Another client, a different session: "I keep waiting for the anxiety to go away before I do the hard thing." I hear a version of this constantly — the assumption that courage is downstream of the fear disappearing first. That safety has to arrive before the valley does, not inside it.
Psalm 23 was written by a shepherd who knew better.
Read MoreA client sits across from me mid-wait — a diagnosis not yet confirmed, a marriage not yet reconciled, a job not yet offered. Nothing has resolved. What's remarkable isn't the circumstance. It's the body. Jaw tight, breath shallow, eyes scanning the room like there's an exit they haven't found yet. They're not remembering a threat. They're bracing for one that hasn't arrived and may never come.
Read MoreScripture named this pattern centuries before "parentification" became a clinical term. A look at what God's Word, forty years of research, and the Christian counselors I trained under actually say — including where they disagree.
Read MoreSome thoughts about how David’s writing in the Psalms is evidence of how he participated in working out what he knew of neuroscience anandamide’s (Bliss Molecule) and the ever present effect of stress on a human body.
Read MoreThe school bus drove away, but the internal chaos remained. If you are a North Texas mother ready to heal the cycle of perfectionism and maternal guilt, your transformation begins here.
Read MoreThere's a particular shame in not being able to feel God's presence — as if not-feeling means not-believing. But the newest trauma research suggests the problem often isn't faith at all. It's a nervous system still forecasting danger in rooms that are actually safe. Here's what predictive processing gets right that the old "body keeps the score" model didn't — and what it means for anyone whose body won't cooperate with what their heart already believes.
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