Do you ever feel like your instinct – or some sense of deep knowing and natural wisdom – is giving you information that your rational mind tells you is illogical or wrong? Or perhaps you’ve been told by a partner, friend, or family member that your choices aren’t as analytical as they ought to be. In fact, we’re often reminded that we should be logical – that we should follow whatever the rational brain tells us to do. And in today’s highly left-brain world, it’s easy to believe that we should discount our intuition and the callings of the creative mind. Yet from my personal and clinical experience, I’ve found that there’s untold power in discovering the gifts of knowing that are beyond the rational mind.

Today, I’m joined by Dr. Kim Hermanson, a renowned educator, author, and psychologist, who will guide us into the realm of tuning into the extraordinary world of the non-linear mind. Topics discussed include imagination, instinct, metaphors, dreams, rational mind, intuition, feminine energy, masculine energy, balance, intuitive, deep knowing, relationships, empowerment, and self-awareness.

Please note that this episode may contain sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert in this (or any episode) is offering medical or psychological direction; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

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Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

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Discover the Power of Your Natural Wisdom, Intuition, and Imagination with Expert Dr. Kim Hermanson

How to Tune into the Power of Your Intuition, Creativity, and Imagination

Do you ever feel like your instinct or some sense of deep knowing is giving you information that your rational mind is telling you that you should ignore because it’s wrong? Perhaps, you’ve been told by a partner, friend or family member that you’re not rational enough or your logical mind needs to be used more. In fact, we’re often reminded that we should be more logical, that we should follow whatever the rational brain tells us to do.

Yet from my personal and clinical experience, I found that there’s vast power in following that sense of intuition, that deep knowing that is a natural part of who we are. In this episode, I’m joined by an educator, psychologist and author who will help walk us through that beautiful journey of coming to honor and understand that sense of deep knowing that sometimes seems to come from beyond us.

We’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question, “My partner and I constantly battle over what he calls my lack of rational judgment. He’s a numbers guy and I’m more of a creative gut instinct person. He gets very upset when I make choices. Most of them are very good that aren’t based on spreadsheets and his type of logic. You’re a psychologist. I hope you can give me information and insights on how to get him to honor my less rational, but effective approach.” With that question is the focus of this episode. I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manly and this is Imperfect Love. Please note this episode may contain sensitive information. Reader’s discretion is advised.

I am joined by a wonderful special guest, Dr. Kim Hermanson. Dr. Hermanson will be sharing her expertise as a Professor, Author, Psychologist and individual whose secret power is opening the spaces of higher knowing that can’t be opened through the cognitive processes of the linear mind. Welcome to the show, Dr. Hermanson. It’s such a pleasure to be with you.

Thank you very much. I love the topic, too.

Dr. Kim Hermanson’s Non-Linear Approach in Life

We will have great fun. Before we launch into the question of the day. Could you tell our readers just a little bit about what makes you, you?

I would say non-linear. Everything is always non-linear. I’ve gotten to the point where sometimes I have to just not say my next step because it’s not going to make sense to anybody. It’s a very non-ordinary life, honestly. I grew up very normal in the middle of the country in Iowa, and a very conservative family. A super traditional and conservative upbringing. A series of life events just takes me in crazy directions. I was a computer scientist. I was in the artificial intelligence field back in the 1980s, believe it or not. Back in the day when it was still an expert system.

I was a computer scientist doing AI work in the 1980s, then I was in a head on collision on the highway and broke my back, broke T-12, displaced my spinal cord by 40 degrees. I felt like I was on one track in life. If you think about tracks like a tractor and a field and, all of a sudden, with that car accident, I got taken out of that track and put in a completely different track in life. It was so dramatic. I was given less than a 5% chance of walking again. I was airlifted to the mill clinic. I have rods in my back.

It was a major turning point and it gave me time to pause and reflect. What I realized was that I was passionate about learning, not computer science. I was very disappointed in AI back in the ‘80s and I wanted to pursue learning and that question of how do we learn in life? How we learn has given me a very non-ordinary life and magical life. Mystical things happening and just to keep pursuing that question. That’s a little bit about my background and how I’m here.

For our readers who might not know what you mean by a non-linear way of thinking or non-linear life, which also comports with the reader’s question. It sounds like this individual is not a linear thinker in the way that spreadsheets and Excel sheets might have us be. Could you explain what you personally mean by that?

The way about this question is, we have two hemispheres. We have a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere. The left hemisphere wants safety, security and the known. It wants control. That sense of control and having things make sense is where it’s happy. It’s a happy place, but then there’s this other part of us, the creative part of us, the non-linear part of us that doesn’t like the tracks. It wants freedom, expansiveness, creation, see possibilities, and things that it doesn’t even know is out there but it can be surprised by.

That’s the part of my life that had more of the bigger voice. It’s had a bigger voice in my life and that’s what I call non-linear. This was in your example, too. That the choices and the decisions don’t often make sense. As I said that example of the tractor in the field, given that I grew up in Iowa in a farming family. The tractor in the field is on a track and it likes that track. I’m very happy with that track but then there’s a big field. What’s in the big field? Those possibilities show up when we’re open and we’re not in that place of control.

Living With a Partner With a Different Way of Thinking

Thank you for that exquisite explanation and I agree with you. That left brain wants predictability, safety, security and the known. We’re often raised in families that want us to follow that linear path, the tractor path, the training path or whatever it is that they see. Generally, they’re trying to help us and keep us safe. Yet that place and this again come forth with the reader’s question which is, how can I get a partner?

It sounds like this individual already values this part of themselves. How can that individual get a partner or maybe other people beyond that partnership to value in our highly left brain world? To dot every I and cross every T and get into that space which you and I have come to know. It’s a combination of gut instinct. To me, this is just my way. I combine gut instinct, left brain, heart and something beyond me. I let all of those pieces weigh in, even if it doesn’t pencil out. Whatever it is. It makes sense. Sometimes, that knowing from inside that is pulling you seems to help you get over not making sense, even yourself.

It’s interesting, though. When we’re in the process of it, it can be hard to demonstrate why we’re doing something. That’s the part that’s hard. Thinking about the person with the husband or the partner. It’s like, can I have space to be? Even though I am very different from you. That’s what I see when I work with clients and we’re looking at marriages. Two people in a solid marriage show up very differently. There is not some interconnection thing. They show up as two distinct people very different and they’re just walking this path side by side.

There’s just a space thing that’s very important here. The other thing is, I work in the creative field. I work with creatives and many of my clients have been working on projects for many years. They’re many years doing something that’s non-ordinary. They’re following an intervention and don’t have proof of the outside world. The world hasn’t seen creative work before. It often doesn’t value it. They’re up against, “Why am I doing this all the time?” If that makes sense, but there’s this call to follow the vision, the polls, what’s real, and what feels alive, even though it’s hard to explain it to other people. How do you defend it if it doesn’t fit into a box?

You’re making me think of Einstein who valued the power of the imagination. He wasn’t able to prove it at first, but now we have all of the mathematics and the left-brain stuff behind what he envisioned. There are countless stories of that in life and in our own realm. As human beings living day-to-day, I believe it’s so important for us to come into contact with each other every day. Not just that left brain, but the right brain. I think back to when I entered my doctoral program. If I had put it down on paper, what was ahead of me, the cost, the commitment, and “the right directions.”

It would never pencil out on anybody’s spreadsheet, even my own. Yet I distinctly recall the first day I said. I was looking at different schools, ones that would work and allow me to pursue a day job also going to school. I remember setting foot on the campus and something led me there and I said, “This is it.” The cost was huge and all of these impediments yet I used my gut instinct.

Plus, I had beautiful support around me of people who were emotionally supportive and was able to defy naysayers as well as any naysaying in my own mind and follow the path that I was destined to be and it’s given me so much joy and helped me. I think that’s an example and your crash. I’m very sorry that happened to you but, in the end, it sounds like it helped you get off this tracker and be launched into this world that has inspired you and enlightened you.

It has the possibility to it. That’s something I was thinking of when you were talking about the woman and her partner or whoever the person might be. One thing they could say is, “This is going to give me a bigger life,” because of what you just said about your dissertation. We want a bigger life. We live once. We only have one life. We want the fullest life that is available to each of us and we get that by opening ourselves up to getting out of that train track even though it’s scary. We can go back to the train track, but it’s a balance. Astrologically, I’m a Taurus and Taurus is safe. I have the push and pull inside myself as well.

I’m not a Taurus. I have a lot of fire in my sign. No surprise there, but it’s so important for each of us to realize that even if we’re going to, as the husband is in this situation. He wants everything to pencil out and we tend to, which is part of us, likes safety and security. I was working with a client and they were talking about someone they knew who has “all the money in the world” and they don’t feel safe. They felt unsafe and they keep working but they don’t have to and possibly throwing money. They could have a bazillion dollars and it wouldn’t feel safe.

Some of the safety that we think we get from this left brain mentally, having this much in the bank account. Not that we don’t want to have financial safety. We want to have enough but if that’s our focus, then we are forgetting all the beauty. As you keep saying, I love how you keep using the word possibility because when we take risks, part of me wants to say calculated risks but then I’m engaging the left brain again but a wise risk, an opening.

Unleashing Our Imaginative Mind Through Metaphors

The other piece I noticed about this reader’s question is they said very clearly, “Most of my choices work out very well. They mostly have good outcomes.” Even someone who goes with a left brain all the time, they’re not going to have not 100%. Even logic is flawed at times. I would encourage you if you don’t mind. You have seventeen steps that help us create more of a healthy relationship with this beautiful, non-linear and creative mind. Would you share some of that with us?

I just want to say one thing about what you just said. The difficulty is that we want to measure things. As your example of the dissertation PhD program. We’re having to trust in something that we can measure because we don’t know. We have to trust in the unknown and that is understandably challenging. I work with metaphors. I work with the language of the right hemisphere. That’s the biggest one. I could give a little example for the readers.

The opening space is huge. We want a sense of spaciousness. I was working with the client and what showed up is her sister is coming to visit. Her sister is extremely extroverted and the image that showed up was a circus. It’s noisy and takes too much energy. The image that my client got was a very soft, gentle cloud. The two sides were polar opposites. She’s in this very quiet, soft and gentle space and she’s been sick and she needs to be in that set of space. Her sister is coming to visit, which doesn’t visit very often. They’re going to be sharing a motel room and be together a lot. She has a very different energy and you have two polar opposites.

What showed up as a third space, the space of resolution. The field image was a rainbow and when I say opening up space, the first thing our minds want to do is try to see how the cloud can work with the circus. The first thing she said was, “I’m going to be able to hold the circus.” I’m like, “I don’t think the cloud once told the circus.” Literally, when you look at two images. The cloud doesn’t want to be a circus. The clouds want to be a cloud. We have two very different images, energy and ways of being in the world but the resolution place was a rainbow.

It was like turning it over. It’s like, I don’t have to shift who I am and how I’m being when my sister shows up. I can allow something else to come through and shift the situation for me so that I don’t have to try to contain the circus or be the circus or fit in with the circus. In my work, I work with images, metaphor and energy. It’s like the qualities of being.

I appreciate that because for some people using words to paint a picture is very natural to them. It’s very natural for me. I speak in metaphors all the time to the point where I drive my husband a little bit crazy with metaphor but whatever. The idea of metaphors is for us to take it above the words and into this imaginal space, this archetypal space. Reader’s, when we’re talking archetypal, we’re talking that language of images that can be felt without verbalizing something.

I could show you an image of a Queen and anyone around the world would understand and get the energy of that Queen image. That is an example of an archetype. An orphan would be another archetype. A King would be another archetype. When we’re looking at using metaphors, it helps us go into that feeling space and imaginable space. As Dr. Hermanson is helping, when we use it in relationships I love how you use the cloud and the circus. Nobody is judging either one.

We’re not judging the cloud and the circus. We’re just noticing how very different these energies are. The cloud is very soft, up there and serene. The circus is very earthly, busy, chaotic, and all of this mess. If we look at this reader’s question, we might see the person who wrote in, I’m seeing like a painter. This very lush, creative, colorful and organic energy and then we have the accountant. I don’t know what his profession is, but we have the accountant with his pencil behind his ear or a pencil in his mouth and the old-fashioned paper spreadsheet in front of him or the computer or whatever it might be. Not one is bad. They’re both fine.

In fact, to be completely honest here. For much of my life, when I was teaching adjunct in graduate schools, I was doing accounting work as my money making because you don’t make much teaching adjunct in graduate schools. I loved accounting. I have a nerdy part of myself that just loves getting down there and doing real detailed work.

There’s no judging at all. It’s just very different and that’s the spaciousness to allow both unique people to exist in the world together, forge a path ahead and be very different. The other thing about images and metaphoric images, as you said, it’s beyond or higher. It’s also deeper. It’s deeper or below the surface of what’s true in a way where we can speak truth metaphorically that we can’t say in linear words because we have the image for it.

I love how we’re veering into this space with this reader’s question because they’re asking for some insights. This is such a beautiful one that you brought to the table because it’s often one that we don’t think of. It’s seeing the partners or seeing two friends or family members when we get into looking at the images. It’s a piece when I’m working with individuals or couples. I will often go into this imaginary space of having them imagine themselves as a character in what they play. It can be a known or an unknown one and who are the characters around them creating that. It’s that metaphor or what their lived experience is. It gives room for insight to pop in the room. It’s a bit playful.

It provides connections to happen because words can tie us down. If we’re trying to think through something logically, figure it out and talk it through, we can just go so much deeper with an image. Also, one of the things that was coming to mind when you were speaking was. A lot of times when I work with people and we’re looking at an issue that involves a relationship, especially like a marriage relationship.

There’s a tendency in the human mind to want to see the connections between things. Our mind wants to connect things, but there needs to be enough space for two people to be completely different but still happily married. That’s what I see when I look at a healthy marriage. As I mentioned before, there’s a spaciousness that’s important rather than trying to make things fit.

I agree with you completely. As long as partners are aligned on their core values like honesty, trust, integrity, transparency or whatever it is that’s important to them. As long as those parts are there because that creates the real safety and the emotional safety. You can let your partner be them. That uniqueness allows each person to learn from the other person because if you’re interested in your partner, it’s like, “That’s cool about you. That’s not a part of me. I’d like to know more about that.”

If it’s something you don’t want to know, you can just accept it, observe it and get a giggle out of it because it’s so different from you. That’s what might be missing in this partner in the question. It sounds like he is wanting her to give up her more right brain side, which must feel very wise to her. I know when I am in that space, it’s different from intelligence. It’s like this innate wisdom. That comes up and says, “This is good.”

It sounds like she gets into that space, which is why she has the positive outcomes that she does. It doesn’t sound like she’s saying, “I’m going to spend all of our money on a canoe.” I don’t know what she would do. It also sounds like she does make very wise decisions, and that it’s more about his lack of ability to honor that her way works for her.

There’s this openness that’s required. As we mentioned, before we started, our whole world is in that mode. It’s hard to accept the creatives. It’s hard to accept the people that have the wild ideas and embrace something that’s brand new that we haven’t seen before. It’s deeper than this situation. It’s a cultural digression.

I remember in my doctoral program. Even though in my Masters program, we did a lot of work with research. It was pounded into me in my doctoral program that even when you’re looking at research and people think, “There’s research behind it. It has to be true.” Even a lot of the research is not based in true fact. There’s bias because a drug company was paying for it. Somebody was paying for it who’s paying something.

Maybe how the question was framed.

What It Takes to Access the Brain’s Left Hemisphere

Even if we are trying hard to bracket our bias, we all have a certain amount of bias. Some of its very overt and some not so much. When we think of the husband and his very logical left brain approach and he might be relying on the research, this and that. Research isn’t always what it has to be and hitting it again, the same with all of this, it must be rational. I’m going to throw the ball back to you. You talk about this whole other realm beyond the left brain. Could you just talk a little bit more about what that is for you? How to access this?

I didn’t mention this but I got my PhD in Education Learning at University of Chicago. I was always interested in how we learned and I was pursuing this question. I was interviewing for a teaching position at Meridian University. The president of the school said, “Rather than try to fit you into our program. Why don’t you tell me what you would like to teach?” The word metaphor was spoken through me. I didn’t say a metaphor. I didn’t know anything about metaphors. He said, “We’ll call psychology a metaphor.” It was just this whole spiritual path of like a book showing up and synchronistic experiences like I was being given a path to take.

I had a visionary experience where I was shown the field and I won’t go into the details of it. It’s my last. The way that I work with people and what happens is images will just spontaneously arise in a session. There’s no complicated thing to get there at all. There’s no process, steps, procedure, and putting on the white lab coat. Anything. No lighting a candle. No sage. Nothing. It’s just boom and there’s an image.

These images will spontaneously appear and their metaphoric images, meaning there’s qualities to them. They’ll be like the tractor in the field or a sun. The mind is very bored. This is always stuck in my mind. This was several years ago, but I was doing a workshop. Somebody got an image of a waterfall and they were so disappointed. If you go into the quality of being a waterfall, what is more life-giving than being a waterfall? What is more joyful? What is more full of life? What is more alive than a waterfall?

Our mind has to stop the judgment and feel the shift of being a waterfall and how we’re being is everything. The right hemisphere is very cool, being in the world and what the qualities were holding. The images that will show up are shifted being for the person. I am working on a training manual now, so we’ll see. They just happen spontaneously. They come in spontaneously. Sometimes, I’ll work with somebody and they think that they need to create an image. They need to say what the image is that they want to work with.

When we do that, or when somebody does that. I can tell it because there’s a deadness to it. There’s, “I can’t get into it. I can’t feel it myself.” When images spontaneously arise from the field, I can step into it. I can feel it like, “It feels great to be a waterfall or feels great to be a skyscraper. It feels good to be a little baby duck.” Feel how good it feels. It just feels good to my body when I’m working with somebody, so then I know that the image is coming from the field rather than from their thinking. Now, I just spent a year since somebody’s come in and try to think that they’re the one in charge of the image. They have to realize they’re not in charge. Something else is going to come in here and I have no idea what it is.

It did, and it resonates with me. It’s so important just to pause here and talk about these images. They’re not just for psychologists and for special people. They are for all of us. As you were talking about, when we stop judging with that left brain, with the prefrontal cortex part of mine that’s going to say, “It needs to be logical to fit in.” As kiddos, we all have this power. We daydream. We imagine things like elves, fairies, and Santa.

We’re happy looking at clouds and seeing the images in the clouds.

We draw and do all of these magical things. We are instructed over time, “Don’t daydream. Get up and get your chores done. Stop hanging that. That’s not a real thing. Go do your homework.” We learn over time to suppress these images and then they don’t come. They’re not knocking at our door as much just like our dreams. When we welcome our dreams or honor our dreams, again they’re from the imaginal world, they’re coming. If we learn to pay attention to them and honor them, more of them will come.

It’s a perfect opportunity to let our readers know that if you’re working with something and you’re not getting, I work with images a lot with my clients where somebody will be talking and I’ll get an image. They’ll be talking about their boss and this image that never works or this image comes in. Maybe a tormentor or a person with big armor on. Who knows what it’s going to be but I don’t create that. It just comes in. That’s because of being receptive to it, to doing the work to not dismantle the logical mind but to make space for the instinct and for that creative side who also comes and offers information.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the book of Iain McGilchrist’s work on the hemispheres. He wrote a book. They’re huge books. It’s probably 800 or 900 pages and it wasn’t new. It has probably been out for ten years or so. The title of the book is The Master and His Emissary. The left hemisphere needs to be the emissary and the right hemisphere be the masker in our world.

Our left hemisphere, as you said, I love accounting. I love things that are clean, neat and linear. I love it myself, but it needs to be the servants of my bigger creative and more connected vision. The right hemisphere is one that connects to higher wisdom and higher vision. It needs to be the servant of that part of me rather than the in charge part of me.

How Partners Can Honor Each Other’s Way of Being

It’s so beautifully said, Dr. Hermanson. I love that way of looking at it. Again, back to our reader’s question, the individual who’s wanting an answer of, how can I take this to my partner? I think this is a lovely avenue. Although, it sounds like the partners are going to bulk up and say, “No, the logic is the power,” but being able to honor that belief in him, if that’s his belief. He needs to make space for something else. She can then say, “I’m honoring your way of being. I’m honoring your logic. I would like you to honor my way of being, my sense of tuning into my higher wisdom, my inner wisdom and it works for me. Can we just honor each other’s way of being?”

Using those images again of the beautiful painter and then the cute little accountant doing his thing. I agree with you, it’s so interesting. I’ve never given up reconciling my checkbook by hand. I love the sheer beauty of it. The numbers match up. If you’re off $5 or a penny or whatever it is, it has. There’s something satisfying about that logical brain. Even though a penny or $5 is not going to harm anything if I let it, there is that part of us that can want that exactness.

It feels very satisfying and we need precision. If you’re building a rocket to go to space, things can’t be off by a quarter inch. They need to be precise. The more masculine building energy of our world is very important. It’s just that it’s overshadowed the softer creative, intuitive parts.

Thank you for bringing that up because it’s a good point as we begin to wind down from looking at that masculine energy and the feminine energy. We’re not talking men only have masculine and women only have feminine. We each want to be working on our masculine energy and our feminine energy so that they are in balance because the masculine is about doing and success in the world. The feminine is nurturing and creative. If we each as individuals work on getting both of those, I hope this makes sense. It’s in my book also, Joy from Fear. It’s an old concept.

Carl Jung was a master at it. When we honor this, we can see that this couple. The more I see about it through the lens you just brought up, Dr. Hermanson, this beautiful uniting where we have this logical side, this man. If he can bring in a little, maybe a little more creative energy into his realm. His partner already sounds like she uses some logic but maybe giving him a nod of logic so that it feels safer to him. It allows us to not pursue the perfection of precision and the perceived perfection of logic and make room for that beautiful imperfect nest that is human life.

I love the way you said that and this space for those differences.

How Your Intuition Can Create a Better World and a Better You

You have given us so much richness and I’m so grateful that you reminded me and the audience about that power of the imaginal world, our imagination, our creativity, our intuition. It is good, valuable and using your terminology, maybe we can put the logical mind in service of that. Rather than it being either ignored or overly lopsided to where we discount the beautiful gifts of higher knowing, creativity and intuition.

It sounds good to me. That’s the world I want to live in.

When we model this for other people, I know I model it from my clients. It sounds like you very much model it for your clients, your students and your workshops. You are helping, and I believe that’s our job as individuals, regardless of our gender. Modeling the importance of this creative space because there is so much wisdom that may indeed save our world because much of the mind left on its own does some pretty illogical things.

The way I have been saying it is that if our linear mind, logical mind was capable of creating a better world. It would have already done it. It’s the part of us that’s connected that we need to be more connected to and to be listening to. That’s what’s going to take us into a better life individually and a better world as far as I’m concerned.

Using Neural Linguistics to Shift Your Being

For any parents reading, you can do this with your kiddos just by modeling for them the importance of creativity, tuning into their Instinct and tuning into the imaginal world and letting them create and honor the importance whatever age they are because you think about nature. That’s nature. That’s so healing and so powerful. Nature is the creative force and the source of many images that come to us. Touching upon just one last piece when you were talking about the images from nature.

I also used neurolinguistics in my work. When somebody is using the word, I’m overwhelmed or the phrase, “I’m overwhelmed” I will say, pause. If you feel safe closing your eyes, close your eyes and give me an image from nature that comes with I’m overwhelmed. Invariably, people will come up with something like a tsunami. A huge rainstorm and avalanche is another one. I said, “How do you feel?” “I can’t get out. I’m covered.” Let’s shift words and go from, “I am overwhelmed to something like I feel challenged.”

I’ll say, “Now, close your eyes. What image comes to mind?” People say, “I’m climbing up a difficult path but I can do that. I’m crossing a bridge. It’s a little scary, but I can get to the other side.” When we see that even in cases like that, the power images to change the underlying programming of I am overwhelmed, which makes us feel down and suffocated. I’m challenged or I’m feeling challenged but I can do this.

Again, through the power, there’s nothing linear there. It is all very much feeling into it with your own creative force of, what words can I choose to make myself feel more empowered? When we look at this reader’s who’s like going to take this back and talk to her significant other. It’s like, what images can she take of him? What words to help honor him and encourage him to deeply honor her?

There’s a couple things I thought of and I know we’re getting to the end here so I’m not going to extend this too much. When I work with clients, they are overwhelmed. Overwhelm could be a tsunami or getting lost in the sea or drowning or having whatever. I could go on and on. If we open up space, the fields will bring in an image. That’s the shift place.

When you were talking about overwhelm, I thought you were going to say that the client said, “I’m a tree.” Trees are like grounded, rooted and strong. A gale force wind could push on a tree and knock it over. There’s a shift of being that even takes us out of the overwhelm and trying to manage into a whole another place. That’s the shift of being if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense and I love that as a way of rather than changing the verbiage using it as an alternative way of, “How could you be in that place and be this nice rooted?”

Their mind is the one that creates the story. I do that all the time. The last few months, I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed. I’ve had a lot going on. I need to read this myself, but like I’ll go into overwhelmed. There’s another place that is not overwhelmed and that’s the place we need to go to.

The place to tap into and just like our reader. It sounds like they might be in a place of frustration. Not being seen and not valued and the idea of, “What images, what feelings can you create that are going to give you that power in that sense?” It sounds like she’s right there. She knows how to access this and it’s valuable. She knows it’s just about her getting more rooted in “This is my way of being and it’s good. It works for me but in a different form than my partner’s.” Maybe they can find some balance there. Two different trees holding hands and offering each other.

I’m seeing her as a tree. Whoever you are out there, I’m seeing you as a tree. Your partner can be something different. He couldn’t be a large wild cat or a son or whatever. You don’t even need to be in the same forest, but just honor your partner’s uniqueness. Honor and stay rooted and strong of your uniqueness.

Get in Touch With Dr. Hermanson

Dr. Hermanson, I know you’ve written three books. Can you tell our readers a little bit more about where they can assess you and connect with you?

I would just say go to my website, KimHermanson.com. Whatever program is happening, you’ll find it there. I also have some digital courses in addition to my books.

Thank you so much for sharing your time, your wisdom and your energy with us. I’m truly grateful.

Thank you. It was fun. I love talking about images. I could do it all day.

To our readers, thank you so much for sharing your time, your energy and your journeys with me. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Dr. Kim Hermanson’s Website
• Dr. Kim Hermanson’s Books
• Dr. Kim Hermanson on LinkedIn
• Dr. Kim Hermanson on Instagram
• Dr. Kim Hermanson on YouTube
• The Master and His Emissary
• Joy from Fear
• Getting Messy: Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok

About Dr. Kim Hermanson

For 25 years, this pioneering expert has guided thousands of creatives, seekers, and professionals globally to achieve breakthroughs in their mental health, learning, and creativity. Their unique methodology focuses on activating the right hemisphere of the brain, described as the gateway to “higher knowing,” and unveiling the profound beauty that exists “beyond thought” in the mind’s third space. This groundbreaking work has been called “pioneering” by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the New York Times bestselling author of Flow and co-founder of Positive Psychology, with whom the author has also co-authored articles and book chapters.

The author is an award-winning author of three books centered on accessing the non-cognitive, visionary creative space. Their most recent book, Deep Knowing: Entering the Realm of Non-Ordinary Intelligence, received a 2022 National Indie Excellence Award. The book synthesizes the author’s deep passion for understanding how humans learn in everyday life, blending rigorous academic research with mystical, non-ordinary experiences. Their research on adult learning, conducted while earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, received an Outstanding Research Award from the American Educational Research Association.

With a career steeped in both academia and practical application, the author is currently on the faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Their influential work has been featured in major publications including Fast Company, The Psychologist (British Psychological Society), and Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. They help individuals tap into their true creative gifts by opening spaces of higher knowing that cannot be accessed through the cognitive processes of the linear mind, revealing that creative power comes from a source that lies beyond the thinking self.