• Door to freedom from anxiety
    Anxiety,  Fear,  Imaginative Prayer

    Three Methods that Helped Me Conquer Anxiety

    I became aware of my anxiety, ironically, when suddenly I had less to fear.  I found myself a single mother of four wonderful daughters and free of a narcissistic and cruel ex-husband.  I was so used to feeling numb that when I began to reconnect with my emotions, all the fear I lived with for years came to the surface. My approach to life, similar to my father’s, is to get a few books on a topic and begin to educate myself, but somehow specific methods for curing anxiety proved elusive. The one thing that kept popping up in my research is that the brain is plastic, and we have…

  • counseling
    Counseling,  Mental Health,  Trauma,  Wisdom

    Eight Signs You Need Counseling

    Just the word, counseling, often has a negative effect on people, I have noticed.  If you want to cause a defensive reaction in someone, suggest gently and without any judgment, they would benefit from counseling.  Immediately they hear only something is wrong with me. Then wait for the litany of various reasons why counseling will not work or has not worked in the past.  Counseling is too expensive, time-consuming, and doesn’t help them.  They know someone who went to counseling and boy, did that counselor mess them up.  I have even heard the excuse that God, as our Wonderful Counselor, did not endorse other counseling, despite the many verses in…

  • confession,  Forgiveness,  freedom,  Heart,  Self Awareness,  Self-forgiveness,  Shame & Guilt

    Three Questions That Lead to Self Forgiveness

    After a decade of no contact, my sixteen year old daughter lived with her father for about six months.  While I didn’t sleep a full night during that time, she seemed happy for the first three.  After that, things began to go south rather quickly, and soon, she came home, to both of our relief.  One day soon after, while we were at the grocery store, she mentioned that her whole life she had assumed that our divorce was her fault.  She had never mentioned this to me, the idea that somehow my divorce from an abuser could be laid at her feet.  But before I could begin my strenuous objections…