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How To Build Trust In A Relationship
By Darrell Provinse, MA, LPC, NCC, Executive Director I don’t believe that you can live for very long on this planet without realizing that the fairy tale ideal of “Happily Ever After” is just that — a fairy tale. Broken people, in a fallen world, hurt each other, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small ways. Sometimes, we relive or carry around past wounds from other relationships and import them into the present. Whatever the cause, I think most people, by the time they reach adulthood, have experienced a betrayal of trust, and struggle with how to appropriately allow themselves to be vulnerable in a relationship without feeling that they…
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The Only Way Out Is Through: Understanding and Embracing Relationship Fears
Many of our Agape articles embody a theme of embracing our core relationship fears and learning how to tolerate the undesirable emotions that come with them. In order to move from self-judgment toward self-compassion, it’s important to understand our core fears, their origin, and how they impact our thoughts, feelings and relationships. This means we have to move toward the fear rather than avoid it. Once we acknowledge a relationship fear and move towards it, the fear begins to lose the power that it has over us. Poet Robert Frost has quoted “The only way out is through.” This is so true! A great resource to understanding core fears is…
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Lessons Taught by Trauma
By Kristy Cobillas, MEd, LPC “What good does it do to talk about it, if it’s not going to change anything?” When it comes to trauma, there are those who will attempt to mentally and emotionally bury the experience. It is true that simply talking about the past does not change it. Recounting the memory of a horrendous experience may do little more than cause one to re-experience the emotional pain. In therapy, victims of trauma can process the event(s) with the help of a professional, who uses techniques conducive to the healing process. Many people who have experienced trauma continue to suffer long after the event is over. The…
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12 Tips for Parenting Your Teenager
by Janet Kontz, MA, LPC Does this sound familiar? We often hear from parents of teenagers that they find it difficult to connect with their kids when they reach the adolescent stage of life. Many parents feel that this is the most daunting time to be a parent. Helping your teenager navigate through this period of life in between childhood and adulthood can be as confusing and frustrating for you, as it is for them. Take heart, parents! It doesn’t have to be a hard as you might think, and you don’t have to do it alone. Here are 12 tips for understanding and parenting your teenager: 1. Expect inconsistencies Teenagers are…
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