Blog posts, news articles, and other resources from The Center • A Place of HOPE
The impact of traumatic experiences in life can be far-reaching. Unresolved traumatic experiences can manifest in our most intimate relationships, leading to trust issues, sexual dysfunction, or aversion. These can then be further complicated by online infidelity or addiction to online pornography - often a result of the earlier trauma....
Have you ever felt like you’re somehow “tricking” everyone around you into believing you’re competent? You might feel like, any day now, you’ll be uncovered for the fraud you are. Everyone will realize you don’t deserve any of your accomplishments – that you’ve simply skated by on luck. These feelings...
Social media usage is becoming increasingly common. Now, over 75% of the world’s population uses some type of social media platform. Reports show that narcissistic personality traits are also growing in young people.
When you were growing up, you may have been told over and over, in a variety of ways, that you weren’t good enough, smart enough fast enough, thin enough, or just plain not enough of anything to please your parents. In order to numb this crushing sense of failure and...
How can you put your life back together after addiction? Healing happens when you reintegrate healthy connections with yourself and others. Once you admit you’re broken, you must agree to look at reconnecting the pieces of your life that addiction has torn apart. Your relationships may be strained, estranged, or...
How you feel about yourself affects all of your other relationships. Some of you may not be used to the idea that you have a distinct relationship with yourself, but you do. You have a personality and a will; you have a perspective on life that is lived out in...
“Things are going so well…I’m really nervous. Something bad is bound to happen now!” Have you ever heard or thought something like this before? “The other shoe is going to drop” sentiment is a common pothole on the road to recovery. Sadly, this type of thinking prevents many people from...
One of the core traits of a dependent personality is difficulty accepting challenging or disturbing truths about self or others out of a need to maintain the status quo.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the only way to have a friend is to be one. The depth of your character is best gauged by the depth of your friendships.
Any kind of abuse, emotional abuse included, is an attack on a person's sense of self. It demeans and controls that person through words or actions, devaluing that person and ultimately elevating the abuser.
Perhaps you have forgotten who you really are. Maybe you've never known. What causes a negative image of yourself? Your life story holds some valuable clues to solving the mystery.
The effects of emotional abuse on your sense of self are significant. Yet often these effects are not linked to the emotional abuse you have suffered. Because this connection has not been made, you may find yourself suffering from one or several of these effects without really understanding why. Here...
Your working relationships can be affected if the personalities of your boss or co-workers closely approximate someone in your past who emotionally abused you. Your boss could be just like your dad. A supervisor could treat you just like your mother did. A co-worker could remind you of the way...
When people fear themselves, they will sometimes turn to activities to try to outrun the fear. They may use alcohol, drugs, shopping, eating, gambling, or the internet to keep from being alone with themselves.Other people may turn to family, friends or co-workers to crowd out their fear of being alone....
The human mind is a wondrous creation, an amazing tool with the power to inspire us to victory or to overwhelm us with defeat. Targeted below are some of the reasons we use for overeating, as well as ways we can turn the tool of the mind to a more...
Few things are as frightening as losing control, feeling powerless against overwhelming forces. When overcome by events, we can feel swept up on relentless waves of circumstance that hurl us toward terrifying heights and bone-jarring lows. Each event is made worse if we have tried to stop it and been...
In today’s social media–saturated world, no analysis of relationships would be complete without proper attention to the criteria you set for your friends—online and off. If you are engaged in online relationships that you consider to be a prominent source of support and companionship, be sure determine the strength of the relationships based on these factors.
As a professional counselor treating eating disorders for over twenty-five years, I am very concerned about the often over-looked issue of emotional abuse. For many years I have noticed that the focus of abuse, even the concept of abuse, has centered around the physical beatings, outward neglect, and sexual invasion...
"*" indicates required fields
The whole person approach to treatment integrates all aspects of a person’s life: