• 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…

  • Bridge to Wholeness | Volume 2 Issue 5 May 2015

    Welcome to the May 2015 Issue of the Agape newsletter, Bridge to Wholeness! Our monthly newsletter is the best way for you to keep up with what is going on around Agape, with events and updates, and articles written by our counselors. We hope it will help bring you a little bit closer to emotional, mental, and spiritual wholeness! In this issue (click to read individual articles): Loving Young Adults Through Transition by Elizabeth Nimmo, MA, LPC Ch Ch Ch Changes by Darrell Provinse, MA, LPC, NCC Intimate Communication: Let’s Talk About Sex by Kathyrn Manley, MS, LPC, CST Healthy Playtime for Developing Kids by Carolyn Knarr, MSW, LCSW Upcoming Group Counseling…  Click…

  • Intimate Communication Lets Talk About Sex

    Intimate Communication: Let’s Talk About Sex

    When a couple is in a long-term monogamous relationship, symptoms affecting sexuality as the result of medical issues, chronic illness or disability, or even natural aging, are inevitable. Naturally, as we pass through life, our bodies experience physiological changes which affect our sexual functioning. Physiological changes might include pregnancy and nursing, coronary artery disease, cancer treatments, arthritis and chronic pain, injuries, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, aging, prostate problems or autoimmune disorders. Learning how to navigate through these changes by means of communication and compassion can be helpful for the sexual relationship. Medical issues, chronic illness, disability and aging are all capable of affecting the sexual relationship and can create symptoms that…