Cutting... Part 2

This is a continuation of last weeks' blog on Cutting, .... described as "Self-Harm"...

I took my notes from a presentation at my church by Laura Rink, who worked this past summer as a counselor for teenage girls. The camp is a Christian Camp and so this subject was approached from a Christan perspective. I know that not all who read this blog may have the same belief system and may approach this and other subjects differently. I am presenting it as it was presented to me. I hope you, the reader, will take this into consideration. As I said previously, this issue of cutting is a serious psychological problem and if you know someone who is self-mutilating in any way, you should talk to a professional counselor and try to get help for them....whether it's a Christian Counselor or a secular one.

Breaking Free:
Talking about your emotions
Writing down your feelings daily (Journaling)
Drawing and Painting
Praise and Worship
Prayer
Reading the Bible
Christian Counseling

Forgiving Others:
Allowing unforgiveness to take root in your life is a stumbling block to freedom. (Note: This applies to breaking free of ALL addictive, destructive behaviors.)
Realizing that we have been forgiven by God frees us to forgive others. Refusing to forgive locks our pain inside of us.
We also need to realize that forgiveness is not an emotion, but it is a choice. It's a starting place to simply say the words, making the choice to say the words daily, even praying for that person whom we hold resentment for. The feelings will come later. Perhaps slowly, but they will come.
Also, unforgiveness keeps us bound to the control of others and their abuse.

Forgiving yourself:
I think this is a big one. Forgiving yourself. Actually, most of us don't think about this one, so we end up on an endless cycle of self-hatred, without even realizing it. It may be hard to forgive yourself for things you've done in the past. They key is: If you can honestly believe that God has the capacity to forgive you, and to even "choose" to forget what you have done in the past, how can you NOT forgive yourself? It's as if you are saying, "I know better than God what I do or don't deserve."..
This subject of forgiveness, .. for others AND yourself, is stressed in all Addiction Counseling, regardless of the addiction or struggle, and I believe it's something that all of us human beings deal with (or don't deal with) at some level in our lives.

For Parents:
In families where a high value is assigned to public reputation, girls especially, tend to feel extreme pressure to portray an image of perfection. In the role that religion plays in a persons' life this often results in the feeling that unless their life matches up to some "ideal" that they have been taught to believe, it can lead to the feeling of being a "failure". This, on turn can lead to a cycle of shame and guilt which simply compounds the problem.
It's important to realize that we aren't perfect,.. not even "close" to perfect,.. and never, in this life, will be.
The only perfect person who ever lived was Jesus Christ. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, something that a friend once told me. "Jesus didn't come into this world so that we could be like Him... He came because we " Couldn't". He came to die in our place and to give us His righteousness as a free gift.... through grace alone. No "Works" involved... no "striving for unattainable perfection"......

Parents, especially, can unknowingly have a negative impact on the emotions of a young person struggling to find their place in a world that portrays images of perfection. We are bombarded with advertisements and television programs which seem to solidify this belief of the "perfect life",... the "perfect body".
I personally believe that there is a great lack of communication between parents and their children and that many parents have abdicated their responsibility to teach and nurture correct thinking and have turned their children over to education via television, movies, music,... the mass media.
In my next blog I will address this issue of parenting further.

Hope you all have a great week!.....

Yes Men

Recently we did a Bible study on an Old Testament king named Eglon. Because he was surrounded by servants who were so intimidated by him, he allowed himself to be put in a situation where he was left by himself and was assassinated by an enemy.



I remember back about 20 years ago when my family and I were attending a fairly large, well-known church. The pastor was very well-known as a speaker and book author and had started the church from scratch several years before. The church had grown into sort of a mega-church and had a couple thousand members. The pastor had a group of elders who were accountable to him. The problem was,... HE wasn't accountable to them. They were basically just "yes men".... too intimidated to challenge the pastor on any issue. After all, he was "The Senior Pastor"... and, to most of the people in the congregation he was a "Spiritual Giant".


This pastor had always cautioned his staff that it was not proper for a man to counsel a woman by himself, that there should at least be another person present. This was so there would be no hint of impropriety... and, lesser chance of developing an unhealthy relationship.


So, ...one day, the pastor finds himself counseling a woman.... alone..without any oversight. The elders know this is a problem but they choose to simply ignore it because they are too afraid to "make waves", too fearful to confront him on the issue. After all, this was "Mr. Spiritual" who was doing the counseling. This was the senior pastor. What could happen?


Well,... what could happen is that the pastor could end up having an affair and running off with the woman to another state, forsaking his church, his wife and his family. Yes, ....it happened. It dealt a devastating blow to the congregation.


Eventually the pastor came to his senses, repented and returned to the church. But, the damage was done, the church was broken apart, and a lot of folks were left questioning everything they had ever believed about Christianity and true faith.


It's a dangerous thing to be surrounded by people who are too afraid to question you once in awhile,... afraid to "confront" you about a direction your life is taking.


I think all of us would like to believe that we are always right about every issue in life. The simple truth is that we aren't. We all have our blind spots and will eventually, if not held in check, fall into a pit of some sort. It takes a degree of humility to admit this and to allow ourselves to be open to criticism. That doesn't mean that the criticism is always accurate, but it does mean that we have the ability to at least consider what people are trying to tell us.... without being offended by it....respecting the advice and even the "correction" of others.



I hope you will be one of those kind of people who refuse to surround yourself with "yes men" ... or "yes women". Allow yourself to be a person of integrity and humility. Both literally, and figuratively, it might save your life one day.

Love Those Tests!

The folks at my church asked me if I would talk to the "young'uns" about drug use and addiction. So, I decided that a good way to go about stirring up some discussion would be to put together this short (but sweet) true and false test. I thought it might be interesting if I were to put it up as one of my blogs (that, and the fact that I'm running out of wonderful, clever things to say.....:-)

So.... here ya' go... take the quiz, and, if you get a bad score I will write all over it with RED (politically incorrect) indelible marker!.... the answers are at the end... don't look and cheat or God will strike you down on the spot. (He does things like that for ... cheating, lying, stealing, watching any t.v. program that features Rosie O'Donnell , listening to Lady Gaga's music,...and basically admiring anything done by Paris Hilton)......


True OR False

1. The use of alcohol has been around for thousands of years.



2. ALL drugs affect the brain



3. Alcohol isn't really considered a "drug"



4. Smoking cigarettes is a way of introducing a drug into the brain



5. Some drugs make a person feel more "stimulated"



6. Some drugs depress the central nervous system



7. Of all the mind-altering substances available, alcohol has caused the most damage to societies.



8. Alcoholism is recognized as a "disease" by the American Medical Association



9. Some people can use a particular drug their entire life and never become addicted.



10. Coca Cola contains a drug



11. Coca Cola was named after the drug cocaine.



12. A person can drink so much alcohol at one time that it can cause death



13. Over a hundred-million Americans drank alcohol last month



14. Around 40% of fatal traffic accidents involve drugs and alcohol.



15. My job as a drug and alcohol counselor is to try to get a drug addict or alcoholic to use drugs responsibly.



16. There is no "cure" for alcoholism



17. ALL drugs either inhibit or enhance chemicals that are already present in the human body.



18. According to Al Gore, all addictions are caused by Global Warming (o.k. this is a trick question).... you should probably go with "True".....




Answers: 1.T 2. T. 3.F 4.T 5.T 6.T 7.T 8.T 9.T 10.T 11.T 12.T 13.T 14.T 15.F



16.T 17.T 18.?