Jan loved her husband and three children, and had a successful job as a computer programmer. However, her family, her beautiful home, and expensive car were not making her happy. Jan felt guilty for being miserable and complaining to her loyal husband. "After all," she told me at her first counseling session, "I have more than others, and much more than my parents did. Why am I so depressed?"

To assist Jan to find her answers, I guided her through a process I developed called HART, which stands for Holistic and Rapid Transformation. I have a favorite saying, "Close your eyes and see clearly." So I said, "Jan, I believe that your answers are inside of you. So close your eyes and relax so that we can explore your issues." Then I guided Jan to visualize both her mother and herself standing in front of her, and to tell me if she noticed any similarities. Jan replied, "Yes, we look a lot alike and we both seem inhibited." Then I asked Jan, "What do you want to say to either one or both of them?" Jan said, "Mom and Jan lighten up. Do what you love doing. Be happy!"

With those freeing thoughts, Jan automatically took a deep breath of relief. Then I continued, "Jan, do you see any differences between your mother and yourself?" She commented, "Yes. My mother stayed home with my sister and I, and like a dutiful wife took care of her husband and the house. Whereas I have a profession and I earn lots of money."

"However, Jan," I continued, "is computer work what you really want to do?" "Not really," said Jan. "In fact, I hate it. It's boring!" When I asked Jan why she was doing that kind of work, she informed me that when she had married her husband, Bob, she had agreed to bring in a certain amount of money too so that they could have their high standard of living. Jan admitted that her expensive home in her upper class neighborhood felt like a trap. She felt boxed in with no way out. "Growing up in a lower class neighborhood wasn't any fun either. I had thought that working hard and raising my standard of living would make me happy. But it hasn't."

"Was your mother happy, Jan?" I inquired.

"No, not really. When I was a teenager my mother shared with me that she always wanted to be a dancer but had given up her dream for her family. Her husband, my father, had insisted that she be the ‘good wife'. Mom felt that she had to follow her mother's model of stifling her desires to play the role of wife and mother. When I asked my mom if she was sorry that she had made that choice, she told me, with an unemotional voice, that she was grateful for her good, secure life, but felt as though she had given up something.

Mom even admitted to me that she probably took out her resentments on her husband by withholding affection and spending lots of his money. She was feeling guilty for the times her resentments caused her to be impatient with my sister and I."

When I asked Jan what decision she was making from that conversation, she said, "I'm deciding that women have to play their roles as wife and mother. But Helene," she went on to explain, "I thought I had also made the decision that I would be different. I would work outside of the home and have more freedom than my mother did."

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