We were celebrating our 47th wedding anniversary at the beach and my husband wanted to go for a walk on the sand down by the water. I was having a bah hum bug moment and really wanted to walk on the concrete near the water but not on the sand. I decided to go along with his request and made the decision that I would enjoy myself. What an amazing time we had! We saw so many birds including Sandpipers, Seagulls, and Pelicans. Then an amazing surprise! From the shore we could see the fin of an animal in the water. Was it a shark? Then, suddenly, a dolphin appeared out of the water doing acrobatic feats that one only hopes to see if you are out on a boat in the ocean or at a paid amusement park like Sea World, not from the shore! The birds and the dolphins were having fun just doing what they were created to do. It dawned on me that they were not carrying any burdens, but just enjoying the beautiful big blue ocean that God created.

At that moment, God reminded me that like the dolphin, we are not meant to carry heavy burdens either. He provides for them, so He will provide for us. Just watching the playfulness of that dolphin enjoying himself in the water inspired me to put off those things that can entangle us and weight us down. Let us practice having less bah hum bug moments and run this life race with joy, vibrancy and a strong faith in a living and loving God who provides for and takes care of us.

Matthew 5:26
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly
Father; feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

As we take in the images of the holidays, we see festive scenes and pictures of joy, gifts, and people laughing and enjoying one another. Yet, your story and experience during the holiday season may be quite different. Loss through death, divorce, separation, or estrangement of a loved one can pull up painful memories and emotional distress that make this time of season difficult to get through. Any number of things can trigger painful memories. Seeing a mother and daughter just walking through a store holding hands can trigger memories that were once joyful and are now replaced with feelings of emptiness and loneliness. These negative emotions can pull up anger, sadness, resentment, and cause you to isolate and move towards depression. Here are four ways to guard against getting into that negative emotion cycle.

1. Identify what you are feeling, what is triggering it and what negative emotions are presenting in your life. In other words, own your feelings, do not deny them. Sometimes owning our feelings requires us to look at things that are inside of us that we do not want to see.
2. Invite a safe person into your life to talk with you about these feelings, process them, and grieve them. Grieving is different for every person. It may involve tears, remembering the person by cooking their favorite food, telling a story about them, or engaging in an activity that they enjoyed and helped you to make a fond memory of them. If it is too painful, see a professional person who can help you work through it.
3. Do not isolate. Reach out to others who are safe and who have your best interest in mind. God made us for relationships, not isolation. Reach out to people who can build you up and encourage you.
4. Remember that God can restore your life. He is in the restoration business. Trust and invite Him to do it! He wants to restore! Never give up on His desire to restore you back to emotional health around loss and grief. It may not be in the timing that you would expect, but when it does come, it can bring tremendous healing, growth and change to your life for the better.

Isaiah 40: 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar
on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.

Do you ever wish that you had an app to help you get your life back on track?  

Unfortunately such a device doesn’t exist—and if it did, you would not need a therapist. It takes a lot of compassion, trust-building, safety, and the use of effective tools to help people solve problems.

Working as a Christian therapist for over three decades, I’ve done everything from helping couples restore seemingly shattered marriages to empowering victims of abuse. The work is hard and never glamorous, but I believe Christian counseling is truly a calling from God—a sacred trust. We must take people’s lives and souls seriously, providing the best quality of care to help them live Christ-centered lives.

I’ve also learned that the more we allow Christ to transform our own lives through His transformative power, grace, and principles, the more effective we become at helping others live healthy, balanced lives.

Of the many clients that I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve found one prevalent theme: people tend to repeat patterns from their past. These patterns can keep them stuck, hinder their growth, and hold them back from achieving all the great things God has for them. It’s something I explore more extensively with case studies in my book, Move Past Your Pain, Discover Your Purpose: Overcoming Negative Generation Patterns to Achieve Your Best Life.

Below is a nine-step framework you can use to help clients begin the process of recognizing and breaking these negative generational cycles:

1. Be transparent and authentic.

Tell clients your story. Allow them to take a look at your life,  and encourage them to share their stories with you. Modeling transparency and vulnerability for clients in this way gives them permission to look at themselves without judgment or criticism. If we’re honest, all of us are broken in some area of our lives (Romans 3:23). Also, within this setting, you can validate your clients’ stories, encourage personal growth, and identify future therapeutic goals.

2. Identify patterns that repeat. 

Construct a genogram that will give your clients a visual of their background, family of origin, and patterns that connect to current issues in their lives that may need to be addressed.

3. Identify current and past stress patterns.

Help clients identify past and current stressors and coping mechanisms used to handle that stress. Illustrate healthy ways to respond, showing how to handle stress and cope in a Christ-centered way. Point out old behaviors and encourage your clients to keep a journal while implementing new coping behaviors.

4. Determine generational patterns.

Work with your clients to uncover the negative patterns they’ve carried into their adult lives and then offer tools to reverse these patterns. You might consider using biblical models; show clients that these problems are universal and not unique to them.

5. Take charge and overcome denial.

Where there is deep emotional pain, it is difficult to face painful truths. This is why it’s important to encourage your clients not to minimize or discount destructive patterns. Half of the battle is won when clients take responsibility for what they have done or suffered.

6. Learn to think differently.

If clients are stuck in a negative or destructive mindset and it’s causing them to be stuck in some area of their lives, use a cognitive behavioral approach to help clients change and transform their way of thinking.

7. Embrace faith and avoid magical thinking.

Encourage clients to embrace the reality of their situation and apply faith-based principles to their situation. Empower them to apply practical solutions to their lives and give them tools that  they can use  in the spiritual battle raging against all believers.

8. Build a positive legacy for the next generation.

Model and express the importance of healthy modeling to the next generation.

9. Forgive others, forgive ourselves.

Provide biblical and personal illustrations (examples are given in Move Past Your Pain) for why allowing forgiveness to sweep through our lives is so necessary for healing ourselves and others.

I encourage you to use these principles to help people live out the best life God has for them. Please feel free to email me at drmary@familyoutreachcounseling.comfor comments or questions.

Mary Simms, Ph.D., empowers people to embrace their God-given purpose and live their best life. Having survived breast cancer twice, and with over twenty-five years of professional counseling and speaking experience, she knows what it takes to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Dr. Mary has a Ph.D. in Theocentric Counseling, masters’ degrees in both Marriage and Family and Pastoral Counseling, and is a licensed Christian Therapist. She is the Founder and Director of Family Outreach Counseling Services, a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural professional counseling private practice with a faith-based approach. As a Minister, Dr. Mary served as Associate Pastor for Light and Life Christian Fellowship, a Free Methodist Church in Long Beach, CA, and was also a career counselor at Cal State University, Long Beach for many years. She has been in private practice for over thirty years. 

By Dr. Mary M. Simms

Introduction: The Big Idea

God desires us to have intimate/connected relationships with our spouses. However, there are so many things that can block that intimacy. Intimacy is defined as a state of being close, familiar, or internally connected. Emotional intimacy is a state of connectedness that allows two individuals to share their feelings and most secret desires and goals with one another. They feel “safe” with their spouse, able to share the innermost parts of themselves with him or her. The marital relationship is supposed to be intimate, as it gives us an opportunity to fill both our developmental and God-given need to be valued, understood, and accepted by another person on three levels: spiritual, emotional and physical. In this talk we will discuss these blocks and obstacles to intimacy. Then we will discuss biblical principles and tools that you can use to start moving down the path of wholeness and recovery.

Some of the factors that can block intimacy are:

1. Anger

a) Righteous v. selfish anger: From God’s word, we learn that we’re all capable of expressing the emotion of anger in constructive or destructive ways. Jesus was a great model of how to express anger appropriately. His anger was always “righteous anger,” because he cared about the way he treated others. Sometimes our anger is “righteous,” but sometimes it’s triggered out of selfishness because we’re not getting what we want.

b) Become a fast-forgiver: God also warns us not to let the sun go down on our anger. This means that when we’re in a relationship, we need to learn how to become fast forgivers so we don’t allow anger and resentment to build up. In other words, don’t let another day go by without resolving your anger! This doesn’t mean that as human beings we won’t get angry. We are human and we will. However, as we submit to the power of the Holy Spirit and allow him to help us, finding ways to manage and deal with negative emotions, we learn how to get better at communicating anger in healthy ways—ways that won’t destroy ourselves or others. Part of the healing process involves learning how to identify the triggers that cause our anger and implement some practical principles to manage it. A big part of managing the emotion of anger is figuring out why we’re getting angry, being honest with ourselves and others, owning it, and learning how to express our anger in healthy ways.  

2. Triggers from the Past

a) Emotional scars: If we come from a background of abuse or neglect, we can develop emotional scars that can be triggered if we feel like we’re being neglected, threatened or abandoned. 

b) Example 1: A good illustration of this principle is a couple locked in a heated argument. In the course of the argument, the man tells the woman that he wants to leave, cool off, and get some perspective. The woman, hearing only that he is leaving, starts yelling, crying and having a serious meltdown.  

c) What gets triggered? When the woman in this relationship was six years old, her dad left to live with another family. So when her husband suggests that he’s just leaving temporarily to take a time out, all she hears is that he’s leaving her just like her dad did when she was a child. She feels frightened and threatened and starts yelling, throwing things and attacking him.  At this point the communication breaks down and they are not able to talk, making the situation worse.

d) Example 2: An example of another trigger is a person who’s received a lot of rejection in his life from his family. From an early age, James was sent to live with his grandmother, and Mom kept the rest of the children at home. James feels anger and resentment, wants to “belong” with the rest of his biological family, but feels very distant from them. Now James is married and feels emotionally distant from his own wife and children. When his wife approaches him with issues about how he’s “emotionally unavailable,” he just gets angry and defensive and projects blame on her. James simply doesn’t see how his past woundedness contributes to his difficulty cultivating an intimate relationship with his wife and family.

e) Be aware: The healing process involves awareness of our own triggers and how they affect our emotions and cause us to react in ways that may be unbecoming to our spouse. Once aware, we can be empowered to engage in new and healthy coping mechanisms instead of the old ones that are not effective and don’t work to bring harmony or oneness to the relationship. New coping mechanisms require transparency and vulnerability.

3. Poor Modeling

a) Example: Because of difficult circumstances and conditions, Mom had to work a lot and Dad wasn’t present in the home. Therefore, Jim had to grow up fast. When he was fourteen, he was already selling things to help Mom make money. Now he has a family of his own and is very hard on his own children. He feels they are “entitled” and doesn’t want them to be “soft.” He and his wife often argue about this issue, and it’s causing a serious rift in their marriage. His wife grew up in a home where the kids were nurtured and valued and not expected to go to work until they became young adults.  

4. Inability to Communicate Feelings or Speak Out

a) Example: Jane grew up in a home where she was sexually molested from the age of ten to thirteen. When she became an adult and married, she had a difficult time using her voice to express her needs. She’d allow anger and resentment to build up against her spouse when he didn’t recognize what she needed. The anger and resentment created walls between them, and Jane didn’t know how to use her voice as an adult to communicate what she desired.  

Some of the other things that block intimacy are:

5. Childhood trauma

6. Poor Self-Image

7. False or Negative Beliefs

8. Past Sexual or Physical Abuse or Neglect

9. Brokenness from Past Relationships

— But here are some tools that can help you recover:

1. Affirm!

• Affirmation involves building up a relationship by giving positive and encouraging words to another person. The book of James tells us that the tongue is an unruly member.

2. Invest time and energy into the relationship.

• To be successful at anything, you have to work at it. Marriage is no different.  You must make deposits if you want to have something to take out. And if you’re constantly taking withdrawals, you’ll have nothing to pull from when you really have a need.

3. Seek a truth-filled, Christ-centered, positive perspective.

• Sometimes we have cognitive distortions that hinder our seeing things clearly.  Sometimes issues like rejection, abandonment and anger get in the way, too. Ask God to give you a clear perspective of what’s going on in your situation. Sometimes we don’t always see our own blind spots. Jesus can give you clarity and help you see clearly.

4. Learn to fight fair.

• In an intimate relationship, conflict will occur. That’s just part of life. We are different people with different ideas about how to resolve issues. It’s important not fear conflict but instead learn healthy ways to engage in it. Take responsibility for your part in the conflict, stay in your lane, and be open and teachable to your partner.

5. Remember that you’re on the same team.

• Couples in conflict often don’t see themselves on the same team. They feel divided; sometimes they even form coalitions with other family members to be on their team. This doesn’t help build intimacy in a marriage. The principle of leaving and cleaving applies here. No matter what happens, you’re both in this relationship together, and you must work out your difficulties without triangling others in. An exception is, of course, when there is abuse or you are seeking professional help.

6. Establish healthy boundaries in your relationship. 

7. Practice healthy communication.

• Our personality traits and modeling from our parents or guardians all contribute to how we communicate with our spouse. Healthy communication means being open and honest and communicating your needs and your feelings. We can’t always trust ourselves to know what we want or need, but our wonderful and gracious heavenly Father knows what is best for us. In practicing healthy communication, we can always go to our faithful Father first and communicate with him. Once he helps us get the right perspective, we can communicate with our spouse. When we invite God into our situation, he can transform our perspective about the situation and enable us to wait on him to bring about positive transformation in the relationship.

Conclusion:

• Embrace each other’s sexuality and view it as a gift from God. Sexuality is a gift from God and must be used in accordance with His standards if we want to live a rich and blessed life. A separate talk on sexuality will follow.

God made us for connection and for healthy relationships. In Scripture, God tells us that His design for marriage is for a man to leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, allowing husband and wife to become one flesh. “Therefore, shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 KJV).This principle sounds great in theory, but often both “leaving” and “cleaving” can be difficult to implement in real time. In this article, I will offer you some practical tips to help you live out the challenging first part of this principle—leaving and cleaving.  

Leaving and cleaving to your spouse is quite a transition in marriage; you leave behind singleness, accountability and connectedness to your family of origin—of mother, father and possibly siblings. So far family relationships have mainly influenced your thinking and point of view, but now a major transition will occur. In marriage, two individuals come together to forge their own adult union—a union without interference from the outside world. Forging this union is a difficult process, and often requires two mature adults with similar values able to manage conflict and learn to appreciate each other’s unique gifts and contributions to the relationship.  

If you’re in a new marriage, here are some principles to help you effectively leave and cleave:

1. Establish that you’re on the same team. A good illustration is a sports team: When a team is trying to reach successful goals, they communicate with each other; there’s back and forth between the coach and the players. They don’t tell the opposing team what their winning plays are. In a marriage, one partner doesn’t disrespect the other by going outside of their circle and telling unfamiliar people negative information about their partner (unless, of course, there is abuse, abandonment, or a dangerous situation at play).

• Work through normal conflict by talking things out; communicate your differences without overreacting emotionally. Remember, all us have been given a unique, God-given voice to express our feelings. It takes a mature person to appreciate and value someone else’s perspective if it conflicts with their own. Learning to listen in a relationship is a skill that all of us must cultivate. Controlling your emotions and responding to someone you disagree with civilly and respectfully can be a difficult skill to learn. Often, triggers from our past hurts can hinder us from responding in a calm and civil way. 

• Encourage and support each other to achieve personal goals. Marriage requires—not co-dependency, or severe dependence upon one another—but interdependency. This means we’re two independent people who come together with our own uniqueness, personal preferences, and goals. But we can learn to establish both individual and collective goals in our marriage. It’s so important for us to support and encourage each another in our achievement of goals that are practical, realistic, and promote harmony and unity within our marriage. Most of the time, people want to get their own emotional needs met in a relationship. But taking the high road of modeling love and respect, even when things don’t go your way, can be a winning prescription for achieving a productive, successful, and satisfying marriage.