Therapy Issues: Discerning the Professional from the Personal

What's the difference between friendly advice and therapy?
A lot. Compassionate boundaries of respect and limits, for a start.

Therapy Issues: Discerning the Professional from the Personal

Popular posts from this blog

Glad They Didn't Call

A couple of weeks back I wrote an essay for the Savage Pacer , one of the columns I have done for the paper every few weeks or so since 1997. This time, I wrote about my disgust with the Roman Catholic leadership about the decades of cover ups of child abuse and pedophilia that continue to be discovered. I am just one of the hundreds of people writing, blogging, speaking, and interviewing recently on this continuing scandal. My ideas are certainly not unique in any way, and are informed by my 25+ years of study and personal service as a pastor of the Church. Want to read it? Here it is:  Savage Pacer column It generated a lot of feedback. I'm happy I have more than a few readers, and that I can continue to inspire people with my words. But the most angry people respond, of course, and their letters to the editor were printed in the paper last week. I decided I didn't need to read them myself. I guess they were pointed upset and shocked. I'm just glad they didn't wr
Read more

And Furthermore

While pain is the energy that moves us toward change, the absence of pain isn't enough to sustain it. This is one of the factors that makes change so hard: we experience the lack of pain as relief, as a kind of balance or homeostasis. We tend to rest there; we're comfortable again. We take a few pills, and our pain decreases. We see a therapist once or twice, and we don't go back. Many of us aren't really that interested in change. We just want a rescue from pain. Pleasure is what I think is on the other side of relief. In order to move us from pain to relief to change , human beings need regular, positive reinforcement. We need to really feel that our effort is giving us something new and different than just relief; it's creating a welcome, desired difference. And that difference needs to be sustained in order for us to trust our effort is working. We need positive, consistent reinforcement of our efforts. In other words, rewarding ourselves keeps the balance
Read more

Pr. Rob Bell's Revision

Image
Rob Bell, evangelical pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, MI, is making quite a stir with his new book, "Love Wins." I hope lots of people read his words. I hope they come to his side of the old Christian debate about the nature of salvation and the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.  While I haven't read his book, I know what it contains. It contains much of what I have been taught, studied, preached, written about and believed about God's intention for the human world through the life, ministry and death of Jesus. In my words, it's less about the details of certain parables and teachings of Jesus about hell and suffering, and more about the nature of God being grace, love and welcome to us sinners. We are all helpless without the love of God. And once we experience that love, Christianity is not so much about right belief anymore. It's about living with freedom, forgiveness, and using our lives to help and heal the world. To care about the kingdom of
Read more