Hello, Tamara Johnson here!
This is just to remind you that my new podcast http://www.GetOutoftheMud.com begins in just two days!
I am excited about teaching you the tools you need to Be Your Own Therapist and deal effectively with every problem that comes up for you as a busy, healthy woman.
This Wednesday, I'll be talking about the problems I see with the Mental Health system as it is available today and how I plan to circumvent some of these problems with my internet radio show. Basic emotional health is a right that should be available to everyone. I'm doing something to make that happen. Join me, won't you?
-By the way, if you can't be there on Wednesday night, the show will be available afterward. Download it to your mp3 player or your ipod and listen whenever it's convenient for you! Ah -- the magic of modern technology!

Watch this video to see why it is important to join Tamara on Wednesday night for her discussion of The Purpose of Feelings.

Hello, I'm Tamara Johnson and I want to invite you to join me on Wednesday evening November 14 at 6pm PST - that's two days from today - at http://www.GetOutoftheMud.com when I'll be discussing why we have feelings, how to figure out what our feelings are and how interpret them. I'll be giving you a practice exercise that will assist you in keeping regular contact with your feelings so that you can learn to balance between thoughts and feelings toward a more happy, fulfilled life.
See you Wednesday night!

Hi, This is Tamara Johnson at www.GetOutoftheMud.com with your Weekly Quote and Assignment.

Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see.
- Bernard Baruch

Bernard Baruch has it right when he says that we must know ourselves in order to see the world clearly. The difficulty is that it is not always easy to know where our blind spots are unless we keep consistent contact with ourselves - it must be a continuous effort. To know ourselves, we must remember that we will have thought and feeling responses to every event we experience in our lives. Some of those events will cause us to experience feelings that are uncomfortable. It is during those moments of discomfort that we must remain courageous enough to allow ourselves to experience, explore and express our thoughts and feelings in a way that acquaints us more and more intimately with our own responses, feelings and beliefs. The better we know ourselves, the more easily we can respond to the world without out-of-proportion reactions. The more our responses remain in proportion with reality, the better we become at seeing the world clearly.

Your challenge for this week: Notice your personal reactions within your relationships. If something bothers you, try to spend some time understanding your own reactions. If you are typically prone to quick responses, slow down and take some extra time to evaluate your internal reaction to the situation before saying anything to the other person. If you are typically prone to withdrawing, explore that part of yourself that would rather not engage in the conflict. See if you can figure out where that comes from and take some action to deal with your concern directly rather than withdrawing.

Remember to tune in to my podcast at GetOutoftheMud.com two days from now, Wednesday, November 21 to hear my conversation with Crista Salvatore about the process of Knowing and Loving who we are as women! This is Tamara Johnson. Thanks for listening!

Crista Salvatore is a Certified Coach who specializes in empowering individuals to create fulfilling lives by achieving exceptional results in whatever they choose to do. As a coach, she is noted for her ability to help professionals focus their values and beliefs to helping them achieve greater clarity in meeting their day-to-day challenges. From there, she goes on to teach them how to leverage their strengths so that they may be better able to reach their maximum potential.

She is passionate in teaching others to understand themselves, welcome their gifts and speak their truth in order to thrive in their professional and personal lives. Through stories, quotes, and humor her focus is lighten up “self-discovery”. Her mission is to help people connect with themselves and live a life of authenticity.

Crista can be contacted for training and development and professional speaker services through her profile at www.WomenForHire.com.

Hello, Tamara Johnson here!
Thank you so much for your interest in The Get Out of the Mud Show! I am delighted about being able to offer you effective tools for self-growth and healing.

Since my journey with this project is just beginning, there are things I'm learning along the way and one of my first lessons is that when I allow my listeners to hear a preview of an interview, I need to also include a way for them to hear the entire conversation!

So, here is how it's done! Just give me your name and e-mail address and I'll send you my complete conversation with Crista as well as all of the interviews I have scheduled in the future!

Thanks for being here with me and thanks for your support and patience while I learn!
All My Love,
Tamara Johnson

A funny thing happened to me when I finished my training as a Marriage and Family Therapist. The day I woke up as a graduated, licensed therapist, my world changed -- not in the way you might think! In a single day, I went from your average, run-of-the-mill friend, daughter, sister, wife to someone who had X-RAY vision! I'm not kidding!!! People who would talk to me before I finished school suddenly ran away, as if I had super-human powers! I think they actually thought that I could SEE their underwear! It was actually such a problem for me that after my divorce (yes, therapists do get divorces), I actually told guys who potentially wanted to date me a "little-white-lie" when they asked: "So what do you do?" I said, "Well, uh. I'm a consultant!" The conversation usually didn't continue along the lines of my profession after that because I'm sure they thought I was in some kind of sales. Good enough!

So I've been thinking about this whole idea lately and I've already suggested to you that I have some real problems with the mental health profession as I've seen it. One of those problems is that mental health professionals put themselves up on a super-human pedestal -- and so do their clients. The therapist is the near-perfect, super-human sage with infallible advice. WRONG!! My response to that is to jump down and show you just how very human I am. Yes, my friends! I'm going to show you MY underwear!! (No, not literally!!!!)

Self-love is not opposed to the love of other people. You cannot really love yourself and do yourself a favor without doing people a favor, and vise versa.
- Karl A. Menninger

Perhaps, when women hear the word “self-love,” we think the concept is the same as self-ish. I believe there is a significant difference between the two, however. The problem with the perception that there is no difference between self-love and self-ish is that it sets us up to give and give and give until we’ve depleted ourselves. Then, once we’re depleted, there is nothing left to give. Some of us keep giving even then! And what we give at that point fulfills no one!

If I love myself and show enough concern for my own well-being, I will remain committed enough to make sure that my own “cup” is always full. Then from a full cup, the quality of my giving enriches the lives of those to whom I give.

How can I call self-love or self-care self-ish if I do it in the service of giving more and giving better to the people I love?

This week's assignment is a preview of how the Weekly Quote and Assignments work. If you would like to recieve the Weekly Assignments associated with the Weekly Quote and Assignment feature of The Get Out of the Mud Show, simply enter your name and e-mail address below! (P.S. I HATE spam as much as you do and will NEVER spam you!)

On this Wednesday’s podcast, I’ll be talking about the recent Wildfires in Southern California and provide some education about how we respond to crisis and how to cope emotionally when things happen in our lives that are unexpected and overwhelming.

I look forward to seeing you Wednesday night! This is Tamara Johnson at www.GetOutoftheMud.com

Hello. I am Tamara Johnson, your host at The Get Out of the Mud Show. Thank you for joining me.

Tonight, I want to talk to you about how we deal with crisis. I chose this topic today because the recent California Wildfires remind me that we have had a series of crisis in our country over the past six years that have impacted many, many lives. The first major crisis occurred on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people died in New York City, Virginia and Pennsylvania at the hands of terrorists. Many Americans still suffer serious health consequences and even death because of their rescue efforts related to the terrorist attacks. Those continuing casualites of 9/11 were documented by Allan Tannenbaum at www.sohoblues.com/9-11-Still-Killing.html. Two years later, in October of 2003, Wildfires in California destroyed over 3,600 homes. After another two years, in August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina devistated Louisiana and the Mississippi Coast, including parts of Alabama, destroying approximately 275,000 homes and taking at least 1,800 lives. And most recently, 1,300 more residents of Southern California lost their homes in October due to the fires.

These large-scale diseasters have touched many of our lives and leave lasting emotional, mental and financial difficulties in their wake. If we have not been directly impacted, we know and care about someone who has. But, in addition to large-scale diseasters like these many of us also experience personal crises as part of our day-to-day experience. Those crises come in the forms of a devistating health diagnosis such as Cancer or AIDs, divorce, foreclosure on our home, death, the serious injury of a child, disability or unemployment.

Whether the crisis is a shared community loss or one that is very private, one thing is certain, crisis and the losses associated with them touch each of our lives from time to time. But because we don't expect the unexpected, these experiences take us by surprise and we can find ourselves unprepared to deal with the emotional and psychological aspects of recovering after crisis.