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I started my journey of blogging in 2003 — mostly to capture what I called “transitioning life’s journey”.
In 2023 I took a 3 year break from blogging, but have decided to return to it. I hope you enjoy.
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Search 20+ years of blog writing…
Shutting Down Boy’s Emotions
m currently working on an article for the Fuller Youth Institute on boys and emotions — more specifically how we as a culture tend to sabotage boy’s emotions — making it unsafe for them to express[…]
Transforming Your Anxiety: Final Thoughts and Resources
I’m a huge believer in the good that can come out of our anxiety. I believe that we too often dismiss anxiety as something bad. We are too quick to try and get over it, or bury it, or pretend it doesn’t exist…all things that can lead to high levels of unhealthy anxiety, depression and […]
Men’s Disconnect with Vulnerability and Connection
The above is a quote from Chapter 8 in my new book (coming out May 1) What it Means to be a Man: God’s Design for Us in a World Full of Extremes. Vulnerability is one of the major themes that has emerged over the last 18 years in my work with men. Many men […]
Transforming Your Anxiety: Anxiety in Relationships
“When we can stand face-to-face with another human being in all of our anxiety, and we don’t have to try to run or hide from it, that is the beginning of a true relational connection.” One of the areas of life that we often tend to experience the most anxiety is in relationships. And what […]
Grandiosity: Terrence Real on Working with Men in Therapy
To understand the importance of leverage, you have to understand grandiosity, especially male grandiosity. Therapy and self-help have mostly focused on helping people come up from a one-down position of shame. But we don’t really talk much about what it means to help people come down from the one-up position of grandiosity. This is really pivotal in terms of working with men, because they typically tend to lead from the one-up, grandiose position, while women present in the more one-down, victim position.
Tranforming Your Anxiety: Boundaries and Living Within Your Limits
A few weeks ago I spoke to college students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I love speaking to and working with college students. It’s such an amazing time of life…so many opportunities and roads to journey down, but also lots of fear and anxiety over which possibility to choose and which road to journey on. It’s a perfect collision of feeling excited and scared at the same time. I think that’s why I loved being the college pastor for seven years at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience to work with students at UCLA, USC, LMU and a number of other schools…as well as the large number of college-aged people in the entertainment industry.
The Corrosiveness of Contempt in Marriage (John Gottman)
In this clip, marriage researcher and therapist John Gottman talks about the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” — which are predictors of divorce. In this video he deals specifically with the issue of contempt. Gottman states that not only is contempt corrosive of love, but it is also corrosive of one’s immune system.
Transforming Your Anxiety: Getting Intentional
“Do you want your marriage to get well?” is the question we ask the four couples that are present. Just because they are there doesn’t mean they want their marriage to get well.
I used to think that the question Jesus posed to the man at the pool was a dumb question. It just didn’t make sense to me.
Are You Spread Too Thin? Going in Too Many Different Directions?
Most of us in fact, never “get it together!” We never get ourselves together. Instead we go through life frustrated and dissipated, letting our restless energies push us in one direction, then in another, never quite able to settle down, to figure out what we want to do, and never quite able to discipline ourselves […]
Parker Palmer on Ground Rules in “Maintaining Safe Space for the Soul”
Parker Palmer has written one of my all-time favorite books — one that I re-read every year — Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Powerful…powerful book, and one that I have written on quite a bit over the years.
Fathers, What Kind of Energy Do You Pass on to Your Sons?
“When a father tells a child that he can do something, he can do it. I don’t know why that is, except to say that there is some mysterious energy that passes from the male to his children. It is some sort of creative energy that can make things be when they are not, and […]
Transforming Your Anxiety: Wrestling with God
“In many circumstances, as we experience anxiety, we may be tempted not to face it. We may be tempted to turn the other way and not acknowledge that it is there. But if God uses anxiety in our lives as a way to help us grow, then we must not turn away from it. Instead, […]
“You…We are the Beloved sons and daughters of God.” — Henri Nouwen
I love this video clip of Henri Nouwen preaching (this is a short clip — 8 minutes and 55 seconds — well worth your time). His many books have been influential in my personal life and in my work as a pastor and therapist. Here we get a good sense of what it means to […]
Unfortunately, Sometimes Being a Boy is Not Emotionally Safe…
“Little boys and little girls start off with similar psychological profiles. They are equally emotional, expressive, and dependent, equally desirous of physical affection. At the youngest ages, both boys and girls are more like a stereotypical girl. If any differences exist, little boys are, in fact, slightly more sensitive and expressive than little girls. They […]
Transforming Your Anxiety: Beginning to ReImagine Your Anxiety as Good
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” — Soren Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety When I first read those words from the existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard my heart literally leapt out of my chest. Finally a statement that resonated a lot with what I had been feeling. Most of my struggles with anxiety appeared when […]
How You React When Upset Inhibits Relational Intimacy
“Thanks to a series of influential research studies, the things people who succeed in intimate relationships do differently from those who fail have been discovered by researchers. One of the most important differences involves how people react when they feel upset. All partners in long term relationships feel upset with each other at various […]
Transforming Your Anxiety: Stuck in a Rut
“According to recent brain studies, we are literally stuck in a rut: As a result, we choose our most instinctual coping behavior when certain feelings arise. We often choose this path because it is also the direction that confronts us with the least anxiety.”(The Anxious Christian, pp. 61 — the source in the book is […]
How the Integration of Theology and Psychology Can Transform People’s Lives
One of the books that I have really enjoyed reading over the years because of my interest in the integration of theology and psychology, especially pertaining to pastoral counseling in the context of the Christian community is Theology and Pastoral Counseling: A New Interdisciplinary Approach by Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger. In the book Hunsinger applies […]
Transforming Your Anxiety: Welcoming Uncertainty Into Your Life
“One of the reasons we experience anxiety is that God is persistently trying to move us through the wilderness, because it is in the wilderness that we are most dependent up on Him.” (The Anxious Christian, pp. 45). About 15 years while I was reading through the book of Exodus I came across a passage […]
Mumford and Sons and the Apostle Paul on Boundaries
“Roll away your stone, I’ll roll away mine Together we can see what we will find.” I have had this lyric from Mumford and Sons playing around in my head for the last couple of months. Probably because those two lines remind me a lot of the concept of boundaries and differentiation in relationships (i.e. […]