You can begin a better relationship now by following these steps:
Be Your Best SELF
I hope the story of your relationship is one that you enjoy sharing. If not, it’s time to create a new story, where you are the empowered hero, not a victim.
Often, looking at the half-full parts of your relationship will help change your vantage point and allow for more intimate connections.
When you learn how to bring your best SELF to your relationship now, you’ll see old patterns and habits change for the better.
You can understand the conflicting feelings you may sometimes have, you also can recognize how your family of origin has affected your perspective.
Communicate Compassionately
The more you reduce your stress by taking better care of yourself, the more positive energy you will have to share with others.
Set your intentions for the future you want, and then put your attention on watching the Universe support your goals.
You’ll become more receptive, when you remember what it is you truly want, know you deserve it, ask for what you need, be willing to receive, and stay grateful.
Empathy helps you communicate with “I messages” where you share your feelings (not your judgments), and relate from your heart.
Explore Your Options
When you decide what you truly want — instead of focusing on what you don’t want — you’ll be able to talk about everything.
You don’t need to feel “stuck” in a situation that you want to change.
As you become more of an empowered partner, you’ll make confident and clear decisions for future.
Understand Your Finances
As you feel more informed, you can decide how you want to proceed with current and future choices.
If you think a separation or divorce is a possibility, find a good mediator and attorney, but first go back and be your best SELF and create a compassionate relationship with your partner now.
Plan for your future.
As you bring your best SELF into a new and better compassionate relationship, miracles can happen.
Take your time to explore your options, feel your feelings, and share all that you can with your partner to improve your relationship.
Get a FREE CHAPTER of my award-winning book: Compassionate® Mediation for Relationships at a Crossroads: How to Add Passion to Your Marriage or Compassion to Your Divorce, CLICK HERE.
To order my book on Compassionate Mediation, click HERE.
To order my Kindle book on Compassionate Divorce™: Changing the Face of Divorce, One Heart at a Time,click HERE.
For over 20 years, as a therapist, mediator and attorney, I have worked with thousands of individuals and couples who want to improve (or leave) their relationships. My heart goes out to each one of them. Often, I wish I had been able to help them years before our first visit, because they could have avoided the pain, anger or sadness that had affected their lives.
I can only see a limited number of clients in person each week, and my hope is to reach people everywhere with a message of self love, hope, possibility and happiness.
My goal in creating this course is to share what I have been doing for decades so that people all over the world could learn the skills of Compassionate Communication. You can learn how to heal the pain from your past, let go of limiting beliefs, connect to your spiritual source and relate from your highest and best SELF.
It’s no secret that half of all first marriages end in divorce. But it may be surprising to learn that the failure rates for second and third failed marriages get even worse: 67 and 73 percent, respectively, according to a 2012 article in Psychology Today, “The High Failure Rate of Second and Third Marriages.”
But what about the statistics on married people who are “thinking” about divorce?
Researchers estimate that 1 in 3 divorced couples try to reconcile later, according to a paper written by a noted marriage scholar and therapist. Also, a significant number of divorced individuals—about half—say they wished they or their spouse had tried harder to save the marriage.
In other words, divorce is all too common, and there’s a lot of regret out there. It’s these people—the ones at a crossroads of their marriage—that represent the primary market for this book, as well as those struggling with challenges in their marriage and seeking to make their union healthier, richer, deeper.
Compassionate Mediationfor Relationships at a Crossroadswill show you how to become more conscious of your own behaviors as you better understand yourself and your partner, and create something new, together.
I’ll share with you the secrets to becoming more empathetic and considerate. You’ll finally be able to talk about every subject with clarity and courage, including finances, parenting, responsibilities, extended family, and sex. You’ll learn how to ask for and get your needs met as you lower your “walls,” change the “filters” through which you see yourself and your partner, and forgive yourself and each other. You’ll remember how to be grateful again for what you do have, and learn how to reflect the attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance you both desire.
The world needs to be a safer place for marriage and divorce. Children should be shielded from the shrapnel of their parents’ animosity. This book will offer a new paradigm for couples at a crossroads. I believe that families need not be “broken,” but can be peacefully, and respectfully, restructured.
This bookwill give individuals and couples the roadmap they need—whether they choose to put passion into saving their marriage, or compassion into getting a divorce. As a therapist, mediator, attorney, and Chopra-certified Vedic Master, I’ve successfully applied this approach to thousands of couples in my twenty years of private practice.
Couplesno longer have to spend years “on the fence” in an unhappy, dysfunctional relationship. Through this book, readers will learn how to set healthy boundaries, as well as how to ask for what they truly want and need (even if it means they can only give it to themselves!) Compassionate Mediation is about helping couples get “unstuck” and clearer so they can move forward—whether that means reviving their marriage and starting anew—or ending the relationship with compassion for both their sakes.
In-between the weeping, beauty abounds: my story
I once was where you are now, and it’s a painful, lonely place. I discussed my situation with friends, family members, and loved ones, but in the end, no one could make the decision for me. There were moments when I was clear and determined, but more often, I was trapped in a state of limbo, unable to leave but unhappy in the marriage. Because I’ve experienced divorce firsthand, I have much to share about what to do—and what NOT to do.
For years, I asked myself, “Should I stay or should I go?”
In the decade it took me to finally decide, I had spun my indecision, vacillation, and heartache into gold—the kind of gold you can only mine from experience. I took the pain of my own failings and missteps, and turned them into lessons learned and methods developed that are now helping others succeed.
As I struggled with my own marriage and emotions, I returned to school to study psychotherapy, earning my second graduate degree and becoming a licensed clinical professional counselor, as well as a mediator and attorney. Surely, I thought, as a lawyer, mediator, and therapist, I could get us through our divorce as smoothly and painlessly as possible. But trying to mediate your own divorce is like trying to deliver your own baby. Sure, it may be remotely possible, but ultimately, it’s way too difficult. I tried to make our divorce “picture perfect,” until I realized: codependence isn’t the same thing as compassion, and that yes, LOVE is the answer, but it starts with loving your SELF.
During my journey of self-discovery and healing, I became the oldest Vedic Master trained by Deepak Chopra, David Simon, and Davidji at the Chopra Center University (the trifecta of certifications). I used to say I got my Medicare card in May and my Vedic Master card in June.
I’ve always believed that our struggles are part of our dharma or purpose. We can only offer wisdom to others by healing ourselves. I’ve learned through the years that being open and vulnerable with others, that sharing from the heart is more powerful medicine than ten degrees or theories. Hard-earned wisdom has finally surpassed my education, and I want to share it all.
It’s the mistakes I made along the way that may help you the most.
This book will lead you through the steps you need to take so you can resolve your issues for the highest good of all concerned. Love is the answer, and it starts with loving your SELF.
Through the art of Compassionate Mediation, you’ll learn how to heal burdens from your past, let go of limiting beliefs, connect to your Spiritual Source, and relate from your highest and best SELF.
So instead of asking the question “Should I stay or should I go?” you’ll now consider, “How can I bring my best SELF to this relationship and transform it from the inside out?”
I am so thrilled and honored by the response I got from the IFS community about my Compassionate Mediation® Tools for Your Practice Now.
I'd really like to share with you the process that I've used for many years to help individuals and couples resolve conflict from their highest and best SELF.
You can get the Roadmap here (www.LindaKroll.com/Roadmap), and I also want to share with you some of the other tools of Compassionate Mediation — the genogram, the 5 Steps to Get What You Want and Need, the budget form, the Miracle of Empathy, talking with your children, and many more.
It's an IFS-based program that incorporates self-leadership into conflict resolution.
And with all that's going on in the world right now — with all the relationships that are being strained from either too much togetherness or too much separation, we can use these tools and impact our current clients and any future clients and teach them a new way to communicate.
Thank you so much for checking out Compassionate Mediation.
I look forward to sharing all that I can with you and having you use the tools that I've used for many years to make a difference in many people's lives.
Thanks again, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.
With everything going on in the world right now, have you wondered how you could help more people communicate?
A lot of people are stuck in quarantine and they're communicating with some very bad habits. They may be sarcastic, they may be withholding, they may be judgmental, they may be secretly harboring a hope that they're going to separate once this quarantine is over. And they don't know where to turn.
I want to offer you a process so that you can help them.
If you're a therapist, a coach, a mediator, an attorney, clergy, a counselor, I want to talk to you about Compassionate Mediation®
Compassionate Mediation will help you to help people communicate compassionately about every issue they've ever considered.
And it's different — it's different from marriage counseling, it's different from divorce counseling, and it's different from typical mediation.
Because in a typical mediation, both parties are ready to get divorced, they come and talk about a divorce, and that's all they talk about. In marriage counseling, people are often feeling that the only thing they can talk about is how to save their marriage.
But what if they've secretly thought about, what would it be like to leave? How would I feel if I could find someone new? What if we could stop the fighting and start over somewhere else? And if they are having those thoughts, they can't really invest in marriage counseling as fully as they might, if they were able to talk about everything.
Compassionate Mediation fosters a safe forum for talking about everything. They can talk about their money issues, their parenting roles, their finances, their sex life, and you will have the skillset to help them do that.
I'm offering a certification program in Compassion Mediation.
So I'm Linda Kroll, I wrote the book, Compassionate Mediation, How to Add Passion to your Marriage or Compassion to your Divorce. And I've created a six hour online video program that follows the book. So if you go to CompassionateMediationProgram.com, you can see there's a six hour video series that can help an individual or a couple truly, either add passion to their marriage or compassion to their divorce. And it follows the book and it's available now.
If you are a professional who helps individuals and couples then my certification process is for you. And what that is, it's going to be a three level process. The first one starts this fall, and it's going to be eight weeks, two hours a week, where I give you every detail of the process that I created.
And what's compassionate mediation is, is a process where you become an expert in conflict resolution, where you help foster compassionate communication, and you help an individual and couples create a relationship that they truly desire and deserve. And how do you do that? Well, the course has the A to Z training on what you need to know. So it helps you do an initial interview, so you get all the information you need to understand the dynamics, the family dynamics, the family of origin dynamics, how they relate now, what parts they get triggered with with each other, and how to help them get to their highest and best self. And then you can help them create a compassionate relationship, you will help them learn the miracle of empathy.
And there are many couples that come to my office and either one or both is ready to leave the union. But instead they start talking about the issues that have divided them. But instead of being reactive, and angry, and yelling, and withholding, instead of doing that, they learn what it means to come from their highest and best self. And what that means is they're calm, compassionate, creative, curious, connected, clear, confident, all the C words of the internal family systems, IFS therapy that I practice. That helps people really relate from their heart. So they connect to their best self, they let go of the limiting beliefs and judgments that they have about their partner for themselves. They in burdened the pain from the past, with all the backlog of feelings that they can let go of and they learn how to relate from their
So just imagine, imagine a couple or an individual who right now is sitting in quarantine, wondering what's going to happen when they get out. And you can reach them online or in person, but online as well, and teach them these skills because I'll teach them to you. I'll give you the handouts, the templates, the scripts, the meditations. All of the information you need so that you can help them get to their best self, create a compassionate relationship. And then help them explore all their options because many people don't know they have options. They think they have to stay in a situation that isn't meeting their needs, or they think they have to leave. And when they think they have leave, they're not ready so they stay stuck. But you can help them with all kinds of options.
And the options can be getting into counseling, individually or together, an option could be creating more time together, an option could be planning a separation or planning a separation within the house, or just going to their own corners and giving each other a break. So there's lots of options, including what to know if they were going to separate or what to know if they were going to get divorced. And that's all the information that I give you to give them.
So, if you're a therapist, you don't have to lose your clients to mediators or attorneys. You'll have the information to give them, to talk about every issue they need to talk about. If they're going to talk about property division or maintenance or child support, you learn from me how to have these conversations. And then you help them process all those feelings that come up from the conversations they'll have. And that can go on for weeks and months and sometimes even years. And you're there supporting them the whole time.
And if you're a coach, perhaps you don't know how to get new clients. But if you learn how to become certified in compassionate mediation, you'll have your own expertise and you'll be able to reach out to attorneys and financial planners and therapists and clergy, and let them know that you can coach people in this process. And help them facilitate either a new and better relationship or a peaceful and respectful separation and divorce. And again, you're coaching them, you're advising them with all of the information, all of the data that I give here.
And if you're a mediator, I'm a mediator, a therapist, and an attorney. And in mediation, typical mediation, you often see the couple act out their reactivity in your office. So what compassionate mediation does, it gives you a whole new skillset so that you can work with the couple and really help them heal. And I have to tell you, there are many times when one or both parties have come to my office, seeking mediation, seeking to get a divorce. And in the course of learning how to come from their highest and best self, and relate with compassion and empathy, they start to talk about their issues in ways that they hadn't for years. And they actually get to a place of understanding, compassion and forgiveness and that's when miracles happen. Then they create a new relationship together, so that's possible. And with compassionate mediation, you're given the skills to offer that besides just a one way route to divorce.
And if you're an attorney, how many times have you been in a room with your clients, where over and over again, what you find is that they are fighting and you are being a therapist. Or you get late night calls because you're dealing with their emotional reactivity. Well, what compassionate mediation does for attorneys is gives you a skillset and a vernacular and a bunch of people with whom to collaborate and refer. So that you're no longer the therapist without a skillset on helping them both have compassion for what they're feeling, compassion for what their partner's feeling, and a way to hear you and go through the process. It's much calmer and much clearer and much more connected and confident than they might've been without this process.
And if you're clergy, what you can do is you can bring spirituality back to a party. Because even if compassionate mediation leads to a new marriage, that's a wonderful opportunity. If it does lead to a separation or divorce, you have the opportunity to create with a couple, a spiritual transformation that allows them to remain friends and create a restructures family. Where they have respect and kindness and their children, if they have children, feel safe. And you can do that with the skills in compassionate mediation.
So I'd love for you to check out the certification program. In the meantime, you can let me know at lindakrolle.com/tools and sign up for the compassionate mediation introductory course and from there, the certification will start soon. So I look forward to staying connected. Let me know if you have any questions, send them to me at lindakroll.com. And I hope to see you in the certification program where we all together, can help make this world a safer, saner, and more compassionate place. Thanks for checking this out, talk to you soon. Bye for now.
During this time of stress and uncertainty, relationships can be strained to their limits.
I want to share with you my proven transformational process for relationship healing Compassionate Mediation®.
Compassionate Mediation® is NOT just for individuals or couples considering divorce.
This process works with clients who aren’t worried about leaving, but want to improve their relationship with SELF-led communication.
Any relationship that needs healing or transformation will benefit — even if only one member of the relationship learns these skills.
Sometimes the willingness to consider what an ending may look like provides the impetus to create a new beginning together.
I’ll provide you with methods, strategies, and handouts I’ve used successfully with thousands of individuals and couples for over 35 years.
As a therapist, mediator, attorney, and Chopra-Certified teacher of meditation, yoga, and Ayurveda, I have created a process that covers emotional and spiritual healing along with financial and legal information and support.
Families need not be broken, but can peacefully and respectfully restructured.
Together, we can improve relationships – and even change the face of divorce – one heart at a time.too
It's a time for love, forgiveness, compassion, and joy.
And it's also a time to “start over.”
I recently had a big disagreement with someone I love very much.
He believed he was right and I was wrong, and I believed he was wrong and I was right.
We had a standoff of cold interactions for awhile. I'm sure he wanted to unload his reasoning on me, and I wanted him to understand my position.
Instead we kept telling ourselves the same stories about each other. “He always…., she never …..”
We looked at each other through the same filters of judgment and blame and disillusionment until finally the pain of the estrangement became worse than the need to be right.
One of us reached out and requested we “start over.”
What that means is you just begin again.
You pick up in the moment. You find the best of who you are.
You relate from your heart.
You let go of all the stories you've told yourself and others about the other person.
You change the filters through which you're judging that person and stop judging, and clear your vision. And you give yourself and the other person a chance to show up as their best self and just begin again.
You can go back to the best of who you were before the argument. Or you could decide to even go forward with more love, and compassion, and forgiveness, and understanding, first of yourself and then of the other person.
Pick someone and start over today by being your best self, letting go of all your old stories, changing the old filters, and relating from your heart.
From my heart to yours, happy holidays. Happy new year. Happy everything.
Hi, it's Linda. I'm at the Botanic coming to you live cuz I wanted to talk about what kind of relationship can you start over with right now And in our Compassionate Communication Community, we talk a lot about connecting to our highest self, letting go of limiting beliefs and judgments,unburdening, pain from the past and relating from our heart.
But what does that really mean?
Instead, you could take a breath right now, and as I look around at the beautiful scenery, think about a relationshipbright now that might be strained or might be in conflict.
And see if in just a few moments you can start over.
When my children were younger and teenagers and we might be
fighting about something, one or both of them might come in in the middle of an argument crying and say, “Can we start over?”
And what that means is it doesn't matter who said what, who did what, who was right, who was wrong, what did you need to do over.
It just means start over.
Just take a breath and see if you can pick up from the last time you felt good about that person and go back there and do it again.
I have some friends and some of them aren't talking to their children, some aren't talking to their siblings, and there's a way to have boundaries without disconnecting.
Even if the other person might not be someone that you want to communicate with rightnow, you don't have to communicate with them. You can just start over.
Take a deep breath, give yourself permission not to replay the old
stories, to change the filter by which you're seeing the other person, and to allow yourself to begin to think that you can start over.
People can change,Situations can change.
And forgiveness is a gift that sets you free.
You can set boundaries. You can decide you do or don't want to be connected to that person.
But if you give yourself permission to start over right now and take off that filter through which you're judging them or yourself, and stop believing the stories you keep telling yourself, and just give yourself a clean slate, then what you can do is change the energy between the two of you.
And as you change the energy, the relationship changes.
Give it a try.
Think about somebody right now with whom you're having a convict or a strain.
Take a few deep breaths, belly breaths where you can really get to your higher self.
Drop down from your head into your heart and compassionately
communicate to yourself first.
Let yourself know that you understand you have some hard feelings or hurt feelings or misunderstood feelings. And then see if you could turn that compassion outward because the other person probably does too.
They may have similar hurt feelings and sadness, and you can put
yourself in their shoes for just a minute so that you can be compassionate.
And there's a great guided meditation I have on my website. You can get it in your Compassionate Communication Care Kit at www.LindaKroll.com/CCC
You can get a guided meditation to help you get to Self.
And when you're “in Self,” you'll see that our human parts that rub up against another’s don't have to get in the way of a divine soul connection.
We can connect divinely with other people.
*****
So I'm at the Botanic Garden waxing philosophically bringing you to see the glorious vistage is here and inviting you to start over with somebody right now.
And even if you don't tell them you're starting over, just do.
And you may find that they're going to reach out to you and you can begin a conversation without processing all the feelings of the past, even though that's good to do.
Both of you want to. But the other thing is to see the highest in
each one of you. To let all your human parts that judge just relax while you go to the top of the mountain from your highest and best Self and have compassion for yourself and have compassion for the
other party.
Even if you decide not to connect, you'll see there's more peace.
****
You can start over with a relationship that brings you peace, brings you joy, and gives you a way to get off the hook of whatever you're telling yourself.
We're at the Botanic Gardens
I'm about to go to the Rose Garden and we're talking about starting over.
And just like plants need to be replanted, relationships can heal and transform.
A few months ago there were tulips. Now here's roses.
Relationships can take on different flavors.
Compassionate communication,sets you free.
Whenever I come here, I just reconnect to myself, to my soul, to the earth.
if you have any questions about how to start over in a
relationship, just ask me. I'm a pro.
I'm a pro at starting over with parents and children, ex-spouses and in-laws and all kinds of people with whom you could have conflict, but you don't need to maintain the conflict, especially when there's so much beauty in the world.
Take time to smell the roses, take time to get outside, and most of all give yourself permission to start over.
And again, arose by any other name is still divine. And you are divine. Thanks for joining me. Sending love, light and hopes that wherever you're having an issue in a relationship, just start over. It really works.
