• Humor The Priceless Secret Weapon

    Humor: The Priceless Secret Weapon

    There is something about the early morning hours that is appealing to me. The stillness of the day, listening to the birds “wake up,” smelling the freshness of the air and watching the colors of the sky. Most of my energy is expended before noon. So imagine my dismay as a newlywed when my husband didn’t start moving till 11:30? You guessed it. Major Conflict. Honestly, how could I not know this before we were married?!? Now, all of a sudden, he sleeps until noon?!? Love casts a blind eye. Naturally, as any good, loving, caring wife does- I began to nag and complain. The next morning I receive a…

  • How to build trust in a relationship - wide title pic

    How To Build Trust In A Relationship

    By Darrell Provinse, MA, LPC, NCC, Executive Director I don’t believe that you can live for very long on this planet without realizing that the fairy tale ideal of “Happily Ever After” is just that — a fairy tale. Broken people, in a fallen world, hurt each other, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small ways. Sometimes, we relive or carry around past wounds from other relationships and import them into the present. Whatever the cause, I think most people, by the time they reach adulthood, have experienced a betrayal of trust, and struggle with how to appropriately allow themselves to be vulnerable in a relationship without feeling that they…

  • Understanding and Embracing Relationship Fears

    The Only Way Out Is Through: Understanding and Embracing Relationship Fears

    Many of our Agape articles embody a theme of embracing our core relationship fears and learning how to tolerate the undesirable emotions that come with them.  In order to move from self-judgment toward self-compassion, it’s important to understand our core fears, their origin, and how they impact our thoughts, feelings and relationships. This means we have to move toward the fear rather than avoid it. Once we acknowledge a relationship fear and move towards it, the fear begins to lose the power that it has over us. Poet Robert Frost has quoted “The only way out is through.” This is so true! A great resource to understanding core fears is…

  • Lessons Taught By Trauma - wide title pic

    Lessons Taught by Trauma

    By Kristy Cobillas, MEd, LPC “What good does it do to talk about it, if it’s not going to change anything?” When it comes to trauma, there are those who will attempt to mentally and emotionally bury the experience. It is true that simply talking about the past does not change it. Recounting the memory of a horrendous experience may do little more than cause one to re-experience the emotional pain. In therapy, victims of trauma can process the event(s) with the help of a professional, who uses techniques conducive to the healing process. Many people who have experienced trauma continue to suffer long after the event is over. The…