Healing Challenge 2022

Dr. Singleton and Dr. Bakare set the record straight on relationships.

Love is not a good hiding place for pain. Dr. Bakari and Dr. Singleton explain why a relationship will not save you.

Relationships and love don't always last forever. Dr. Bakari and Dr. Singleton tell you how to know when to let go and how to let go.

The Three Cs of Love: Children, Career, and Companionship are addressed by Dr. Singleton and Dr. Bakari, the Empowerment Expert.

Sexual pleasure can significantly increase relationship satisfaction and wellness. Yet, a 2015 online survey of more than 1000 women using the “Healthy Women / Lippe Taylor Women's Health Behavior Index” confirmed ongoing concerns about the female sexual experience.According to survey results, 60% of women want more sex, although only 27% of women orgasm with every intercourse engagement—the rate increases to 34% with oral sex. Overall, women's orgasm rate is 69%, compared to 95% for men. Sadly, the lack of sexual satisfaction is a cultural norm embedded within a system that emphasizes a particular power structure that only entitles men to orgasm.The female orgasm is optional even though the female body is particularly designed for orgasm, as the clitoris has no other function. Women have fought robustly to remove power structures that restrict success. Yet, research reveals that women compromise their body autonomy to fulfill the sexual “needs” of their partners, including agreeing to ‘threesomes,' watching pornography at the partner's request, and performing as bisexual at parties.Women also rationalize coercive sexual experiences. However, normalizing sex without orgasm is the most common compromise of body autonomy. The single-orgasm sexual experience, in which only the male has an orgasm, is oppressive.

So many adults have suffered from childhood trauma. Being a child did not feel safe, and they had to grow up quickly. As adults, they remain distant from their inner child. Still, the inner child is always looking out through the peephole of your heart, the window of your survivor's eyes, and the crack in your pain. Just because you can't see in doesn't mean they can't see out. The inner child sees what you are committed to, feels what you use as a distraction, and hears every thought. Time is always ticking.The field of research called “adverse childhood experiences” indicates ten common childhood experiences that, combined, negatively affect the adult experience. Those experiences include non-contact experiences of the child, such as single parenting, mental disturbances, imprisonment, domestic violence, and direct physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. The more adverse experiences an adult endures during childhood, the more likely they are to have heavy mental and physical health burdens. Adults exposed to four or more adverse childhood experiences have considerably more difficulties than those with less than four. Those with four or more are far more likely to have severe health conditions, higher than average mental health visits each year, and an increase in broken relationships.The inner child has a place in our adult lives. Becoming childlike (not childish) is the most adult thing we can do on the healing journey. People who are childlike laugh more, are more active, risk more, and are more carefree. They are more at ease with uncertainty. Think about a skill or talent you developed in childhood. That talent is connected to your inner child. Maybe it's time to pick it back up. It may help you become conscious of your inner child.

Being an artist gives a writer much more freedom and creativity than reporting. Writing about feelings requires the brain to return to memories. Creating poetry about a feeling can take the writer anywhere. The same is true if the writer starts with the memory. Writing about a memory requires the brain to associate a feeling with the memory. A poem about a memory can take the writer anywhere. They can move into the future or farther back in time before the triggering event. A poem can move the writer entirely away from the event. One poem can offer all three of those spaces. People often ask performance poets why they write such sad poems, or worse, offer pity for our experience. Any poet will give the same response. By the time we perform a poem, the healing has begun, no matter how much emotion we display in the delivery. Sharing poetry deepens the cathartic release. Poets validate themselves by performing, no matter how the audience responds. We leave grief, shame, and self-doubt on the stage. We flaunt the power that we find through picking up the pen. No one shares their journal. The feelings stay caught up between pages for the writer to return to time and time again. As an artist, the next poem is always waiting to carry you beyond the words. We can choose to return to a poem, update it, or share it. So many options exist.

Good feelings are easy to create in new relationships. Being the center of attention, getting exposed to new activities, and sharing details of your life with someone who listens will draw any two people together. You believe you are paying attention to the other person, but you are only paying attention to how that person is making you feel. You rely on the person for an inner sense of significance. From that point on, your behaviors in the relationship become unconsciously manipulative. You may create conflict with the person, so their decision to remain with you feeds your need for significance. Conflict is a state of arousal that some couples substitute for intimacy. Becoming passive in the relationship so that the person is not temptedto leave is the path of least resistance. Sometimes helplessness or neediness is used to guilt the person into remaining. Each of these patterns is a manipulation based on fear and produces unhealthy relationships. Conflict is a state of arousal that some couples substitute for intimacy. Becoming passive in the relationship so that the person is not tempted to leave is the path of least resistance. Sometimes helplessness or neediness is used to guilt the person into remaining. Each of these patterns is a manipulation based on fear and produces unhealthy relationships. Unhealthy relationships require one or both partners to live small. Unhealthy attachment is signified by insecurity and uncertainty in relationships. There is a desire for constant affirmation. While you may get plenty of it in the beginning, relationships settle, and instead of trust and safety forming, fear of abandonment grows.

Many people have wondered if meditation would improve their lives. Among other things, meditation can be described as a healthy habit, fad, religious practice, or escape from reality. But could meditation be right for you? The biggest challenge is getting started and finding a lifelong meditation practice is a process of trial and error.

Forgiveness is an evolutionary phenomenon necessary for building and sustaining a community. Minimizing conflict preserves cooperation so that groups can achieve goals. Noticeably, people practice forgiveness more readily among loved ones and withhold forgiveness from people they have no desire to be in relationships with. Family members and people who share a loving relationship are drawn to share physical and emotional space. Forgiveness allows them to do so in the face of harm. Forgiveness has evolutionary priorities. Misbehaved children, neglectful parents, careless spouses, and demanding grandparents are frequent beneficiaries of forgiveness. Because forgiveness is extended, children can be raised in low-conflict environments, weddings can be executed smoothly, and family reunions can be a joyful experience. Perhaps this evolutionary pull toward forgiveness makes unforgiveness seem radical.

What's more important than safety? Our mind is conditioned to believe, “Nothing is more important than safety.” If you have experienced trauma, safety feels especially paramount. But when safety is the goal, we miss out on wholistic wellness. Every human being has needs. We need nutrition to stay alive and we are also social creatures with emotional needs. From the moment we are born and throughout our lifespan, our emotional needs change. Our needs don't change randomly; they change developmentally. Just like there is a cycle of physical growth, there is a cycle of emotional development.

In the absence of trauma, familiarity helps us develop healthy patterns for negotiating the world. However, familiarity keeps survivors stuck in dysfunctional cycles. It causes us to choose the demons we know over the goddesses we find strange. Ultimately, we maintain tradition because of familiarity, not practicality. The more times any event or experience happens, our brain will likely code it as “normal.” The brain codes “normal” according to the reality of the environment, not according to right and wrong. Generally, when a victim cannot stop abuse, the brain will habituate to the abuse to survive, making it “normal.” Adult who experienced severe adverse childhood experiences have a long history of normalizing pain, both internal and external. Attempts at new behavior compete with decades of the familiar.

Human beings are social creatures that invest in social “norms.” These become informal rules of human behavior, used to connect us. When behavior is consistent, predictable, and controllable, we feel stable and resilient. Social norms support social evolution. But, social norms are not a moral compass, and individuals come with inherent variances.

As we develop trust with ourselves, we learn to create boundaries and value the boundaries of others. We allow for disappointment in relationships and use healthy communication to resolve conflict. When all goes well during childhood development, we use relationships to express joy, not create it. On the other hand, we enter the school of hard knocks when, as adults, we unconsciously rely on relationships to fill in the gaps of our childhood emotional needs. Rather than experiencing people authentically, we try to predict who can fulfill particular roles for us, and relationships end before they begin. This episode teaches you how to build optimal satisfaction relationships.

An apology is a valuable tool. Some people never apologize and this episode tells you why. But you may be the person who never stops apologizing even when you haven't done wrong. Find out how to stop that behavior. The episode is all about apologies, why, how, and when to offer them as an expression of your humanity.

Self-care is self-centered and necessary.

Looking at how we parent and how we were parented influences society, not just our family wounds. Childhood misinformation about ourselves, our world, and our relationships can last us a lifetime and have a deep impact on who we become. So, we should at least take a look at how we were parented. This episode tells us what to look for.

Generational wounds are the interference of ancestral experiences in our lives. When harm is unacknowledged unaddressed or unhealed, response to it keeps showing up in the next generation, even if the harm is no longer present. The response will show up until an offspring heals it, even if it takes 1000 years. Any maltreatment can leave generational wounds. Any group of people who have been systematically oppressed leave generational wounds in the family tree. Any individual who has experienced trauma can pass down generational wounds. We can pass down emotional wounds just as we can pass down disease.

Dr. Rosenna Bakari and Co-host, Dr. Stephanie Singleton discuss what the Healing Challenge 2022 is about. It is based on the best-seller, "The Healing Journey: Relationships and Wellness Guide" by Dr. Bakari. The hosts also discuss how the challenge came about and how participants will benefit.