of them left their body and came back on Sunday afternoon. Robert Monroe did that for years, and it wasn’t anything spiritual. He liked leaving his body. You need to be able to understand that this has been going on for a long time and what it has to do with you.
Maybe you will never leave your body or get intuition at the back of your neck sometimes like Oprah who says on one of her Super Soul Sunday shows, “How come I get good ideas when I’m in the shower?” She asks this spiritual expert and he says, “I don’t know.” She said, “Somebody says it’s because the hot water hits the back of my neck.” I’m sitting in the family room saying, “It hit your vagus nerve. If it hits your vagus nerve, that’s how you get intuition.” It’s something simple like that. The little voice that you need to listen to more and more in order to be more spiritual is explained in there too.
It sounds like you should send Oprah a copy of your book. It will help her to understand and to get the answer to her question.
I would love to send Oprah. If somebody sends me her address, I will send it to her.
Perhaps in our audience, there is someone who can reach out and do that, which would be great. If you get on IreneWeinberg.com, you could get onto Hello@IreneWeinberg.com and send us the information. We would be very welcoming to it. Thank you and I will pass it along to Karen. Of all people in the world, why do you think it is important to heal and evolve?
I think that we came into this world to live the life we were given. Whether we like our life or not, and we feel like we were cheated, we are to live it. That is the purpose. It’s to develop your soul in the life you have. I have found that I have had to do that by learning how to be more positive. Every day, if it’s not a good day, I decide it’s going to be a better day with a positive attitude.
We came into this world to live life. Click To Tweet
To know that no matter what is happening at the moment, I am safe. I am safe here and there are some people that I have developed in life that I can trust and that can help me and support me. If you don’t have that, then that is going to be your job. If you come from an alcoholic home, you can join Al-Anon, which are people who get together and learn how to handle the alcoholic. I would highly recommend that.
Get yourself out, get some energy, and don’t isolate because that’s one problem with the vagus nerve. People who have problems with this nerve do not go out socially the way they should. That equals mental illness when you stay home and isolate because you can’t handle other people. I try to keep in my life only people who are positive and want to help me celebrate my life.
Every single one of us on this planet has a life situation we were given that is something we are supposed to heal to evolve to another level within this life. Is that right?
Mine was my mother was married to an alcoholic and I married and divorced an alcoholic but she never divorced him. I had to figure it out. One day, he said to me, “We are having a fight. I want to tell you something, but if you tell anybody this, I will deny it.” I could tell he was right there in the conversation for a change.
I said, “What?” He said, “You, I can live without, but alcohol, I can’t.” I thought, That’s what I have been afraid of all this time. He valued alcohol over me.” That’s what alcoholics do. They value alcohol over you. Anyway, that was part of my development that I had to get out. I didn’t know how I was going to do that and still raise two daughters that I had left to know.
Look what it led to with all the people that you are helping and how you have evolved and passed it forward. That’s fantastic.
You know that. We never know our possibilities until we get out there and half of life is showing up.
I know our readers want to find out more about your books and you. What is the best way for them to reach you? You have three websites, right?
I do. KarenHerrick.com and then SpiritualExperiences.info, which has a lot of articles about all different types of spiritual experiences if you want to know about them. Also, GrandmaWhatIsASoul.com.
“Grandma, What Is A Soul?” by Rev. Karen E. Herrick Ph.D.
What is your tip on finding joy in life?
You have to show up every day. Also, I want to give them my email because I type over 100 words a minute and I will answer their questions. That’s Karen@KarenHerrick.com.
You are saying show up every day.
Half a life is showing up somewhere. There used to be a cartoon of an adult child and an alcoholic solving a problem, and it was somebody under the blanket. If you are at home under the blanket, nobody is going to come. We are always waiting for the presence of someone to come to us. We have to go out and find people who are going to help and support us.
I want to thank you so much. I’m looking forward to reading your book the Psychology of the Soul and the Paranormal. Here’s a reminder to everyone. Make sure to follow us on social at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Karen and I both know for sure that life continues after death. Therefore, as I like to say, surely to be continued. Many blessings and bye for now.
Guest’s Links:
- Karen Herrick’s Website
- Karen Herrick’s books: You’re Not Finished Yet, “Grandma, What Is A Soul?”, and Psychology of the Soul and the Paranormal
- CE You! Website
- Stephen W. Porges’ The Polyvagal Theory referenced in this episode
- Al-Anon Website
- Spiritual Experiences Website
- Karen Herrick’s Email Address
Host’s Links:
- Hello@IreneWeinberg.com
- @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram
- Irene Weinberg on Facebook
- Irene Weinberg on Twitter
"Irene is so inquisitive and such a gracious host."
