Tara Bennett-Goleman has been offering workshops with her husband Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) on the ties between Buddhism and psychology for years. In her book, Emotional Alchemy, she outlines ten basic emotional patterns or schemes that are often formed in childhood and repeated through a lifetime. These include fear of abandonment, unlovability, social exclusion, perfectionism, and vulnerability. Like old tapes, these schemes get triggered again and again in relationships that perpetuate pain and obscure reality. All of this can be changed by mindfulness — a method of training the mind that enables us to see things clearly.

Tara and her husband share with New Dimensions host Michael Toms how she has dealt with abandonment issues passed on through the generations while he has tried to cope with his perfectionism. They have tried to give up blaming each other and to be compassionate with their disturbing habit energies. Other subjects covered in this dialogue include neural repatterning, the transformation of emotions, the problem of mistrust on personal and societal levels, and recipes for inner work.