- Betrayal Trauma, Abandonment and Shame - Have you been left, abandoned, rejected, or cheated on by someone you loved? That is a ‘gut punch’ of shame – and creates the belief that you’re not enough. If I was enough, they would have loved me. If I was enough, they wouldn’t have left me. If I was enough, they would have wanted […]
- Desperate to be Loved - Why won’t anyone love me?? Are desperate to be loved? Do you find that you keep selling yourself short, engaging in destructive relationships and hoping that the current person you with will just love you like you so desperately want, but being disappointed again and again? If you don’t love you first, if you don’t […]
- What does Shame have to do with personal boundaries? - Shame prevents you from setting good boundaries. A while back, one of my clients said, “You deserve what you tolerate.” Another way of looking at this is that we teach people how to treat us. If you tolerate bad behaviors towards you, they are bound to continue. If you set the expectation that people in […]
- A bit more about the Shame Cycle - I’ve been thinking about the Shame Cycle recently as I’ve been writing the 2nd edition of my book, Shameless. So many of us believe that our negative thoughts, memories or temptations belong to us. They are in our heads, they sound like our voice – but they are unwanted. Just like the sound of breaking […]
- Understanding the Shame Cycle - Shame Cycle How do you interrupt the Shame Cycle? First, here’s how it works – you get tempted to do something wrong, think something negative, hold onto resentment, what have you. When you give into that temptation, that’s sin or bad/negative behavior. After you engage in the sinful/bad behavior, inevitably shame comes marching in, causing […]
- “You call yourself a Christian?!?” – Faith Shaming - “…and you call yourself a Christian!” Have you ever heard someone say that, or worse yet, been on the receiving end of a shaming message like that? You can substitute any positive label here – ‘…and you call yourself a …..!” and the shaming message is the same. The accusation is that you wouldn’t be […]
- Individual vs. Couple’s Therapy - This can be a challenging question. I’m in individual therapy and my counselor wants to meet my partner. What do I do? I’m in marriage counseling and my therapist suggests I get individual counseling, either with them or with another therapist. What do I do? Individual versus joint therapy versus conjoint therapy can be confusing. […]
- Mental Health is an Essential Service under COVID-19 -
- “They’d be better off without me” - When I talk to people who have messed things up, the enemy tells them that their family would be “better off” without them. They are engaging in self-hatred. They contemplate divorce and sometimes suicide. The lie they are believing is that they can\’t do better, they can’t be better, and they can’t overcome the damage […]
- Shame vs. Conviction - I’d like to talk a little bit about my limited understanding of how God convicts us to change in comparison to how the enemy shames us. I heard Pastor Joby of 11:22 put it very well – if what you’re hearing is a message of condemnation, it’s from the enemy, not God. If God is […]
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