Recently, I was asked this question by a member of my church community, “how is mental illness related to spiritual matters?” Here is my reply:
The problem is trying to put these things into boxes. Is it a physical issue? An emotional issue? Or a spiritual issue? The most appropriate answer as a Christian is all [...]

I recently passed the three year mark from the start of my career as a counselor. It is hard to believe that three years have gone by since graduation. It is hard to believe that my license is complete and I am working full time as a counselor. It gave me an opportunity to reflect [...]

In dealing with an addiction, I believe that there are five aspects of a person that should be addressed. Since my specialization is sexual addiction, I will focus on that as my examples. First, is the behavioral. Unfortunately, too many addiction recovery programs land on the behavioral dimension and live there. They build all of [...]

One of the primary areas that I deal with in my counseling practice is sexual addiction. It is a part of my story and a passion of mine. I believe that there is a lot of bad information about how to approach sexual addiction. I think the church is no exception. Unfortunately, it is a [...]

Russ’ theory in a nutshell comes down to these three things. For him, counseling primarily involves these elements. When he meets with a client, his first objective is to begin to identify the strategies that the person has developed to cope with the reality of this life. Once the strategies have been developed, a process [...]

I don’t sleep right. I found this out shortly after I got married. Unbeknown to me in my years of singleness, I have a sleep disorder. It started out as a few comical stories about crazy antics in the middle of the night. I would do both strange things and funny things. It was for [...]

I recently connected with my long term supervisor, Russ Phillips, on a new idea. Russ has years of counseling experience and has gained a lot of wisdom about the counseling process. After talking with Russ about how he has developed his counseling approach, we came up with the idea to write a book together. So, [...]

It is amazing to me that in this life, there is no end to our growth with God. There is no end to understanding how our hearts work, how they hide and how God moves toward us. Growing up, I thought that you would eventually hit a point where you had collected enough information about [...]

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what the counseling process is like. A lot of people see it simply as advice. Others see it as teaching or training. Still others see it like a meeting with a consultant. While counseling can operate in all of these capacities, I do not think it [...]

I have had a Blackberry now for about a year and totally love it. It helps keep my life sane. As a counselor, I have a lot of appointments to remember. Prior to my Blackberry, I had a cheap old PDA. Prior to that, I used to store them in my head. Amazingly, I never [...]