What are your core values? The guiding principles of your life that give it shape, color, purpose, substance, satisfaction. The things that make you tick. I am convinced that every person has a unique set of core values that have been distilled from a combination of personality, experience, social influence, and divine design. So when is the last time you stepped back and considered yours?
On a daily basis, we are bombarded with images and sounds of all kinds. Through various forms of media - be it podcasts, videos or articles - we are constantly being overloaded with information about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. Doomscrolling and information overload have become the “new normal” in our world today, but what are the impacts that it can have on our spiritual, mental, emotional, and even physical health? And what kind of boundaries and coping skills can we apply to our online engagement to help us stay safe, sane, and grounded in Christ?
Much of what happens in counseling is uncovering why we so often repeat the same self-defeating behaviors. It can be easier in some ways to turn a blind eye to our own issues and blame others, justifying reactions and rationalizing behavior, but growth requires insight that we often lack all on our own. The Jahari Window is a tool that can help us grow in self-awareness, communication, and trust. This article explains how we can use the tool and how it intersects with Jesus’ ministry of bringing spiritual sight those who are otherwise blind.
For some, the arrival to counseling signifies an admission of defeat, hoping a kind stranger can take away the pain and get them back to having it all together. In the West and in the Church, our efforts to avoid pain know no bounds. But what if healing is found not by treating symptoms with contempt, but with care and compassion? Could anxiety and depression, lust and anger, be messages sent by God not to shame us but to show us areas of our heart he wants to meet with his love?
At the heart of God’s intention for human connection is interdependence. This simply refers to the integral balance between unity and distinction, togetherness and separateness, one-ness and many-ness. It means we are simultaneously dependent on one another and independent from one another. When that balance is lost—when we lean too far into sameness or too far into separateness—we see problematic patterns emerge in family, friendship, marriage, and work.
When someone is going through a season of grief or suffering, we often find ourselves responding with clichés and platitudes like, “be strong,” “everything happens for a reason” or “you’ll get over this.” Despite our well-intentioned (or in some cases misguided) reasons for using them, platitudes are actually counterproductive to the goal of providing comfort and encouragement. Why is that? And what can we do to offer sincere and meaningful support instead of platitudes?
Mental health stigma is cause for concern, but this is especially the case when it exists within faith-based communities, as it often does in Christian culture. Being directly associated with something as sacred as our shared faith, these forms of stigma produce even deeper layers of confusion and shame for those struggling with mental health. This occurs despite the fact that mental illness is just as prevalent among Christians as it is within the general population and is just as prevalent among church leaders as among any other member of a congregation. For something that is exceedingly normal, why do we as Christians so often treat it as something that makes us unfit or unworthy?
No friend is perfect, and similar to every individual, each friendship is unique and may bring out different sides of us. Some friendships last a season, while others may last a lifetime. However, healthy friendships tend to have certain things in common regardless of those differences. Here are some “green flags” to look out for in your friendships and reflect on as you consider the type of friend you want to be to others.
As the excitement of a new year fades, many of us find ourselves discouraged by resolutions we haven’t been able to keep. Rather than responding with guilt and self-criticism or just scrapping your goals altogether, we want to share a few questions that can help you pause, reflect, and clarify what you are working toward.
When we are struggling with difficult emotions, it can feel as though God is not with us or for us at all. This can be especially difficult during the holiday season when we feel as though we should feel “merry and bright.” But the miracle of the Incarnation - the very thing we anticipate throughout Advent and celebrate at Christmas - actually takes on profound significance in those very same hard places. It assures us that Jesus knows the burdens of our hearts and minds not in some distant or abstract sense, but intimately and personally, because He chose to take them upon himself for our sake.
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