Category Healing & Restoration

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How to Identify Trauma & When to Get Help 📺+🎧

The negative stigma around going to counseling or therapy is finally starting to lift. Caitlin Zick interviews Dr. Margaret Nagib, Christian Clinical Psychologist, about how to know when or why to go to a counselor. If you find yourself still stuck after doing the best you know how, it may be time to find a counselor. Dr. Margaret and Caitlin also spend time digging into the topic of trauma. How to identify trauma in your life or from your past and the side effects you may be seeing in your life from unresolved trauma. Caitlin also shares from her story and they unpack the events, experiences and effects from trauma in her teenage years. This conversation is a great “starter” for a potential need to discover and dive into more. Want to connect with Dr. Margaret Nagib? You can find her resources or book an online session here at: thedunamisproject.org You can hear more on this topic for pastors and leaders in the Sex. Church. Culture. Vol. II E-Course (SexChurchCulture.com) from Dr. Margaret Nagib or for the females at The More Gathering (TheMoreGathering.com).

To the Woman Who’s Been Abused

On behalf of women everywhere, kind, Godly men, the church, and even God the Father Himself—I want to tell you how desperately sorry I am for what you have endured. The pain you should have never felt. The tears you should have never cried. The life you should have never lived.

The Role of Trauma in Sexual Addiction

Trauma is something that most of us have experienced in one way or another, whether it was through abuse, abandonment, or a circumstance that we had no control over. As children, when we do not have access to resources that help us navigate through the pain of these experiences, we will often develop coping mechanisms that can be unhealthy in the long term.

10 Things to Avoid Saying to Someone Struggling with Porn

If you don’t think porn is a healthy habit (and research would back you up, there), you may have to have some hard conversations about this potentially awkward topic. And not only that, but it can be difficult to know what to say when you’re talking to someone about something as personal as recovery from a porn habit—especially when you care about that person and are being hurt by their porn consumption. You want to be able to encourage them into getting better rather than shame them back into their hidden habits.

How to be a Friend to Someone Walking in Shame

Shame seduces us into secrecy, insists on silence, and results in judgment. When we begin hiding, and are afraid to be vulnerable, we begin blaming others and ourselves for the disconnection that we feel. Instead of pulling people towards us, we push them away, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that we are not worthy of love and acceptance. So then, disconnection is the result. What can we do to help people who are stuck in this cycle?

Boys, Girls, Adults, and Porn

We can often feel the most intimidated by things we don’t understand. The fear of the unknown can lead us down paths of thinking that cause us to over-emphasize the worst-case scenarios while losing hope that good is possible. Pornography and sexual addiction, in general, actually falls into this category for most. It is hard to understand something that is so damaging and yet those who find themselves in the cycle of it see no way out.

If You Really Knew Me

I believe that shame grows in the dark. We begin to question ourselves, “if they really knew me…. then what?” The things that we believe no one would be able to forgive, look past, or overcome cause so much fear, we choose to hide. As shame grows in the dark it begins to own our thoughts, our identities or we simply bury it so deep we are in denial about it altogether.

Where is God in My Darkest Season?

When you’re in the middle of what feels like a debilitating trial, it’s easy to think that God favors others more than you, or that the situation that you are going through is somehow beyond God’s ability to fix it. I know these feelings all too well…

Getting to Know Yourself: Keys to Overcoming Insecurity

The greatest kryptonite of relational depth is insecurity. In romantic relationships, insecurities can cause a couple to spend hours, days, and even years circling back to issues that seem to never go away. In friendships, insecurities assume the worst rather than believe the best. In marriages, insecurities can cause one partner to shut down, another to be jealous and a marriage to fall apart. In our relationship with God, insecurity minimizes us to a form of godliness. It is imperative that a healthy individual get to know themselves, become sold out to the belief that God made you that way on purpose, and then love what God created. So here are some practical steps to becoming more secure in who you are…

Your Broken Relationship Was Not a Waste of Time

I know what you’re thinking: these last eight months were pointless. The emotions, the time, the dates, the gifts – useless, wasted, the stuff you throw away like scraps of paper. Except the scraps are your heart, and the wasted time was your life. He’s gone, you’re here, and though you know how to move on and you’re walking forward with the Lord, it’s hard to see the purpose in an ended relationship.

“I Messed Up… So Now What?” A 3 Step Guide to Cleaning Up Your Mess

Whether it was pushing boundaries with your significant other, or making the decision to look at that website you know you shouldn’t be on, you messed up. So what’s next? How do you not partner with shame? How do you move forward in a healthy way? We totally understand, check out our 3 step guide to cleaning up your mess.

When Rejection Tries To Own Us

Most of us have had our heart broken at some point in our life. Most of us have felt rejected or discarded by someone. It’s extremely painful and no one enjoys the feeling of “not being chosen.” So how do we deal with that rejection? How do we not believe the lie that we are “less than” or “not as good as” that other girl or guy who was chosen? I know this pain more than I’d like to admit. I faced one of the biggest rejections of my life when my husband chose to give his heart to somebody else…