Counseling Blog
Emotional & Relational Health from a Christian Perspective
We can’t control everything in this life, but we can control ourselves and the choices we make. The moment we hand over our agency is the moment we are lying to ourselves, just like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. This lie cost Antonio Brown millions of dollars and the chance to continue playing in the NFL. I’ve seen it cost more ordinary people their jobs, their marriages, and their hope that life could ever be different.
Telling someone that anything is going to be slow usually means they’ve already moved on and will find someone who can do it faster. But the longer I’ve done this work, the more clear it’s become- change is generally a slow process. And it’s not just that change in therapy is slow, many other aspects of life also seem to be slow. Why is this?
Many people enter counseling feeling truly hopeless about their circumstances and the loops that they are in, and I have a lot of empathy for that. It’s a terrible feeling. But we need to know that the remedy to hopelessness is not a quick solution to our suffering or simply finding ways to make it go away. The first step is to feel the suffering, to listen to it, to make good choices within it, and to allow it to create a new character in us. God’s love is pouring into us as we do this. This is how we find hope.
When dealing with anger, it is important to remember that you always have a choice in how you respond when you feel angry. Some choices are more beneficial than others. You can choose between suppression, open aggression, passive aggression, assertiveness, and dropping it. If you can slow down enough to evaluate what is causing your anger and what you hope to accomplish by expressing the anger, you will find the choice to be far more manageable.
We live in a society defined by anger and outrage, but most of us do not have a good understanding of anger or how it manifests itself in our daily lives. It is this hidden force, bubbling under the surface, and it has much more influence over us than we would like to admit. For the most part we are unaware of how anger is playing out in our lives. When things are outside of our awareness, they hold far more power and control over us.
If you are thinking about starting counseling or have questions about how therapy works, it is helpful to have some background knowledge about what helps you have a positive counseling experience. Your mindset going into counseling and the relationship the therapist builds with you are both key ingredients.
