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Are You Trying to Get Another Person to Change?
AND are you convinced that he or she
WILL change IF . . .
. . . you keep trying harder?
. . . you say exactly the right words?
. . . you give the other person enough money?
. . . you expend enough energy?
. . . you wait long enough?
. . . you can find someone else who can force the person to change?
In other words, you want the other person to be different than he or she is right now.
But you're going nowhere. |
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What IS The Best Way to Improve a Relationship?
How can you move beyond an issue, or several issues, that lie between you and another person?
How can you repair a stressful relationship with your adult child, parent, sibling, extended family member, or friend?
How can you release the heavy burden you carry of disappointment and guilt and regrets you have over your relationship?
How can you let go of what you don’t need from the past and leave only those essentials that can help you find your way to peace of mind and a better relationship? |
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I Believe the Answer is Courage, Which I Am Sure You Have
 I am Arlene Harder and I think I have the answer to those questions, or at least an important part of the answer. As a parent of four children, wife for more than fifty years, a marriage and family therapist, an author of three books, a workshop leader, and the creator of four websites, I’ve given much thought to the question of how you can change a relationship.
The answers I’ve learned have come from both my clients and what I have learned from dealing with the pain of a very strained relationship with my son. I blamed myself. I believed that everything would have been fine if only I had done a better job of raising him. Then, I was sure that everything would be fine if only I could get him to change. Of course, that didn’t work.
Very gradually, however, I began to see that for both myself and my clients that the most direct path to healing any relationship runs through the heart and soul of the person who has the most motivation to change.
When that motivation combines with the courage, you are on your way to healing, improving, strengthening any relationship. You see,
 It takes courage to sort through the complexity of a difficult relationship and discover what you can do to make it better.
It takes courage to shift your focus from insisting that the other person must first change before your heart can heal.
It takes courage to recognize that the only person you can change is yourself.
It takes courage to make any relationship work well.
 Remember that while relationships require courage to change, you already have courage because you've actively searched for information on healing, which has brought you to this page.
Courage is contagious! Act on your courage. Enrich your life and you will enrich your relationships. |
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 Discover a Book That Uses Your Courage to Go Beneath the Surface of Discord and Create a Foundation for Healthy Relationships
After I wrote Letting Go of Our Adult Children: When What We Do is Never Enough, I wanted to continue giving people the best of what I have learned about improving relationships.
So I began work with Jane Toler, Ph.D., from Dallas, TX, to create a training program for therapists who want to work with parents who have trouble with their grown children. I called that project "Better Tomorrows," because after learning how to relate better to their children, they will have better tomorrows.
Finally, I pulled everything together for those who are not professionals and wrote Healing Relationships is an Inside Job: When the Connection Between You and Another Person is Strained or Broken. It brings the best of what I have learned from both my own experience and that of my clients and readers.
I am convinced that the book will help you realize that when you apply your courage to solving the difficulties of a relationship, you will discover that you, and your relationship, are truly healed "from the inside out."
You will also see that, as you are relieved of the painful burden you have been carrying of a strained or broken relationship, all your relationships become richer and more satisfying.
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 "Arlene Harder has been helping people learn, grow and heal for over 30 years. Healing Relationships is an Inside Job takes her work to an even higher level, because relationships are central to health and quality of life. She shows us simple (not easy but simple) ways to transform even severely damaged relationships. This book will help readers heal their deepest interpersonal wounds and live a more joyful life."
David Spero, RN, author of The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing health when you have a chronic illness and Diabetes: Sugar-coated Crisis |
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 "Healing Relationships is an Inside Job shows you how to positively restructure your relationships by separating your ego from your true self. This book offers comprehensive steps to help you understand yourself, deal with your emotions, forgive yourself and others, and resolve difficult relationship challenges."
Marci Shimoff, NY Times bestselling author, Love for No Reason and Happy for No Reason |
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When we are struggling with a painful relationship, it is a great relief to know that there are those who have been there before us and have successfully resolved their difficulties. That is why one of the strengths of Healing Relationships is an Inside Job is that Arlene Harder shares her struggles and triumphs. She has been able to turn her hard-won experience into an easy-to-follow path to letting go of old wounds that motivates the reader to forge a new future of hope and resolution.
J.M., Parent of an adult child |
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"Arlene has written a book that is more than just another self-help book. It is a book born of the lessons of experience, and forged in the crucible of the author's personal growth. I find it very readable, and it is very insightful - you cannot change others; you only can change yourself. The exercises are nicely conceived, and they progress at a manageable pace. One is not led to try to change too much all at one time, but gradually, through a series of self-discoveries. Personal change is hard work, but this book motivates and reassures one as it leads one through the process.
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Kent Van Cleave, Jr., Ph.D.,
Online Instructor, AIU |
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Turn Courage, Insight and Intention Into Action
You can read a dozen books that suggest ways you can change a relationship.
You can listen to two dozen speakers on how you should try to view your situation differently.
However, insight and intention need to turn into action in order for healing of a relationship to occur.
That is why an exercise reinforces the lesson of each of the nine chapters in Healing Relationships is an Inside Job.
Also, the Appendix has two additional, powerful exercises to build your skills in repairing a relationship. |
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An Excerpt From An Experiential Exercise In Chapter One:
In addition to other suggestions for setting the stage for healing relationships, this first chapter notes that, "A good way to begin the healing of a relationship is to look at the story you tell about a problem that has come between you and another person."
That is why the exercise for this chapter asks you to write the story about your relationship the way you usually tell it.
Express your deepest feelings and why you feel that way. Include negative emotions like fear, hurt, anger, jealousy, resentment, guilt, regrets, hate or extreme dislike, and perhaps a sense of betrayal if you feel that way. Include positive feelings as well.
Don't plan to share your writing, for that will inhibit your narrative. And since you won't be sharing it, you can be freer to explore the depth of your experience and throw away the writing you don't want to keep.
If you were to do this exercise right now, what would you write on the following lines?
Title of the Story About My Relationship
Title of Chapter on When, Where and How My Story Began
Title of Chapter on What is Happening in My Story Today
Title of Chapter on What Will Happen in My Story If I Don't Change |
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 "The need to make close relationships more fulfilling is truly an inside job, a concept that is sorely needed and ignored by many self-help books. With warmth and compassion, the author of Healing Relationships is an Inside Job shares her wisdom for an audience hungry for new and solid ways to heal the rifts that are inevitable in any close relationship. She gently guides readers along a path to healing that will yield invaluable results, and I am recommending it all my clients."
Mark Sichel, LCSW, Author of Healing From Family Rifts: Ten Steps to Finding Peace |
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"In her new book, Healing Relationships is an Inside Job, Arlene Harder masterfully guides us in understanding how our brains create stories as a way to understand ourselves and our relationships. She notes that retelling constructive and nurturing stories brings joy to our lives. Repeating destructive stories zaps our emotional energy and that of our friends and family. By the end of the book we will have a new story to tell that releases us from pain and misunderstanding."
Sandra Dye, Psychotherapist, Parent Training, One Step Ahead Parenting |
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An Excerpt From An Experiential Exercise In Chapter Six:
Most of us remain stuck in our conflicts because we don't know how to let go of our resentments. We don't know how to let go of our regrets. We don't know how to forgive ourselves. We don't know how to forgive the other person.
With some very specific and powerful techniques, this chapter describes the steps you can take to move beyond regrets, resentments, anger, blame, and guilt.
The exercise in this chapter takes you step-by-step through three phases of letting go of regrets, reinforcing the fact that:
While holding in your mind a powerful image of what the future COULD be, you cannot also—at that same moment—hold images of what MIGHT have been!
Imagine how you could move through these steps to a better tomorrow:
Get Ready . . . .
Accept that things are the way they are.
Practice letting go of something small.
Acknowledge the role you played, though unintentional, in the failure of your dreams.
Forgive yourself and others.
Get Set . . . .
Find the lesson buried in regrets of the past.
Decide why you want to let go of your regret
Choose a symbol or picture that represents the burden of your past
GO . . . .
Create a piece of paper, or a strong mental image, that represents your regret.
Plan a ceremony in which you will get rid of the paper, or release the image.
Acknowledge your readiness to let go.
Say good-bye.
Embrace your freedom.
Welcome the future with a new and powerful piece of paper. |
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 "Arlene Harder uses her personal experience, wrapped in her expertise as a therapist, to show readers how relationships which had seemed to be dead-ends can actually be transformed. Her exercises are extremely user-friendly, practical and powerful. Having done a considerable amount of self-reflective work, I wondered how this book might help me. After working through a few of the exercises, I saw on a much deeper level that those relationships which once caused me pain are some of the greatest gifts to me in life. Thank you, Arlene."
Shannon White, author of How Was School Today? Fine, pastor, speaker, TV news journalist |
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 "Arlene Harder's book Healing Relationships Is An Inside Job is a guide for understanding why deep, lasting change in ourselves is key to transformation in relationships and a "how-to" manual for taking manageable, conscious steps toward making it happen. I highly recommend Arlene Harder's book with its user-friendly experiential exercises that engage the creative mind in wonderful, empowering, change-promoting ways. I have used some of the book's exercises with clients facing intense conflicts and found them immediately useful and effective."
Jude-Treder Wolff, LCSW, Performer, Speaker, Psychotherapist and Writer |
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 "When you are ready to release the Velcro that holds you firmly in the grip of old relationship patterns, old belief systems, old pain of rejection and abandonment, and all that which is so intense, take Arlene Harder's book and embrace it and make it one of your best friends.
Ivajoy Draper, PhD, Psychotherapist, Hypnotist |
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 "Arlene Harder does a wonderful job in Healing Relationships is an Inside Job using stories and metaphors to teach us how to take personal responsibility for the relationships in our lives. The principles and healing exercises in her book will transform your life and your relationships. I use them quite often in my therapy practice with great success."
Mary Einarsen, Psychotherapist |
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It Costs Very Little To Change Your Relationship From the Inside Out
What is an improved relationship worth to you?
What would you be willing to pay to create a healthy relationship and make the pain of stress and estrangment go away?
Does $24 sound like a good investment in your relationship?
Wouldn't it sound even better if you received two bonuses worth $30? That would give you $54 of value for only $24!
If you purchase Healing Relationships is an Inside Job, with excellent information and powerful exercises, you will also receive MP3 downloads for two excellent imagery exercises:
Listening to Your Inner Advisor
This guided imagery exercise can help you discover answers to problems from a perspective you may never have thought of before
Removing the Mask That Hides Your True Self
This guided imagery exercise leads you to an appreciation of who you are at your core, where you can not only build a stronger sense of self, but you can build healthier relationships
Note 1: Your purchase is 100% GUARANTEED
Note 2: If YOU LIVE OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES AND WANT TO PURCHASE A PRINT COPY, please contact me. |
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Ordering the book — AND the bonus of two audio exercises — is very easy.
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Yes,
I want to order
Healing Relationships
is an Inside Job E-BOOK
I understand I will receive
a PDF format of approximately
220 pages. I will also receive a download of two MP3 audio exercises.
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Yes,
I want to order
Healing Relationships
is an Inside Job PRINT BOOK
I understand I will receive
a print book. I will also receive a download of two MP3 audio exercises. The total price is $29.00. This includes the book's price of $24.00, plus $5.00 shipping.
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© Copyright 2008, 2011, Arlene
Harder, MA, MFT |
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