Articles
Coping with Grief: Scriptures About Loss to Help You Grieve
The world we live in is a broken one. That brokenness manifests itself in diverse ways, from relationships mired in conflict, rifts between loved ones, having those you love taken from you by illness or some other calamity, and so on. There is much weeping and sorrow that accompanies our sojourn. Scripture reflects this reality and gives us the language to process our experiences and grieve the various losses we go through. In this article, we’ll consider some encouragement and tips for coping with grief. Grief comes to us all, and it does so in different ways. Rather than denying our [...]
How to Recognize Employee Burnout
According to a study of 1000 participants, around 77% of people experience employee burnout at their current workplace. Employee burnout is common and causes many physical, mental, and emotional problems. How can you tell if you are in burnout, and what can you do? Employee Burnout Symptoms Employee burnout can happen to anyone. You may enjoy your job, but due to employee shortages, new contracts, tighter deadlines, or management changes, the stress is unbearable. Combine workplace burnout with other problems at home, such as marital strife, behavioral issues in the children, financial worries, and illness. It can be too much for [...]
Infidelity and Fidelity: What Are They and How Do They Look?
Loyalty and trust are the bedrock of relationships, particularly marital relationships. When that is broken there is a lot of fear, anxiety, and sorrow to work through. Talking about infidelity is hard. It involves painful emotions and complicated situations. Often it comes with wondering about the inverse. Even fidelity and infidelity have a spectrum. Understanding how to be a faithful partner involves more than just not having an affair outside of your marriage. What is fidelity? Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Fidelity is a quality that is valuable in many parts of life and is essential to establishing [...]
What is Insecure Avoidant Attachment?
Take a moment to think back on yourself as a child. Think about your relationships with your parents or caregivers. What were they like? Did you feel safe and secure around them? Was your heart met with delight? Were your desires honored with curiosity and healthy discipline? Did they attune to you when you were upset or crying? Did they comfort you and bring you back to a calm or regulated place? Insecure-avoidant attachment defined To ask the question, “What is insecure-avoidant attachment?” is to engage these core areas and narratives around desire, delight, safety, attunement, and curiosity. More specifically, it is [...]
What Does it Mean to Receive Trauma-Informed Care?
A person who experiences trauma has a hard time getting the help needed due to the alteration of their ability to recover from the event. Trauma is not the same for all people, so there is no one way to approach the healing process. Receiving safe healthcare for trauma starts with the ability of the caregiver to understand that trauma can impact a person’s ability to engage in treatment. This is the basis of trauma-informed care. What is trauma-informed care? Trauma-informed care is the practice of universal precautions for trauma. Just like the universal precautions for pathogens, trauma-informed care is a [...]
Making Use of Your Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
Have you ever heard the expression, “read the room” being used before? Often, it’s used when someone blunders into a situation and acts in a way that’s totally out of sync with the prevailing mood. They fail to pick up on the non-verbal and verbal cues given by others and respond inappropriately to what is being said and done. Failing to read the room can make you feel isolated and lost in social interactions. Being able to read situations and respond appropriately is important not only in social settings but at the workplace as well. There are many interpersonal interactions in [...]
How to Move Beyond Codependent Relationship Dynamics
A relationship can be like a grapevine – planted in good soil and with the right mix of what it needs, it can produce an amazing crop. The best relationships leave you feeling deeply satisfied, and there’s nothing quite like them. When two people genuinely love and respect each other, those are the makings of a beautiful relationship. However, just like a grapevine, a relationship can be emaciating and unhealthy in a variety of ways. Codependency is one of many ways that a relationship can go wrong. The good news is that codependency can be dealt with, and a relationship can [...]
Symptoms of OCD and How Christian Counseling Can Help
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a mental health condition that involves repetitive, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) that are relieved by repetitive rituals (compulsions) that appease the discomfort of the behavior. As the symptoms of OCD become more pronounced, the pattern of behavior can become further engrained and feel uncontrollable, causing much distress to the individual, as well as their loved ones who witness the struggle. At the heart of OCD lies deep-seated anxiety, which can be treated with medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. However, Christian counseling offers an additional tool. By reminding individuals that the symptoms of OCD are not beyond the sovereignty of [...]
PTSD and Relationships: A Circular Pattern
PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is a mental health disorder that can develop as the result of a person witnessing or experiencing a shocking, terrifying, dangerous, traumatic event such as war, physical or mental abuse, violence, captivity, an act of terrorism, or a natural disaster, where someone’s life was threatened, or a severe injury or death occurred. How PTSD and relationships interact PTSD symptoms can create issues with trust, closeness, and communication that affect the way a trauma survivor suffering from PTSD acts toward others. This, in turn, influences how they respond to the survivor’s actions, which impacts his or her reaction [...]