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Reading Level: Gratifying

As mentioned in a recent post, resentment or bitterness results from you not dealing with past hurts. But what can be done about resentment toward you in the person or persons closest to you?

First of all, remember you can only change yourself.

You cannot make the other person forgive you or reconcile; neither can you make him or her discuss the sources of the resentment, if they are not willing. By being wise and non-confrontational in your approach, hopefully you can create a non-threatening atmosphere that will allow your significant other to be willing to discuss the hurts which bred the resentment. If you are willing to listen to the criticism and accept it in a constructive way, even if the communication toward you is not necessarily in the most pleasant of form, you will have examples to work with to make needed changes on your end. If the person is absolutely unwilling to talk at this time, you have to begin with expressing your sorrow for causing him hurt, and make changes in any areas in which you are already aware that have caused resentment. In other words, begin by not adding to the resentment that already exists, making changes to your habits or personality which you already know are offensive to your loved one.

To more easily identify problem areas, let’s take a look again at what causes resentment.

Not Confronting Boundary Violations – Due to childhood environment, some people have a very difficult time saying, “No,” for a variety of reasons:

-Especially in religious circles, people are often made to feel that they can never say “No;” they are told that a “No” response is always unloving and selfish instead of self-sacrificing. However, in Matthew 18:15 and following, God very specifically says that if someone wrongs you, you are to clearly let the person know so that he can change. Verse 17 also makes it clear that if the person is unwilling to stop the inappropriate behavior or abuse, you should distance yourself from that person. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Very Impassioned

By the most basic definition, a compliant person melts into the demands and needs of other people to avoid the conflicts that would arise if he stood up for his own needs and desires.

We had a post a few weeks ago in answer to readers’ questions called, “Recognizing a Controlling Person.” Since then, readers have asked for clarification on the opposite personality type/boundary problem called compliant personality/compliance. There are obviously more than 2 personality types in the world, but among family, friends, and acquaintances, these 2 types seem to be very apparent, especially since opposites attract.

A compliant personality often leaves a person feeling defenseless against the demands of others and frustrated by the lack of fulfilling his own desires. A compliant person is unable to say “No” when a controlling person’s demands are unreasonable, against his own conscience, or hindering the progress of his own goals and the fulfillment of his own needs. Controlling people recognize a compliant person and easily manipulate him to conform to whatever the controller’s demands are by the use of guilt, manipulating circumstances, or even verbal or physical abuse.

When a compliant needs to say “No” to someone, a large number of fears typically make him incapable of doing so. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Very Impassioned

How do we recognize controlling people to stop the infringement of personal boundaries?

This is in response to a reader’s question. People with compliant personalities ( basically a personality that feels guilty for standing up for itself) are often “run over” in life by people with controlling personalities. Often the compliant person doesn’t even realize why he, or she, struggles with so much guilt and resentment, guilt for not wanting to do what the controller says and resentment for giving in and doing what is against his own conscience or goals. Since a compliant personality feels compelled by guilt to give in to the aggression or manipulation of the controller, he doesn’t always even realize that the other person is creating these problems. Other times a compliant does realize it, but just doesn’t have the emotional strength to stand up to the person. A compliant person must learn to deal with his or her own weaknesses and the lack of determination to stand up for his boundaries; he must determine to be true to the person that he is and how he wants to live his life, making his own decisions and taking responsibility for them. I needed to give you that background on the compliant personality to understand the relationship between a controller and a compliant. However, since the reader question was on identifying controllers, that will be the focus today. My definitions of the 2 types of controlling people and other illustrations are taken from Cloud and Townsend’s “Boundaries” book, pp. 54-55. Full book information is at the end of the post.

Controllers are people who cannot hear a “No” answer.

The example Cloud and Townsend use is of the phrase common to sales training, “No” means “Maybe” and “Maybe” means “Yes.” This attitude can make an effective salesman, but it is quite harmful to personal relationships. The primary problem of a controller who refuses to accept another person telling him, “No,” is that he is refusing to take responsibility for his own life. He is continually controlling others in various ways to convince them to take care of responsibilities in life that he should be taking care of himself. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

A reader asked, “Define harmful behavior.” There are many ways one can define or recognize the harmful behavior of others in your life, or even behavior of your own that is harmful to others or yourself, but the easiest way is to evaluate the results.

God says that real love does not do harm to another person, so living according to real love causes a person to completely obey all the laws of God due to living a loving lifestyle (Rom. 10:13). Thus, a person who truly loves you will not consistently live a lifestyle that brings harmful results in your life. Granted, we all lose our tempers at time and say or do things that later we have to apologize for, but the key difference is whether or not a person brings more harm than good.

Let’s take a look at how to evaluate behavior by the results. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

In my recent post called, “Break Out of the Rut,” we discussed how rarely we implement the great ideas or input that we come across and how to break out of the rut of life and make real progress. I came across a great article by Caroline Jalango on how to make room for all the positive changes we want to achieve by identifying and removing what hinders constructive changes.

Here is an excerpt from Caroline’s article along with a link to the full post on her website.

“You want to be loved, to be at peace, have wonderful relationships, look and feel good, find a better job, be respected and recognized for your work, make more money, grow your business, advance your career and so forth — but have you ‘emptied out’ the unproductive aspects in your life to make room for your new desires?

If you haven’t, what’s currently taking up the much needed space in your life? Emotional clutter, baggage, tolerations, hang-ups, fixed perspectives, belief systems, attitudes, excuses, fears, or debilitating habits can occupy a large part of your life and prevent you from Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Gratifying

The first matter to overcome regarding a fear of God’s rejection is a concrete decision to replace feelings with truth.

Negative feelings about God most often stem from harmful relationships with authority figures in one’s past, such as parents, or from improper religious education during childhood. Authority figures may have misused their authority or shown a harsh form of discipline that was lacking in love and security. Or, some religious leaders present God has a harsh, unforgiving, unreachable person due to, not only some distortions regarding the character of God, but a failure to teach the full scope of God’s character. Contrary to such a presentation of God, His love and sense of justice are perfectly balanced. He does discipline us at times, but in ways that lovingly bring about our healing and restoration!

Negative feelings from childhood can be overcome, but accept the fact that it will take consistent effort since usually you are trying to correct decades of negative thought patterns.

When faced with certain situations that spur your desire to seek God, your mind will automatically follow the negative pattern of thoughts, fearing God’s rejection, as it has always done. You will need to be consistent in interrupting those automatic negative thought processes by repeatedly speaking truth to yourself and refusing to allow the emotions that are associated with those old thoughts until your present feelings line up with truth. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

Guilt is a recurring struggle for many people. It is one of the most common search terms that people enter to read about on this site.

I’ve also read numerous blogs online by people who turned away from conventional religion due to spiritual leaders who erroneously bogged them down with a sense of guilt, making them feel that God is on a constant campaign to condemn their every thought, word, or action. In complete opposition to how many people were taught as children, guilt is a bondage that God our Father does NOT desire for us to live with. Scripture makes countless points to uphold this idea, but I’d like to focus today on one particular passage to get you started on releasing your guilt.

One of the leaders of the early church back in the first century A.D. was a man named Paul. He is considered by many to be the greatest apostle or leader of his day, having written a large part of what is now the New Testament. Yet, though some people tend to exalt him almost to deity, Paul was just a man with the exact same struggles and imperfections as any other human being. In Philippians 3, Paul talks about his past social status, education, and career–all the things about which a person could normally boast. Paul says he considers all this status nothing compared to actually knowing God. Next is the part important to one’s struggle with guilt. Paul admits something everyone overlooks, “Not that I have already been made perfect. But I am pressing on, striving to take hold of the prize for which I was taken hold of by Christ (Phil 3:12).”

This is key to freedom from guilt. Paul admits that he fails, but says he still presses forward to fulfill his God-given destiny.

He keeps pressing forward in life to fulfill the whole purpose for which God gave him life. In the releasing of your guilt, the first point then to apply to your own life is Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

Want physical health? Your emotional hurts may be as much as 85% of the root cause of your physical health problems!

There was an astounding statistic in an article on 12 Tips to Preventing Cancer from Dr. Mercola’s email newsletter which said, “Even the CDC [government's Center for Disease Prevention and Control] states that 85 percent of disease is caused by emotions. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here…”(1) Those of us who readily acknowledge our need for emotional healing will have little difficulty listing a broad range of physical conditions that are in need of healing as well.

To see physical healing, we must come to terms with the emotional hurts of the past and present.

If you are struggling with past hurts, Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Impassioned

In my life experience of working with people who are seeking after God, there has been a noticeable characteristic of people’s responses to God being affected by past parental relationships.

I have seen children from abusive family situations that felt great apprehension at the thought of even talking to God, fearful of His rejection or of some sort of mistreatment by Him. I have known women who were making an effort to seek after God, but because of past abusive relationships with fathers and ex-husbands, could not emotionally handle the intended positive analogy in Scripture of paternal characteristics in God. Though Scripture makes clear that spiritual beings are neither male or female, since God often uses the analogy of a Father to illustrate to us certain positive characteristics that can be seen in earthly fathers, people can, without being aware of it, project bad attributes particularly from fathers (but also mothers and any other person seen as an authority figure) onto God. Throughout my career, I have made it a point to remind people that God’s fatherly characteristics are those of, not just a good father but, a perfect one, since God is perfect and that concept has been helpful to them.

There is a term in psychology when dealing with boundary violations that is called a withdrawal of love. An example of this emotional violation is when a parent who is displeased with the child, whether for poor behavior or even just behavior against the parent’s personal preferences, responds with anger.

Even if the child’s behavior was ethically unacceptable and needed some form of discipline, the discipline included more than just corrective action; it was carried out with types angry behaviors which portrayed that the parent no longer loved the child due to his behavior. Parents like this, often unintentionally, also display behavior that conveys to the child that his actions were a personal insult to the parent. This results in a performance-based relationship. “If you do what I like, I’ll love you. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Very Impassioned

One of the first issues worthy of discussion on this site is, “Do you really believe that you deserve to be well?”

This sounds like a ludicrous question, but medical science has proven that it is not. Our mental perspective, what we think about ourselves and God, has a great effect on our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

For the purpose of example, there is a particular area in the medical field in which the procedure actually brings back to one’s mind past emotional hurts that are causing current physical health problems. Brief, physical treatments are then done which actually remove the pent up emotion from that bad emotional experience which has been stored in the body. During the physical treatment, you are asked to state out loud phrases along the lines of, “I deserve to be healthy. I deserve to be free from allergies” etc. People are then cured of various recurring physical ailments once that stored negative emotion from a past experience was removed from the body.

Believing that you deserve to be well is just as necessary a perspective in the area of faith and the spiritual realm.

In Matthew 9:29, while bringing healing to people, Jesus said, “According to your faith will it be done to you.” The Amplified Version (expanded from the Greek) says, “According to your faith and trust and reliance on the power invested in Me be it done to you.” Most anyone you talk to, regardless of their religious beliefs or the lack of them, believes that Jesus healed people. Yet even Jesus said that people’s healing was dependent on whether or not people believed that they would be healed or, one may say, whether or not they believed that God desired to heal them. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »