Blog posts, news articles, and other resources from The Center • A Place of HOPE
We are living in very stressful times, living in the time of this Coronavirus outbreak. The situation seems out of our control and our new way of living – either or lock down or social distancing from loved ones –is uncomfortable and different. Here are 10 things you can do...
Part Two of a Six-part Series on Relationship Communication The darkness of the sky felt as if it might swallow the whole of her as she stared out the window that cold winter’s night. Tears streamed down Jena’s face as she replayed the evening’s events in her mind. The same...
One of my clients had had his marriage blow up in his face only months before. His pornography habit had been discovered yet again--after repeated promises of “I’m quitting now"--and his wife was so fed up she had left the house for a week. (It could just as easily been...
“Things were going well all week with my wife and me, and I thought the tensions were behind us,” a client told me recently. “But no, last night, she got all upset again over nothing.” If your marriage has been disrupted by your spouse exploding over their discovery of your...
When you were growing up, you may have been told over and over, in a variety of ways, that you weren’t good enough, smart enough fast enough, thin enough, or just plain not enough of anything to please your parents. In order to numb this crushing sense of failure and...
What do people do when it seems God is not acting according to their expectations? Validation, assurance, relief, significance, and more -- are gifts from God.
Turning over your life to God as the navigator is not easy. It requires you to give up control over your life, listen to God, and pay attention to His answer.
If the parenting model you grew up with was fundamentally flawed, you may be at a loss to determine what is normal and what is not, what is helpful and what is harmful.
How you feel about yourself affects all of your other relationships. Some of you may not be used to the idea that you have a distinct relationship with yourself, but you do. You have a personality and a will; you have a perspective on life that is lived out in...
There's something important to remember in the quest for strength and courage, and that's a spirit of kindness. Too often we teach our children the verse, "Be kind one to another" (Eph. 4:32 RSV), and then we forget the admonition as adults. True forgiveness and kindness are cut from the...
When you take the risk of opening up to others and begin to share who you are with someone you learn to trust, you are on your way to emotional wholeness.
One of the core traits of a dependent personality is difficulty accepting challenging or disturbing truths about self or others out of a need to maintain the status quo.
Healthy people are growing people, and people do not grow healthy in isolation.
Resilient as children are, childhood abuse, in its various forms, can decimate a child's sense of self. Here are ten questions to consider when processing the struggles associated with childhood abuse.
Sheila sat on her bed and cried out in frustration. What was she going to do? The fear she'd been carrying around inside for the past six months finally was realized. He's made it clear that if she wanted to get her promotion, she'd have to "cooperate" with him. Sheila...
Have you ever been so mad at someone (it doesn't have to be a parent) that it's all you could think about? Every time you were around that person, you kept thinking about how mad you were. You didn't want to be around that person. Even though what made you...
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the only way to have a friend is to be one. The depth of your character is best gauged by the depth of your friendships.
Anxiety has written a script where you play the part of a frazzled, anxious, suspicious, irritable, short-tempered, and easily frustrated person. How do you want to be perceived by the other players on stage? When you take control of your own script, you determine the part you are going to play and then you act accordingly.
The whole person approach to treatment integrates all aspects of a person’s life: