Relationship Issues

Making Peace: Crafting a Recipe to Heal Toxic Family Relationships

By |August 26th, 2024|Family Counseling, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

The beauty of intimate relationships emerges from being seen and known by those who love us. Unconditional love and acceptance remove certain barriers from having to explain parts of ourselves that seem odd or unusual to others outside our family circle. This can free us to fully be who God created. However, this is not the case with every family. Sometimes, challenges with intimacy arise when our hearts feel unsafe with those closest to us, giving rise to a toxic family. Understanding the toxic family When toxicity rules our communication, it makes it difficult to connect. Our interactions become governed by mistrust, and we find ourselves among strangers in the place we call home. Within the network of people who may share our name or genetic makeup, we sometimes find ourselves cycling in a loop of dysfunction. What originates as an ordinary encounter on the surface can explode into an assault on our psyche and emotions. The people who love us, though imperfect, may not possess the skills to communicate their thoughts and feelings in ways that don’t objectify or offend. We may engage in interactions where we and our family members weaponize each other’s vulnerabilities. In a sense, it seems like both a blessing and curse that our families know our sensitive areas better than most. However, when conflict erupts, no one is safe when we lance one another’s soft spots. When we misuse prized information against each other, it indicates our collective unresolved personal pain. Our relatives’ humanity collides with ours, deepening wounds that seem impossible to heal. This is not the way that God intended for us to live or relate to one another. Overcoming these feelings requires more than just dismissing the encounters from our thoughts or cutting off communication. Ignoring it changes nothing, but [...]

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Date Ideas for Couples (Including Frugal Options)

By |July 17th, 2024|Couples Counseling, Featured, Marriage Counseling, Premarital Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Life is busy, and even the most devoted couples find themselves stalled out and needing date ideas. Date nights are all the rage, but the concept is not merely a trend. Spending time with your spouse allows the two of you to reconnect. Think back. When was the last time you and your partner had a deep, meaningful conversation that wasn’t about the kids, the house, or other responsibilities? Your busy schedules might make it feel like you’re constantly tag-teaming to manage everything. Here are some date ideas for couples that can help you hit the pause button on life and reconnect with each other. Whether you’re looking for entertainment, active dates, or frugal options, there’s something here for every couple, regardless of your schedule or budget. Remember, the best date ideas for couples are the ones you will do and enjoy. So, put the kids to bed an hour earlier, settle in for a good movie and snack, and enjoy each other’s company again. Entertainment date ideas for couples Laughter and fun can make dates memorable. Sharing interests and hobbies is another way to reconnect and converse about something other than children and work. The following are date ideas for couples involving entertainment. Movie theaters or outdoor movies. Concerts or the theater. Theme parks. Zoos and aquariums. Museums and art galleries. Karaoke. Road trips. You might be tempted to bring the family along for a few of these dates, such as the zoo or a theme park. However, remember that this date time is important to the relationship. If you were dating, you would not bring your family. You would want to share the moment with your significant other. Let your spouse be your sole focus during these trips, and vice versa. Active date ideas for couples Staying [...]

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Biblical Help for Codependency

By |July 2nd, 2024|Codependency, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Overcoming codependency is a complex process, but there is help available. One of the best things you can do if you are trying to navigate codependent relationships is to lean on biblical wisdom. This will help you make healthy choices such as relying on God, connecting with a Christian counselor, and setting healthy boundaries that honor the unique person God designed you to be. It is always advised to develop a support network to help you overcome issues like codependency. Consult with a pastor, spiritual leader, or Christian counselor in addition to trustworthy friends outside of the situation. They can provide guidance and support specific to your unique situation. As you do this, here are some biblical principles that can help: Seek God first But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. – Matthew 6:33, NIV God will provide the most important support you need in your journey to overcome codependence. You can rely on His strength and wisdom as you navigate decisions in your relationships. Accept God’s love and grace But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8, NIV God’s love for you matters more than the approval or validation of anyone else. This includes the person you are in a codependent relationship with. As you accept His love and grace you can stand firm on this foundation. Set healthy boundaries Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. – Proverbs 4:23, NIV God does not call you to engage with everyone in the same way. When you guard your heart with wisdom, you can establish healthy boundaries to protect your emotional and spiritual well-being. This will help [...]

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How to Forgive a Loved One Who Hurts You

By |May 17th, 2024|Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues, Spiritual Development|

We don’t always choose the people we love. By dint of circumstance and the various situations we find ourselves in, our lives become populated with people and relationships that have a huge impact on us, for good or for ill. People such as our parents, siblings, and relatives who form part of our extended family are a given for many of us, and they are in our lives before we are even able to make decisions about such things. Our loved ones aren’t perfect people, whether they just happened to be in our lives at the right place and time or because we chose to make them part of our lives. They make mistakes, whether these are errors in judgment, the result of poor communication, the inability to see someone else’s perspective, or sometimes through doing and saying hurtful things deliberately. When mistakes happen, they threaten the relationship and its ongoing existence. One of the main ways to deal with relational hurt is to forgive the person who hurt you. Forgiveness isn’t always easy, not only from the perspective of understanding what you’re doing when you’re forgiving someone but also from the experience of offering forgiveness itself. This article will provide some pointers for how to forgive a loved one who has hurt you. The place of forgiveness in relationships In all relationships, there comes a time when harm is caused, inadvertently or otherwise. Your loved one might not show up when you were relying on them to babysit. They might let slip to someone else something that was said in confidence. They might break a promise to pursue their rehab and treatment. They might lie, and so break your trust. They might say something in public that humiliates you. There are many ways for people to hurt each [...]

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Important Questions to Ask Your Significant Other

By |April 10th, 2024|Couples Counseling, Featured, Marriage Counseling, Premarital Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Can you ever know too much about the people you care about? In some circumstances, you find out things about loved ones that change how you view them, and you might want to turn the clock back to before you asked and obtained the terrible knowledge. In most cases, though, knowing more about your significant other – even the uncomfortable things – helps you appreciate them more as a person. Why ask questions to your significant other? There are a few good reasons to pursue a deeper understanding of your significant other. Some of these include: It’s good to be and to remain curious about them People change and grow. Also, not everything comes up in conversation or by simply observing them. Being curious about your loved one helps them know you’re still interested in them and are willing to learn more about them. Helps you understand them better You can’t presume that you know everything about someone. Instead of making assumptions, simply ask them about what you want to know. That’s the case whether your relationship is new, or a decade down the line. Helps you avoid miscommunication and increase alignment Asking questions helps you avoid misreading situations and gives you insight into how and person thinks or feels. You can guess how a person is, but asking them allows you to act with knowledge and avoid miscommunication. Helps you make an informed choice Knowledge is power, and when you know more about your significant other, it can help you to make informed choices. In a premarital situation, for instance, it can help you discern if your goals align and if the relationship has a future. Questions you can ask There are a number of questions you can ask your significant other at various stages of your relationship. [...]

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Professional Boundaries in the Workplace: What They Are and Why You Need Them

By |March 15th, 2024|Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Professional Development, Relationship Issues|

Boundaries are physical, mental, and emotional limits that determine how you care for yourself, interact with others, and allow others to treat you. They enable you to stay in control of your life. Professional boundaries in the workplace are especially important when you face the challenging task of trying to balance work obligations with personal time and responsibilities. Establishing professional boundaries in the workplace enables you to maintain a healthy balance between your personal and professional life so that work-related stress does not bleed into your personal life and cause important relationships and family life to suffer. Benefits of setting professional boundaries in the workplace Life-work balance is crucial to your overall well-being. Having healthy professional boundaries at work can increase your job satisfaction, improve performance and productivity, build better working relationships with yourcolleagues, and help prevent emotional exhaustion and burnout by ensuring that your workload is fair and reasonable. Professional boundaries in the workplace also help maintain a safe and supportive work environment by identifying what behaviors are and are not acceptable in the workplace, providing each employee with clear, realistic expectations of what their role is, and fostering honest, open communication to minimize disputes and misunderstandings. Setting professional boundaries for a healthy life-work balance Establish clear work hours Define your working hours and stick to them as much as possible even if you are working from home. Let colleagues, clients, and/or your boss know that you will not be available after hours unless it is an emergency, and set limits on tasks you will accept outside of work hours. Avoid bringing work home and avoid checking e-mails or work-related messages after work hours. Prioritize self-care Taking care of yourself is an important facet of finding a balance between your personal and professional life. It will increase your [...]

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Understanding Abandonment Issues: Causes and Signs

By |November 22nd, 2023|Abandonment and Neglect, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

If someone has abandonment issues, they can signal them in several different and seemingly unrelated ways. These can include unhealthy relationship habits, struggling to communicate, constant need for reassurance. If you are looking for help to more effectively cope with abandonment issues, then rest assured that experienced help is at hand. When someone ends an important relationship or friendship with us, or if someone that we are close to passes on, we will experience loss. The angst and anguish we experience as we go through these experiences is natural. When it comes to abandonment issues it is important to understand that these difficult and complex emotions do not pass normally. Rather a residue of them remains and this may lead to an unhealthy level of worry and fear of this abandonment happening again. If you or someone else struggles with abandonment, then common signs are a struggle to have healthy relationships, difficulty communicating with others, or failure to see one’s own value and self-worth. Defining abandonment issues. A form of anxiety and stress whose residue can affect relationships throughout a person’s life, the term “abandonment issues” cannot simply be interpreted as a medical diagnosis. Experts expect that the fear of being abandoned comes from an anxious attachment style or a trauma experienced in early childhood. Due to experiencing these emotional difficulties, one is unable to easily regulate their emotions. Unregulated worry, for example, can easily affect your actions and how you communicate. An anxious attachment style normally develops when a child’s need for security, and other needs, are not met by their caregivers. Almost all children with an anxious attachment style struggle with insecurities in the area of self-esteem, and some will also struggle with abandonment issues. Main causes. Safety and security are right at the base of Maslow’s [...]

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Long-distance Dating: Overcoming the Challenges

By |November 3rd, 2023|Couples Counseling, Featured, Premarital Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Many people have said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” But is this true? Can two people truly stay committed in a relationship if they are long-distance dating? To answer this question, we need to understand what it means to be long-distance dating. Long-distance dating is simply a relationship in which two people do not live close enough to see each other more than once or twice a week. Making any relationship work depends on how willing you are to invest time into the relationship. This is not just something that one person can make work. It will take both parties being intentional about the relationship. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. – 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, ESV Unique challenges of long-distance dating. Any relationship has challenges, but when it comes to long-distance dating they seem to be more intense. Challenges don’t mean that the relationship is doomed to failure. Challenges cause each person to decide how much they are willing to invest in the relationship. Here are five unique challenges that most couples who are long-distance dating will face. Local relationships and friends. For there to be a sense of trust there must be boundaries regarding local friends and other relationships. Financial impact of travel. Traveling once a week to see each other can be financially draining. Driving a couple of hours of week may not be as impactful as having to purchase an airline ticket. The emotional expectations of meetings. Since you are not seeing each other daily, there [...]

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How Counseling Can Help with Family Problems

By |October 12th, 2023|Family Counseling, Featured, Relationship Issues|

Family problems happen. You cannot prepare for every situation or crisis that comes along. Even if you know about specific issues, it is still challenging to navigate through them when you are in the thick of it. Many people seek therapy for family problems. This type of family counseling brings awareness to the problem and methods for dealing with it. Each family member is heard and seen during counseling; their voice matters. Common family problems No family is immune to problems. Yet, some issues can cause offense, isolation, neglect, abuse, and emotional distance. Some family problems can rip relationships apart. Children can turn against their parents, siblings may never speak to each other again, or a parent may feel it is safer to freeze out a child than to confront bad behavior. The Bible stresses the importance of marriage and family. Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court. – Psalm 127:3-5, NIV There are times when it feels as if we are being sliced by those very arrows, our children. The Bible also warns us not to over-discipline our children either, but to raise them with the right amount of discipline and teaching. Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. – Proverbs 22:6, NIV Raising a family is hard enough without outside factors such as bullying, financial downturns, health crisis, and mental conditions adding to the family problems. The following are common family problems counselors address in therapy. Communication issues and clashing personalities. Differences in [...]

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Codependency in Friendships: Knowing When Things Go Wrong Between Friends

By |September 20th, 2023|Featured, Individual Counseling, Men’s Issues, Relationship Issues, Women’s Issues|

Having a best friend for life can be a blessing. That blessing, however, is if the friendship is a healthy one. At times, an unhealthy dynamic of codependency  friendships is mistaken for committed care for one another. Knowing the difference between the two can make all the difference. What’s at the heart of codependency in friendships All good relationships have at their heart the mutual care and concern that ought to mark interactions between people. When it comes to codependent relationships, whether between friends, a parent and child, or between lovers, what’s gone wrong is the breakdown of healthy boundaries. For a relationship to function properly, a distinction needs to be maintained between the people in it so that their distinct needs are met. A good boundary allows us to separate our own needs and feelings from those of others. Boundaries help us define ourselves personally, helping us to thrive as individuals. A lack of poor boundaries leaves people enmeshed with one another. There is a loss of individuality, and with that is the reality that one or both sets of needs aren’t being met. That can be detrimental to emotional and physical health, leading to burnout, among other possibilities. Are you in a codependent friendship? Codependent friendships may look like a deep, rich connection from one vantage point. Upon closer inspection, what’s happening is not healthy for either party in the relationship. Both parties will likely lose their sense of identity the longer the dynamic continues. Some signs of a codependent friendship are: You feel threatened when the other person gets close to other people. Jealousy is common in codependent relationships. Often, other friends are cut off, leading to greater reliance on the friendship for emotional support. One of you is always in need of rescue by the [...]

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