Connections: From Heart Challenges to Healing Hearts by Mery Ben

In her memoir, Connections: A Woman’s Journey Back to Love, Mery Ben shares a life story marked by courage, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to helping others. Born with a congenital heart condition, Mery faced significant health challenges from the very beginning. Her childhood was further complicated by anxiety, yet she emerged resilient and determined to make a difference. Finding her calling in teaching, she dedicated 20 years to Berlin’s educational system, where she excelled in counseling students and parents, particularly in difficult family situations. Mery became a trusted advocate for intercultural understanding, consistently striving to create a supportive environment for all. After training with renowned therapist Marisa Peer in Rapid Transformational Therapy, Mery transitioned to helping clients overcome self-esteem and relationship issues. Her rich personal experiences and empathetic approach now guide clients toward happiness and fulfillment, transforming lives with each session.

What inspired your transition from teaching to becoming a Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) Therapist? 

I have always been a good teacher who loved her job. However, dealing with all the difficulties around it due to the fact that more and more students had mental issues of and all the paperwork coming with this it became more and more challenging. Students always loved me and I loved them and am still connected with some of the students of my last class. I got along well with parents, colleagues, with everyone. It just got too much. When you are a good and engaged teacher, you don’t quit thinking and working for your students when you go home. During Covid, my class and I grew even closer because I spent more time with each of them individually. I realized that I loved staying at home and teaching from there. I didn’t want to go back to school, but I had to. During Covid I learned a lot at the Mindvalley platform. I loved all of it. I found myself telling me that going to school is exhausting, that I will get sick here, and that I can’t bear it any longer. If you know about the rules of the mind, then you understand that your mind is trying to keep you safe. So my mind tried to keep me safe by making me sick, so I didn’t have to go back to this dangerous place. I found Marisa Peer on Mindvalley and learned about the rules of the mind and how to program myself for the better. I started telling my mind that this is challenging and that I’m the best teacher for these difficult students because I can do this. My health got better and I taught my students what I learned. I had planned to take a year off from school before I made the decision to start something new, so, when my class left school, I left too. A year before I had started a YouTube channel to become an influencer for students and teach what I knew. When I found out that there is a training by Marisa Peer to become a RTT therapist I booked it and I loved everything I learned. That’s two years ago now, and I still love what I’m doing and wished that RTT would be more popular in Germany. I’m working online on zoom, in English and German. 

How do your experiences as a teacher, particularly in counseling and intercultural affairs, inform your approach to therapy? 

Having been a teacher for 20 years, explaining difficult things in an easy way has become a second nature. I have always been kind of a diplomat, in my family, and at school being in the middle between all my German colleagues, and the students and parents coming from everywhere in the world. Being raised as a Christian in Germany but becoming a Muslim and getting in touch with Muslim communities from Turkish and Arabian background, it was easy for me to explain to each side what the other side meant during conversations. I was also raised in South America, so being intercultural has always been part of my history Counseling is part of every teachers job, and it has become more and more lately. I have learned to listen closely and read between the lines being a teacher, and this is very helpful for me now as a therapist and coach. When I’m dealing with religious clients, be it of Christian, Jewish or Muslim faith, I always include God and their faith in my transformational audios. 

Can you share a specific example of how your training in RTT has helped a client overcome a challenge related to self-esteem, love, or relationships? 

One of my first clients was a woman of around 60. She had been in rather abusive relationships before, again and again. She booked a session for self esteem because she didn’t like herself enough to say what she wants. She was living with her daughter and her two grandsons in Tunisia. Although she was providing for them with her pension, she wasn’t able to stand her ground when it came to taking decisions. She had no voice, she always stayed silent, and the effect of that was that she became more and more unhappy and upset because she didn’t get what she wanted. In our session, we went back to scenes of her childhood. Lack of self esteem and having no voice must not necessarily come from a terrible childhood or immense trauma. We found out that the main root cause of her issue was a situation where she was simply left alone in her room, in her bed, when she was two years old. She had cried for her mom to come, but her mom was in the kitchen and couldn’t hear her. So she formed the belief that she’s not good enough and her voice would not be heard. It was as simple as that. After the session, she suddenly liked herself on pictures, started to love herself and pampered herself if she needed it. She’s living a much happier life now and so is the rest of her family. She is now open and willing to start a new relationship, but only with a man who values her the way she values herself. 

One of my last clients came to me with a fear of flying. Fear of flying often has to do with the need to control and not feeling safe. In our intake call I found out that she needs to control her parents beyond a normal way. Although she was happy in her marriage and was a young, beautiful woman, she could not enjoy having sex with her husband. She just couldn’t feel anything. Sex was only a duty to her and necessary because she wanted to have children. After our first session where we worked on her need for control and after we solved this issue with her parents, she experienced that she also began to enjoy having sex with her husband. She didn’t need to control her parents anymore, and in this very moment, after the second session there we concentrated on the fear of flying, she is on a trip to Rome with her husband, by plane. 

What motivated you to delve into fields such as Tantra, Reiki, and mediumship, and how have these experiences enriched your current practice? 

I have always been unhappy in relationships, being unable to value and love myself. I gave myself away much too easily when I was young. I’ve always been looking for connection and didn’t even have an idea who I really was because I had always mirrored the man I was with. I was raised with the idea that you need to become a wife, a mother, get a good job and money. In my mid 30s, I finally came to the point where I had achieved all of it, but still was unhappy and unfulfilled most of the time. This is where my journey started. I learned about many things: healing stones, astrology, tarot, and finally Reiki. During my trainings in Reiki, I realized that there is more than what the eye can see. I started to believe in God again after having lost my faith in God whenI became a teenager. I started praying again and wanted to learn more about the other world, the spiritual world. As a result I left the Church because I couldn’t cope with Christian history. I learned that we are all capable of connecting with the highest source and our higher self. Being unable to find satisfaction and all the answers I had in the material word I tried to escape to the other world. I became an energy healer and started by healing myself. I trained my intuition and connected to my heart. Although my second marriage broke too I found myself and part of my identity in these tantra classes, which were nothing but pure body therapy. I cannot describe how much I learned there, in these two years of tantra training. I dropped judgment and even learned to forgive myself. When clients come to me today, I never judge, not them and also not the ones who made them suffer. All my spiritual practice have led me to the conclusion that everyone is doing the best they can and that our responsibility here on earth is to heal ourselves and lead others to heal themselves. That’s what I’m doing now. My job is to give those who want to heal a hand and Mae it possible for them to understand why the experiences of the past have caused their issues of today. 

Tell us more about the “Happiness-Quickly” hypnosis and how it has benefited your clients. 

The „Happiness-Quickie“ is a RTT audio I have made to allow not only my clients but everyone who wants it to experience a quick access to the feelings of love and happiness – and you can train this if you listen to it regularly for a longer period of time. To clients who are dealing with the need to control, I always give it in advance of our session, for free, so when they book the session or when we start, they already trust my voice and know they are save when they go down the stairs in hypnosis with me. There is a YouTube video of mine in German where I explain how easily we can make ourselves happy by thinking the right thoughts. I also give it to clients in advance when they can’t have a session immediately, and are suffering a lot. I love giving it to everyone who wants it because I want everyone to be happy.

As a public speaker in the making, what topics are you most passionate about sharing with your audience, and why? 

Been trained by Marisa Peer one of the main important topics I can think of is how their mind works, and how we can influence how we feel by ourselves, just by thinking the right thoughts. My favorite topic is love, of course. Having experienced so many difficulties in relationships myself, due to the fact that I didn’t love myself until I was fifty, I think it’s so important to talk about the connection between failing in relationships and lack of self-love and self-esteem because, for example, jealousy and the need to control have the potential destroy every otherwise happy relationship. I have always been afraid of being abandoned and was therefore very jealous, longing for a symbiotic connection with my partners. I have always been lovable, but I didn’t know it. However, learning to love yourself is so easy because RTT is such a powerful tool. We can even command our cells, our body, to work perfectly in hypnosis. And it works. I left school because I wanted everyone to know about it. Talking about the fact that there is a fast and easy way to solve most of the problems people have to deal with surely is something worth talking about. I love working with RTT and coaching. 

How has your journey from Chile to Berlin shaped your perspective on life and influenced your professional path? 

I was a baby when I moved to Berlin from Chile. I lived in Bolivia for three years at the age between three and six. I don’t believe it has influenced my professional path. But what has influenced me in becoming a teacher was the fact that both of my parents were teachers. My sister stayed in Bolivia and married a man from there. She has got eight children and my family is very much connected. So, being part of a German-Bolivian, Spanish-speaking family has influenced me in that way that I have always been open for different cultures. I have traveled a lot even in my childhood and traveling is my hobby, still. 

What role has Islam played in your personal growth and decision-making process, especially regarding your career changes? 

Reiki, Tantra, Islam and Marisa Peer have been milestones on my path, back to love. Reiki has made me believe in God again, Tantra has made me believe in the value of my own body and soul, Islam, same as Tantra – although it might sound weird for many to see a connection between the two – has taken me away from the conditioning of my past, the way I was raised – it has helped me to become the real me, the connected me, the one who was able to rise above what I had learned about who I am as a child. I grew immensely spiritually with both, Tantra and Islam. I gained trust in myself, in my higher purpose, and the higher source, or God or Allah, however you want to name it. I grew strong in my personality because I became different from the rest of my family and friends by choosing first Tantra and then decided to live by the rules of Islam, and this helped me to break out of what I have always thought was the right way to live. In fact, it was my mother’s way of thinking I broke free from. Her way to see the world has always influenced me since I was a child. She couldn’t cope with Tantra, and for sure, not with me becoming Muslim and covering my head. She is old now, 94, and we really love each other very much. However, she will never be able to understand how I could leave a secure job just to follow my heart ’s desire, and be happy with what I do now. My faith in God and my believe that I can achieve everything I want made this possible and I owe it to the path I mentioned above. I’m a woman with a mission, with a heart full of love for everyone, including myself. I hate no one and I have forgiven everyone. I don’t know where this will lead me to, but I’m open for whatever comes, trusting that everything that is happening to me is happening for me. 

Could you describe how your personal struggles with anxiety and fear have influenced your approach to helping others navigate similar challenges? 

I believe that having been in the dark places were my clients are struggling with when they reach out for help is making it easier for me to understand the challenges they are facing now. I am able to feel them somehow and to see the connection between their issues and where it’s coming from because I that’s where I’m coming from. But even when I’m dealing with issues like depression or others which I have never experienced myself, I get a sense of how they feel because I’m very emphatic. I have experienced in the past while I was working at a hotline that I’m able to feel people’s feelings. That was strange. But now it’s helping me to build a rapport with my clients and understand what they need. 

What advice would you give to someone who is hesitant to follow their heart’s desire due to fear or uncertainty? 

This question is not easy to answer, because it depends on what the heart desires and what the circumstances are. You always have to take into account the financial and family situation. I would always recommend to take small steps, take action while taking into account the effects the action will cause to others. Most important is to know your Why. There is a great exercise I use in my coaching called „Seven Levels Deep“. You write down what is important for you, like “ I want to become a healer” for example. You ask yourself the question: „Why is this so important for me?“ You write your answer down and then you ask the question again and again until you reach level seven. Very often what we are really looking for is not clear on first sight. If you then know your why and understand your longing for change from the bottom of your heart, you will be strong enough to go all the way. 

What’s your unique expertise in addressing various challenges such as fear of flying, depression, and weight loss, while also nurturing self-love and facilitating fulfilling relationships, as demonstrated by successful experiences like those with Muslim women from Israel and the US seeking to attract suitable partners?

I specialize in addressing various challenges such as fear of flying, depression, OCD, and weight loss, aiming to alleviate burdens and install feelings of self-worth, fostering fulfilling relationships. With a focus on matters of the heart, I’ve successfully assisted clients worldwide, like two Muslim women from Israel and the US, in attracting compatible partners by helping them radiate positive energy. I these cases, too, it was very helpful to find their why in the beginning. What kind of partner would they love to attract and why. We then found out what was hindering them, which experiences in their childhood and teenage have created sabotaging fears and blocks that finally led to them not being able to open up to possible partners. Not believing we are lovable, we are enough and valuable are the main reasons why people can’t find a happy relationship.

Could you share insights about your forthcoming biography, intertwining personal experiences with family history, spanning pre, during, and post-World War II eras, set to release by the end of June?

I’m currently working on a biography slated for release by the end of June. It delves into my personal journey, encapsulating profound learnings and also some historical narratives. Beginning with the experiences of my parents and grandparents, it even navigates through the pre, during, and post-World War II periods. I believe that it’s most important to understand where you are coming from, to know your family history, if you want to understand why you are the way you are. Writing this book has become something between self-therapy and an approach to guide others through the jungle love can become when you are desperately longing for connection. I have taken the decision to openly talk about love and sex, adultery and jealousy, the good and the bad in the matters of the heart. It describes my journey from being an abandoned child to finding my way back to love, back to myself. I’m in the process of writing the last chapter, so hopefully it will be released by the end of June. „Connections – A Woman’s Journey Back to Love“ is the title I favor the most.