In my previous post I discussed one common scenario of how and why married couples grow apart. My recommendations for both prevention of and counseling point to at least three realities the couple must reckon with: A man and woman / husband and wife must not seek to find their “completion” through their spouse. Two […]
In the past few months I have seen an inordinate number of couples who are experiencing marital stress, conflict, and anxiety within their marriages and families that look well put together on the surface. Regardless whether it is the wife or the husband who contacts me, the reason for counseling is that the wife has […]
The Heart Is the Conduit The soul and the spirit are inexplicably tied together by what the Bible calls the “heart.” It’s obvious that God was not referring to our physical, flesh-and-blood heart when He included this term within the pages of His word. Throughout the Bible, writers seem to reference the heart in ways […]
Can Freud’s Theories Be Trusted? Although Freud and his teachings were highly circulated, what he claimed completely flies in the face of what the Bible teaches about human identity. The natural extension of Freud’s “blank slate” theory would be that our identity is merely the sum total of our past experiences, both good and not […]
A landmark article by the US Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD explains how the emotional trauma World War II imposed on American men profoundly changed how they functioned as men, husbands, fathers, and citizens. PTSD can make somebody hard to be with. Living with someone who is easily startled, has nightmares, and […]
Overcompensating is the only way we know how to effectively re-enter life – by creating a façade of what we believe to be acceptable, in hopes of safeguarding our inner brokenness. In constructing the façade, however, the shame messages within us cause us to go overboard, thinking we can will ourselves to be whole – […]
Shame has a deceptive way of convincing us that we need to hide ourselves from the outside world – at all cost – much like the way Adam and Eve hid themselves from God. We go to great lengths to protect our secrets. At its worst, shame will lead us to sacrifice good things in […]
The Five Freedoms Renowned author and therapist Virginia Satir speaks of the five freedoms that accrue when we are loved unconditionally. Shaming occurs when any or all of these are overlooked or under-validated within a family relationship system. The freedom to perceive. If a child’s God-given need to perceive is not affirmed, he or she […]
Secrecy Shame has a deceptive way of convincing us that we need to hide ourselves from the outside world – at all cost – much like the way Adam and Eve hid themselves from God. We go to great lengths to protect our secrets. At its worst, shame will lead us to sacrifice good things […]
Common sense might say that if we just do the opposite of the shaming we witnessed in childhood it will produce a healthy life, marriage, children, and family. The flaw in this reasoning is that, without of a person’s heart being regenerated through Christ, the opposite of shame-based is not self-worth, but rather pretentiousness and […]