To Marilyn and who else might read this,

I want to thank you Marilyn for saving my life. This is how I look at it, as I know I would be nowhere where I am today if it wasn't for you. If not for you, I would probably be stuck with frequent self-esteem-attacks robbing me of many social events, randomly ruining many interactions, and in total, preventing me from having a fulfilling life, including a good love-life.

I don’t feel that way at all today. Today, I feel quite confident. I rarely ever have self-esteem attacks, I do well socially, and I can even walk up to a woman on the street and strike up a conversation.

It’s quite amazing as Marilyn’s program seems so simple in concept, and almost obvious, but in the plethora of self-improvement-approaches and not knowing, it’s quite impossible to tell diamonds from rocks.

Marilyn’s method is in a nutshell identifying any distorted thought as it appears, rewrite it to what is actually true based on fact, truth or history (“Can I based on fact, truth or history say that what I told myself is true?”), and read it 5 times a day. That’s basically it! It’s oddly simple, but just as strangely effective.

The reason I believed in Marilyn was the way she described the Low self-esteem experience – it was just so spot on, it had to be right. She also said she had cured herself and hundreds of others, and that also gave security in that I should spend my time trying to recover focusing on self-esteem.

And last but not least, her method is systematic and you can sort of partially measure it. As a very structured person, I need this to feel secure that I am spending my time on the right thing – who wants to waste years of it? - and that I can somewhat forecast recovery or see where I need to go to get there. Years of psychoanalysis did nothing for me except a frustrated me and therapists.

To shortly shed some light on my story with Marilyn, I met her in the summer of 2008. I am from Norway and started therapy by email with Marilyn. Within 6 months, I was already quite a different person, focusing on her “Part 1 “ as I understand it, eliminating and replacing my many distorted thoughts. These days, I don’t have many distorted thoughts, and focus on “Part 2”, building social skills and interests (since we fall behind in life). Things are going quite well here. I will list my interests and social-skills areas I started after meeting Marilyn at the end for those who might be interested.

It’s been 5 years since I met Marilyn, and for those of you who consider starting therapy with Marilyn or any therapists that she has trained - do!

Lessons learned for me are:

• I know you can improve a lot in 6 months if you do it – I did – and this is such an improvement that already here, you’ll feel, “Wow, this is great”
• After a year of hard work you should be quite recovered
•  I am sure therapy in person is the best, but I did it by Skype and it has also been great. We started doing email, but Skype is so much better, that Marilyn doesn't offer it anymore as she knows a dialog is so much more effective than email.
• Don’t get out of therapy just because you feel quite good. Step down gradually, because there could be blind-spots, and Marilyn or her associates will see you, where you are. I wasted a bit of time here thinking I was done with all of it

I think that is it.

Thanks Marilyn, I will never forget.

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Some of the biggest social skill-building and Interests I did since starting therapy:

• Joined and singing on an amazing choir, belonging to an amazing group of people there. Met my closest friends there.
• Generally, small talk with people at supermarkets or wherever I want to
• Inviting people to have dinners, do things
• Did hang gliding for a year
• Took two amazing dating-courses, one focusing on nighttime and the other one on daytime, and continue to learn more and more of those good-value-based skills, building a lot of confidence
• Will try golf the coming spring