Friday, October 22, 2010

Live Conversation with Dr. Beth

People have asked me if there was any way to ask follow up questions after listening to my Relationships 101 conversations on webtalkradio.net.

Because you decide when to listen and there is not a specific day and time I was reluctant to try to have a live call in portion with my show.

Because of you, the listener's interest, I am goingto try this on a test basis I have created a venue where you can call and engage with me live to address issues and answer questions you may have about life, relationships, family, grief theoretical concepts or other emotional concerns.

I invite you to join me for a follow-up to these conversations this Thursday evening October 28, 2020, at 8:00 Eastern 7:00 Central 6:00 Mountain 5:00 Pacific called “Live with Dr. Beth.”

If you would like to attend, please send an e-mail to me at drbetherickson@aol.com.

Put “Talk to Dr. Beth” in the subject line, and we’ll send you the call-in information.

If you would like me to specifically talk with you about a specific issue send me the question in your response email. When I know you are on the call as soon as a natural break occurs I will start discussing with you the issue you provided to me.

I truly hope you can join me. Hope to see you there.

Please feel free to invite others to join these conversations. It is not necessary to be on my mailing list to call in. If you know of a family member or friend who is up against some issue please do invite them to call in.

Just forward a copy of this email to them. I will not have a specific topic but will engage with callers to address their issue regardless of where that takes the conversation.

Dedicated to your health and happiness.

Dr. Beth

What Are Your Biggest Regrets?

Next month, I will be doing an interview on “Relationships 101” on the topic of regrets. A surprisingly large number of people – 30, to be exact - responded to a query I recently posted asking people what are their regrets. That floored me. In fact, I almost didn’t post that query, thinking I’d probably get only a handful of people responding. Instead, I got a large outpouring of people’s heartfelt answers. It almost felt to me as if I were reading people’s confessions.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We all have regrets of one kind or another. Maybe we still remember the time we didn’t help someone when we could have. Or when we were curt with a Customer Service representative. Or maybe when we betrayed ourselves by not pursuing our own dreams in the service of someone else’s vision of what our life should be like.

What follows is a list of some of those regrets. See if you recognize yourself in any of them.

• Being banished from the family because of the mistakes I’ve made in my life.
• Letting my Mother’s ideas for me stand in my way.
• Not pursuing my dream of being a drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
• Marrying the wrong person and staying too long.
• Trusting the wrong person who then betrayed my trust.
• Being overly concerned about what others thought of me.
• Doing drugs.
• Neglecting my children until it was too late.
• Not sticking with my goals, dreams, and passions.
• Letting fear rule my life.
• Not going far enough with my education.
• Surviving a life-threatening illness and then spending the next 25 years believing I didn’t deserve to survive.
• Being jealous of my little sister and coming to grips with that too late to make amends.
• Trying to handle my son’s drug addiction on my own.
• Not doing all I could to help workers at Ground Zero after 9/11, which is my biggest personal failing.
• Not being more attentive to a parent before s/he died.
• Not believing in myself.
• Doing too much too young and failing in the process.
• Switching my kids from Catholic schools to public schools.

The task for each of them now is to find a way to understand and to forgive themselves and others who they believe wronged them.

And that’s the hard part.