Creating a Better Way to Heal
Inner Bonding is the original proven 6 step process for emotional healing - developed over 40 years and practiced by hundreds of thousands worldwide
Created by 2 psychologists to transform shame, guilt, emptiness, low self-worth, relationship struggles, and addictive behaviors into self-love, emotional freedom and joyful connection
Most therapeutic processes help you understand why you struggle, but Inner Bonding teaches you how to heal, so you can develop loving relationships, and live free of your false beliefs
A trusted approach with a global community of practicioners, resources and supportive programs to help you heal yourself and create the life and relationships you long for
The Question that Changed Everything
In the late 1980s, two psychologists began asking the same
question:
Why does so much therapy help people understand their pain — but
not actually heal it?
Dr. Margaret Paul had already spent 17 years in a traditional
psychotherapy private practice, working with individuals and
couples. She could often identify the heart of a person’s struggle
within minutes.
But something troubled her.
Many people gained insight into their problems, yet continued
repeating the same painful patterns in their relationships and their
lives.
They understood why they felt the way they did.
But they still didn’t know how to change it.
At the same time, Dr. Erika Chopich was pursuing her PhD in
psychology after an extraordinary and unconventional career that
included work as a firefighter, paramedic, musician, chef, and
public health administrator.
Margaret has prayed for a teacher or process that would work to
actually heal, and that’s when she met Erika.
Erika had spent years exploring the emotional and spiritual
dimensions of healing — particularly the role of the inner child and
the connection to a higher source of guidance and wisdom.
Their conversations quickly became electric. As they began
comparing ideas, a realization emerged:
Each of them held part of the answer.
Margaret had developed powerful work around emotional
responsibility and intention.
Erika had a deep understanding of the inner child and the spiritual
dimension of healing.
As Erika later described it:
“Margaret had half the process, and I had half the process.”
When the two ideas came together, something new began to take
shape.
That collaboration would become Inner Bonding®.
A New Path to Emotional Healing
From the beginning, Inner Bonding addressed something Margaret
had long felt was missing in traditional therapy:
The “how” to heal and change their patterns and struggles.
It gave people a way to learn how to care for themselves
emotionally — how to respond to painful feelings with curiosity,
compassion, and responsibility rather than self-abandonment.
The work began transforming lives almost immediately.
Margaret and Erika wrote their first book, Healing Your Aloneness,
which introduced these ideas to readers around the world. The
book quickly became a bestseller and was translated into multiple
languages.
Soon they were teaching workshops internationally, appearing on
television — including The Oprah Winfrey Show — and working with
thousands of individuals and couples seeking deeper healing.
While writing their next book, they were able to further improve the
impact and usability of Inner Bonding.
They organized the process into six clear steps that clarified the
essence of their work and created a pathway people could learn,
practice, and apply in their daily lives.
The result was a system that was not only profound, but teachable,
practical, and transformative.
What Is Inner Bonding?
Inner Bonding is a six-step, spiritually grounded process of self-healing that addresses the root causes of many forms of emotional suffering — including anxiety, depression, addiction, relationship conflict, shame, and feelings of emptiness or disconnection.
At its heart, Inner Bonding teaches people how to develop a loving relationship with themselves.
Through the process, people learn to:
- recognize their inherent worth
- heal the wounded inner child
- develop a strong, loving adult self
- connect with a deeper source of spiritual guidance
- take responsibility for their emotional wellbeing
- create authentic and loving relationships with others
The practice is simple enough to learn — yet deep enough to transform how people relate to themselves and to life.
Over the past four decades, Inner Bonding has helped hundreds of thousands of people heal emotional pain and create more loving lives.
Today the work continues through books, courses,
workshops, and trained facilitators around the world.
Yet Margaret and Erika have always seen the work as something larger than a therapeutic method.
Their belief is simple:
The more people who learn to love themselves, the more love and peace will exist in the world.
The Proof Is in the Lives They’ve Lived
Margaret and Erika did not create Inner Bonding from theory alone.
Both women came from difficult beginnings and faced profound personal challenges in their lives.
Each spent years searching for deeper answers about healing, love,
and human potential.
And through that search — and through the practice of Inner
Bonding itself — they created lives defined not by hardship, but by
creativity, exploration, service, and joy.
They are artists.
Teachers.
Writers.
Horsewomen.
Speakers.
Explorers.
Margaret has spent decades helping people reconnect with their
emotional and physical wellbeing while continuing her own lifelong
creative practice as a painter and master potter.
Erika has flown planes, opened restaurants, worked with homeless
families across the country, and developed healing programs with
horses.
Their lives are full not because they avoided pain — but because they
learned how to heal it.
In many ways, their lives themselves are a demonstration of what
Inner Bonding makes possible.
When people learn to care for themselves with love and responsibility, something remarkable happens.
Their energy returns.
Their creativity awakens.
Their relationships deepen.
And life opens in ways they may never have imagined.
Meet the Co-Creators of Inner Bonding
Dr. Margaret Paul
Psychologist, Relationship Expert, Author, Educator
Dr. Margaret Paul is a psychologist, relationship expert, educator, and bestselling
author whose work has helped shape the modern conversation around emotional
healing and conscious relationships.
For more than four decades she has worked with individuals and couples to help
them identify and heal the patterns of self-abandonment that create anxiety,
depression, addiction, and relationship conflict.
She is the author or co-author of numerous bestselling books, including:
- Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?
- Inner Bonding
- Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding
- Healing Your Aloneness
- The Inner Bonding Workbook
- Diet for Divine Connection
Her books have been translated into eleven languages and distributed worldwide.
Margaret has taught workshops and intensives internationally since the early 1980s
and has worked with thousands of individuals and couples. She has had specialized
training in healing trauma, and is very successful in helping her clients heal from
even extensive trauma and abuse.
She has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including The Oprah
Winfrey Show, and has taught at institutions including UCLA Extension, Pepperdine
University, and California State University Northridge. She was also a consultant for
Barbra Streisand on the film, The Prince of Tides.
In addition to her work in psychology, Margaret is widely respected for her expertise
in nutrition and mind-body health. Through her books, courses, and clinical work
she has helped thousands of people understand how emotional healing and
physical wellbeing are deeply intertwined — empowering them to stop abandoning
themselves physically and begin nourishing their bodies with care and awareness.
She’s a master potter, a painter, welder and an accomplished artist. Her artist eye
and observational skills have been enormously helpful in her therapeutic practice.
Today Margaret continues to teach and work with individuals and couples around
the world through sessions, courses, and the SelfQuest® Inner Bonding program.
Her deepest passion remains what first inspired the creation of Inner Bonding:
Helping people heal the root cause of their pain and discover joy, connection, and
purpose.
Dr. Erika Chopich
PhD, Author, Philanthropist, Chaplain
Dr. Erika Chopich is a psychologist, bestselling author, speaker, ordained chaplain, and humanitarian whose life has been devoted to healing and service.
Before becoming a psychotherapist, Erika had an extraordinary medical and public health career that included roles as:
- firefighter
- paramedic
- surgical and cardiac intensive care technician
- laboratory technician
- administrator of the LA Free Clinic, the largest free clinic in the US
Her background gave her firsthand experience with trauma, crisis, and the resilience of the human spirit.
She later earned her PhD in psychology and co-created the Inner Bonding process with Dr. Margaret Paul.
Dr. Chopich is the co-author of:
- Healing Your Aloneness
- The Healing Your Aloneness Workbook
- Lonely No More
And Author of:
- Real Angels Don’t Have Wings
She has appeared on television and radio programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, and has led seminars and workshops across the United States.
In addition to her psychological work, Erika founded Hope America Ministries, traveling across the country to work directly with homeless families and individuals — often meeting people living under bridges, in parks, and on the streets and helping them reconnect with resources and support.
She is also:
• an accomplished pilot
• a classically trained chef
• natural horsemanship trainer and equine assisted therapist
Today she continues her work helping people heal trauma through Inner Bonding and through her healing ranch in Colorado.
What People Have to Say about Inner Bonding
Here is a method for recreating yourself as a powerful, spiritually connected, loving adult self, capable of taking personal responsibility for your own feelings and behaviors. Anything that takes huge wisdom and turns it into a practical tool is a treasure indeed.
Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God ⭐
As a former psychotherapist, coach and spiritual seeker, I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the past thirty plus years. Your inner bonding process and self-love course gave me additional tools to take my relationship with myself and my relationships with others to a new level of health, joy and love.
I’ve already recommended your work to family, friends and coaching clients and will continue to do so. I look forward to future learning with you. Thank you so much for sharing your gifts!
Lyndra Hearn Antonson
Dr. Margaret Paul is a true master of Love. By reconnecting the aspects of the personality that have been marginalized for protective reasons early on in life with the essential Soulful Self, she transforms life right before one’s eyes into deeply meaningful moments of celebrating our wholeness. Her work is timely, profound, and completely accessible for everyone.
Dr. Sue Morter, Founder, Morter Institute for Bio-Energetics; Host, GAIA TV Healing Matrix ⭐
Nothing — no other process, no studies, no counseling, no spiritual quest, nothing — has ever impacted me so much.
The shift inside me is palpable; I can feel huge, positive changes “clicking” into place.
Even just this very brief exposure to the IB teachings has been completely life-altering. Which is notable, to say the least, for someone who’s been as desolate at heart as I have, for so long.
All I can say is Thank You. Pretty small words, for such a big gift.
Coby Gordon