Healthy Relationships

There are millions of us. We carry around leftover pain from childhood wounds. As a result of this unprocessed pain, we act out in ways that damage our relationships. We’re easily offended. Fragile. We lash out. We withdraw. We’re baffled by our behavior. Frankly, we’re not even sure what normal behavior looks like. We all…

If your parents were never properly parented themselves, that put them at great risk to repeat the cycle with you. And that puts you at risk of repeating the vicious cycle all over again. If you or someone you love is caught in a cycle, can put a stop to your family’s intergenerational dysfunction. But…

The following questions might apply to you or a loved one: – Do you struggle to believe that people really care about you? – Do others accuse you of being oversensitive or taking things too personally? – Is there something that routinely triggers your anger? – Is there a particular area of your life where…

Do you regularly find yourself feeling insecure and looking for reassurance? Do you experience big mood swings, but don’t know why? Are you especially responsible or immature for your age? Do you have a negative experience, word, thought, or voice in your head from your childhood that stills torments you? Are you estranged from any…

What’s it going to take for you, your loved one, or a friend to start healing from childhood wounds? Healing is all about pain—acknowledging it’s there, identifying where it’s coming from, and then knowing how to face it, grieve, accept it, take control, and heal. Tune in for an overview of the stages of healing.…

Denial can be tenacious. Facing difficult, painful, or humiliating facts from your or your loved one’s childhood can be hard. Most worthwhile things are. I commend your bravery to tackle the truth. But it can also to be so liberating and soothing that you’re going to feel like you’re seeing things as they really are—perhaps…

Something was taken from you, your loved one, or friend. You didn’t have the childhood you wanted, deserved, and should have experienced. You have been afflicted. You feel the loss deeply. Now that you’ve faced this truth, you need to grieve what went wrong. In this practical lesson, Pat Morley will help you understand grief, the…

Did you know that all successful recovery programs address spiritual needs? There’s a reason for that: A relationship with Jesus can give us the rest for our souls that no amount of human effort will ever be able to provide. If you’re on your way to being mended, you have faced the truth of what…

To be sure, our parents are responsible for how they wounded us, whether they knew it or not. Maybe they were good people who made serious mistakes, or maybe they were uncaring, toxic, or even evil. Nothing can minimize, justify, excuse, or change that. What happened to you or your loved one happened. But what…

Healing and rebuilding relationships takes time and mutual commitment. What’s the current state of your relationship with your parents and siblings? What’s the level of ongoing dysfunction? How receptive are you to restoring a relationship with them? How receptive are they? Do they and you both have the communication skills to pull it off, or…

Two weeks ago we talked about how to honestly assess our family relationships and approach them with the mind of Christ. Now it’s time to explore how we can actually communicate with our parents. Join Pat Morley and learn a tension-reducing way to start an awkward but crucial conversation. Whether your family’s level of dysfunction is…

All of us who have ever been broken boys will have flare-ups because, to some degree, we all live with the residual pain of what happened to us. We all have an emotional limp.   Join Patrick Morley and learn how to evaluate how much pain you’re still in, some examples of what residual pain…

When men try to put into words what’s holding them back, many say something like, “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t overcome the destructive behaviors that keep dragging me down.” Christian men are not exempt—and no matter how much a man loves God, it’s especially hard to move forward if he’s stuck…

When the world gets to be too much, who do you take it out on? If you’re like most men, it’s your wife. In fact, the number one place where the residual symptoms of your childhood wounds flare up is your marriage (or it will be if and when you get married). Do any of…

Pat Morley writes, “When Patsy and I brought, Jen, our daughter and firstborn child home from the hospital, all three of us were exhausted. I lay down and cradled our precious Jen on my chest. The warmth of that tiny body—a living person I helped create—and the thump, thump, thump of her acorn-sized heart will always…