OWNING HAPPINESS
Finding The Right Path to Real Recovery

BY SHARI SCHREIBER, M.A.

Revised, 6/12/2026

Over the decades that I've helped people resolve their inner pain, many wanted to know how my methods of healing were different from traditional therapies they'd already tried, so it seemed important to write this piece, in order to provide illumination.

I've helped clients learn to rebuild themselves from the ground up, just as I did. I'm dedicated to helping you heal yourself and actually thrive! I have devised a marvelous twenty-one day tutorial that helps you put an end to your anxiety and panic at your own pace, and finally start building the kind of life you've been afraid to even imagine was possible. This material, both written and video entries will very soon be available to you, at no charge!

My very first YouTube video, "How to find a solid therapeutic fit" addresses how to find a responsible professional who's able to offer you useful, meaningful growth and healing work. I hope it helps guide you toward a fruitful outcome. Very few work as I do. If you are unable to experience solid change in your life or relationships within 1 - 3 months elsewhere, you may have hired someone incapable of assisting you. 

As you read this, perhaps you'll think of it as a road map that can help you look at your life differently, and think more deeply about Who you want to become. In my view, if we don't resolve the core of our difficulties like poor self-worth, we retain our episodic dependence on therapeutic help. I have personally never wanted that, and perhaps you don't either.

In truth, many want happiness, but have no clue about how to acquire it. My approach isn't for those looking for a quick-fix, although my methods work faster than conventional modalities of "therapeutic" intervention. It's for folks who've tried just about every other treatment under the sun, and still haven't found real relief. I'm not describing the brief, delightful episodes that come with starting a romance or buying a new car or home. I'm referencing an ongoing feeling inside you, that's tranquil and joyful.

If you're looking for someone to take your money and be your sounding board week to week, this is not the place for you. Effective, life-altering assistance will never perform this function! Healing work's sole commitment is to help you acquire wellness in every sense of that word.

I'm not a state licensed professional. Healing work requires an entirely different skill set. My bio page reveals more about me and my work, if you have an interest in reading it.

You may derive as much insightful information as you wish from my online articles~ but the thrust of my work has never been insight-based, because resolving human pain is a matter for the heart, not the head. I train people to stop fearing and dreading their pain, and engaging in various addictive reflexes and other self-destructive behaviors to avoid or distract from their ever-present agony. 

In my view, all life's obstacles are due to poor self-worth. This deficit informs on how we relate to and take care of ourselves within all personal and professional relationships. If we think about self-worth as the hub of a wagon wheel, any damage it sustains means that all spokes which emanate from that central point will be weak and susceptible to breaking under any type of strain or pressure.

OBVIOUS SYMPTOMS OF POOR SELF-WORTH:

Sticking with a job or career you hate. Staying in an under-satisfying or abusive relationship. Feeling afraid to raise fees in your business. Constant concern about what others may think of you. Deep feelings of unlovability and worthlessness. People Pleasing behaviors. Ongoing struggles with money and finances. Never feeling at ease in social situations. Fear of genuine success, love, joy and riches, and finally getting what you really want. Fear of confrontation or initiating difficult conversations about your needs or feelings. Belief that it's not okay to even have needs. Addictions of all types~ particularly the one that has you feeling an irrepressible need to fix, train, guide, rescue and assist others~ which is the definition of pathological Codependency. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as the list is practically endless.

My work has helped clients achieve two distinct aims: Building rock-solid self-esteem, and learning how to experience and tolerate ALL emotions in their body, instead of analyzing, over-thinking and compulsively attaching meaning to them in the head.

Consider this; you might go to a gym to strengthen and develop your physical muscles~ but has anyone ever taught you how to build powerful emotional muscles? This is the crux of effective inner work! If this hasn't been a crucial part other therapies you've tried, there are simple, super-effective exercises to alter this deficit, so you can become genuinely empowered.

Total Wellness means that you should expect steady, incremental gains from applying the principles and tools you're taught to use (there's only a small handful of 'em). Growing truly healthy will require your diligent, determined and focused effort, but the rewards to you could well exceed what you've ever dreamed was possible.

I've always sensed there were quicker, more effective ways to help individuals who could not find relief using traditional therapies, and who slipped through the cracks. Throughout my entire career, I focused on inventing and developing unique, groundbreaking methods which facilitated one's capacity to accept joy, contentment, happiness and inner peace. It may be hard to believe, but many cannot~ they live with anxiety symptoms, and are always waiting for the other shoe to drop! This is a deeply programmed emotional response left over from childhood, and it's the most common anxiety trigger for millions of people, all over the globe.

My work is a growth-oriented process focused on raising self-esteem and helping one become whole, joyful and content. I am always devising new ways to significantly shorten that process, but You are in the driver's seat. We can only go as fast as you'll let us. You will need a few concrete 'power tools' specifically crafted to dismantle and eliminate the negative/abusive tape that plays in the back of your psyche 24/7, which constantly asserts; "I'm not good enough or lovable, and I'm a screw-up." You're relentlessly hard on yourself, which causes you to select lovers and friends who echo exactly how you really feel about yourself~ because how we view ourselves, cements what we believe we deserve from others!

Nothing's given me greater glee, than being able to witness a client's utter transformation. It's nothing short of a metamorphosis~ like the caterpillar to butterfly transition. I'm selective about who I accept into my practice, for some people resist getting well, and my time is too precious a commodity to waste.

You may not be a suitable candidate for an atypical approach to healing. This may not feel like it's a fit with your personality or temperament. But a responsible practitioner will try to assess your readiness to change your life during a preliminary consultation, and they should never try to offer assistance you can't or won't make good use of.

Never enter into someone's office 'cold.' If they're unwilling to have a brief phone consult with you to discern your difficulties and sense whether (or not) they can help you before work with them begins, you should call the next person on your list!

Try to sense whether you can feel understood and comfortable with someone you're calling for help! They should want to get a solid sense of you also, to determine if you can be a compatible fit for them and the type of work for which they're best suited! Few clinicians operate this way. In my view, they're missing the boat~ both for you and themselves.

Psychotherapy deals with matters of the mind. My articles speak to the root of your anguish and help you gain useful insights about it, but my work is not insight based. Mind work can turn into a very lengthy process, and who wants to spend years or decades in treatment?!

I've never let my clients to retain their comfortable love affair with survival. I wouldn't allow them to complain about their "Life" month after month (which is boring) without getting to the root of that problem, and resolving it. Mine is solution-focused work that helps people learn how to Thrive--not just survive. Survival oriented individuals (those with BPD traits) who prefer chaos and drama over developing emotionally and getting well, are not suitable candidates for healing work.

In the realm of thinking about "Happiness" you might presume that wealth will cure your woes. It won't. I've worked with multi-millionaires who've never felt calm, safe or secure. They struggled with loneliness and emptiness just as you have. When you've gotten all the boats, planes and houses you can possibly own, and they don't eradicate the painful sense of emptiness that lives inside you, we have a sort of 'existential crisis' on our hands.

Mid-life concerns pertaining to this issue are developmentally driven. They're about our need to change or amend what we've been doing for decades. As we evolve, we can't keep performing the same tasks year after year, without outgrowing our ability to be stimulated by them! It's like wearing an old suit that's now a couple sizes too small. We've made substantial investments in that wardrobe, but we had different values and priorities in our twenties and thirties that can't fulfill the needs of our forties, fifties and sixties. When we aren't responsive to these developmental changes, passion steadily wanes, and getting through each day requires great effort (or various addictions) to help us maintain a sense of vitality or aliveness.

Our desire for this sensation of 'aliveness' often has us choosing high-intensity relationships with partners who have personality disorder traits. The emotional roller-coaster they keep us on triggers extreme highs, but also anguish and anxiety, which routinely distract from our own feelings of emptiness or dissatisfaction. Those dark, difficult emotions may have haunted us for years, but we've harshly judged, and tried to avoid or outrun them through any means possible.

When another makes us feel our emotions intensely, whether those emotions are pleasurable or painful, it's actually grounding and enlivening to us (dead people can't feel pain). This is often the reason we've clung to tormenting, toxic relationships long past their shelf life or our ability to access joy within them. We are NOT addicted to the person. We are addicted to the feelings of aliveness they engender in us!

MISERY COMES EASY. HAPPINESS TAKES DAILY, DILIGENT WORK.

Our lack of love, abundance and prosperity are just symptoms of poor self-worth. When our pre-existing foundation is rotted and crumbling, no structures we try to build on it can remain intact. The primary goal of healing work is to bring about tangible and permanent foundational restructuring and change.

Change is frightening for most people, because it threatens long-held stagnancy that is often mistaken for "safety." We always feel a bit destabilized, while instituting changes in our life. You've landed on this text, because you've bought into some faulty belief systems, which have kept you 'enrolled' in self-defeating behaviors and thought patterns. These must be eliminated, so that you can acquire true happiness, and learn how to maintain it.

WHAT REAL RECOVERY ACTUALLY IS:

Emotional pain is not stored in the head. It's stored in the body, and each one of your body cells retains a traumatic imprint from every emotional wound (no matter how slight) you've ever incurred.

Mine has always been a holistic or 'whole organism' approach to eradicating pain, which includes the body and spirit. If we're not responsive to these parts of you, we're failing you in context of true well-being. My methodology has embraced the principle that you are not just a brain hooked-up to a life-support device. Body-centered healing work is not psychological intervention or mind work. It's light-years beyond it.

Real Recovery is antithetical to psychotherapy. It requires that you learn how to feel emotions in your body, instead of talking about or attaching meaning and reasons to them in your head. 

You might consider genuine Recovery to be like acupuncture, as compared to western medicine. Western medicine treats the symptoms of your discomfort or "dis-ease" so you can feel better~ whereas Chinese medicine targets the cause of your distress to eradicate it completely from the body. In a sense, effective and lasting recovery's goal is to unblock and heal emotional Qi or 'Chi.'

Healing work goes well beyond mitigating your dissatisfaction or pain. Acquiring specific new tools helps you accomplish this for yourself. We want you to thrive, rather than just survive or feel "okay" about your life. If there's not enough 'juice' in your daily existence, you may be sleepwalking and should want more for yourself! Sleepwalking (staying unconscious even when you're physically awake), drives addictive and compulsive behaviors and poor relationship choices which catalyze drama, chaos and pain. That my dears, is only existing~ it's definitely not living.

We want to help you reconstruct your foundation brick by brick, so that whatever you build atop it, will remain intact, despite inclement weather. During this process, you'll be climbing out of those deeply-dug, self-defeating trenches that have kept you emotionally disabled and unhappy. 

I help every client construct a strong and sturdy personal foundation, so they can genuinely like, admire and feel proud of themselves. This irrevocably changes one's 'Attraction Strategy' to the type of individual they've previously been drawn to. One is finally able to want and choose loving, nourishing attachment bonds, without fearing them.

The inner work you do with anyone must be a collaborative effort. While you're gradually building trust in them, you might think of him/her as your 'mentor' on whom you can depend for guidance, support and concrete strategies that have the power to bring about joy, self-actualization, and monetary success.

Wellness consulting is experiential, rather than cerebral. It may feel counterintuitive, as it's an innovative approach most have never experienced before. A natural learning curve comes with trying anything new, so one might backslide a bit, and that's to be expected. My work is designed to help individuals learn and grow~ not perform perfectly.

Healing methods focus solely on what you are feeling in any given moment, not on "how" you are feeling. This unconventional approach helps one connect with facets of the Self, so that life-force can be accessed within (dead people don't feel)! In my view, this is the most important gain one can ever achieve.

The most important and vital relationship you will ever forge and maintain is with You. When you master constructing this nourishing, friendly, supportive relationship bond with you, all your choices, experiences and outcomes become far more healthy and positive. 

Every client who's committed to Healing reaches a fork in the road, as they're transitioning from unwell to Well. This feels a bit uncomfortable for a little while, because all change feels somewhat destabilizing. This part of recovery can seem challenging, because we're navigating terrain that's feeling foreign, and it takes some getting used to. 

Clients receive guidance and support to help them become the person they've always wanted to be. This is no small feat, because lighter feelings of joy and bliss are completely foreign to most people, and feel scary or unwieldy. The roots of self-sabotaging impulses run deep, and tend to kick in at this juncture. We learn how to dismantle these, and help you get wherever you wish to go.

One notices a growing sense of inner contentment and peace as they begin to heal. They're feeling their emotions, rather than hyper-analyzing them or acting 'em out. Being 'alone' with oneself stops triggering dread and fear, because a newfound friendship with him or herself has grown more solid, comfortable and rewarding on many levels.

Getting well means you're no longer observing yourself through another's eyes. You'll learn to take your own emotional temperature, rather than everyone else's! Trying to make sure everyone likes you (people pleasing), is not a priority anymore. New feelings of respecting and liking yourself, is! 

Clients who recover, quit hungering and striving for acceptance and approval from others, including their parents. They gain the desire and capacity to give support and approval to themselves~ and they own it. Nobody is able to take this from you, once it's established. When you've gained real self-worth, it cannot be diminished by anyone.

Getting well is a process. The principles and tools you'll be learning are simplistic. You may think of them as silly and resist using them, which means you will not recover. The work itself is challenging, because it has to reorganize and reconfigure what you've thought was needed all these years (like avoiding difficult emotions), to save your own life.  How's that worked out for ya, so far?

I'm at heart, an educator. My job, is helping you become truly empowered. As such, you are taught how to help yourself: "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he eats for a lifetime." Why not learn how to lovingly reparent yourself, and become your own best therapist?