A Compulsive Perfectionist is someone who, as a child, achieved attention only for significant successes and were ignored or sternly criticized for anything less. They were discouraged from showing their intense feelings and were severely chastened for expressing anger or frustration. Their parents were emotionally cold and distant and uncomfortable with physical expressions of affection or intimacy. Perfectionists value logic and order. For them, feelings and relationships are like ants at a picnic, unwanted. Perfectionists are prone to depression, especially after losing control of some aspect of their lives. They are also vulnerable to anxiety problems and worry. When they worry it only intensifies their compulsive perfectionism leading to irritable and cantankerous behavior. If you are in need of counseling or know someone who does, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
Tag Archives: bible counseling
The Exiled or Disconnected Person
The Exiled or Disconnected person is robed in self-sufficiency and does not feel the need for acceptance or approval from others. They may in fact have little desire to connect at all. They believe they must exclusively count on themselves to provide psychological and emotional support. Typically the exiled or disconnected person cuts themselves off from people and looks inward to a world of fantasy to find pleasure and comfort. To those around this person it may appear that they look cold, distant, and aloof. The exiled person has learned to fend for oneself and Latchkey kids are prone to develop this relational style. For the exiled person, depending on others for emotional support provokes anxiety, which leads to profound feelings of vulnerability. The exiled person derives little if any pleasure from interacting with others and can come across as having a sense of superiority. This is not like the puffed-up superiority of the narcissist. The exiled person barricades themselves from their emotions. Life appears bland and colorless. It is calm, cool, and without much intensity. Lastly for the exiled person there is a longing for connectedness but the fear of being overwhelmed and controlled by others blunts this desire. If you are in need of counseling or know someone who does, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
Avoidant People – Part Two
When avoidant people are asked to describe their parents, they use generalities like “wonderful, great, warm, loving, and kind.” However when asked to provide specific examples of when their parents behaved this way, they are unable to provide specific examples. They want to believe this really happened but have no specific experience to back it up. Insensitive parenting includes “dismissive” parenting where a parent dismisses a child’s emotions, especially the negative ones. “Rejecting” parenting involves a parent who is emotionally disengaged from the child even from early on as an infant. “Intrusive” parenting is too much of a good thing and a failure on the part of the parent to be attuned to the child in a way that honors their freedom to choose. It is a failure to read subtle cues. If you are in need of counseling or know someone who does, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
Priorities and Demands
How often have you been in a situation where later you wished you had said something differently? Maybe you regretted what you said or you just didn’t speak up when you should have. Relationships that are neglected can create an enormous amount of stress. This stress then increases emotional vulnerability and the relationship can quickly go downhill from there. The longer a relationship remains neglected, the harder it is to repair. The ability to repair a “rupture” in a relationship is of primary importance. The key is to balance priorities versus demands in life and relationships. Priorities are those things important to you, things you want to do or get done. Demands are those things other people want you to do, things other people want done. Most troubles with priorities and demands are due to your own priorities conflicting with other people’s priorities. Thus you need good interpersonal skills to maintain your own priorities and/or negotiate compromises. If you are in need of some counseling or know someone who does, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
The Grace of Marriage
The key to making changes in a marriage is to see your spouse as God’s son or daughter. Your spouse and you are someone Jesus Christ died for and thus you both are part of God’s flock, a part of His handiwork in the Kingdom. Your spouse is worthy of your respect at all times. Spouses can work through each other to accomplish God’s work. Spouses can influence each other to the good. If you want to influence someone to be more Christ-like then you need to become more Christ-like yourself. A spouse’s behavior should be exemplified by a single word: grace. Grace heals. The hallmark of grace is forgiveness, and one aspect of forgiveness is the attitude of “I am giving up my right to retaliation, my right to hurt you back.” If your spouse has given you every reason for withdrawing, pursuing, or fighting, forgiveness means just letting it go. You are going to cancel the debt. However cancelling a debt is just part of forgiveness. The other part is establishing an appropriate relationship. That means not being foolish or inviting more hurt but having enough courage to take risks and to be vulnerable. Share those parts of yourself you have been keeping locked away…secret feelings, risky opinions, times when you risk rejection but share an idea anyway. If you are in need of marriage counseling or need some counseling, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
How To Help Your Spouse
Your job as a married partner is to consider your spouse in a way that brings understanding and healing to your relationship. This means you listen to stories that under girds their hurts and pains. This means you listen attentively and with sensitivity. When you provide acceptance and empathy, there is safety and your spouse can more aptly correct the misconceptions built into their attachment (and relational) patterns that produce their fears. God wants to work through spouses so they can help each other become more like Him! This is a big role with a lot of responsibility. Understanding and caring bring about security, safety, and stability. Couples can experience emotionally corrective experiences and learn to trust and love in a more meaningful way. If you are in need of counseling or know someone who does, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
Bible Marriage Advice
We need to live for our spouses and this makes their problems your problems. Though often quoted, the Letter to the Ephesians 5:21-33 is a passage all couples should review from time to time and utilize as an examination of conscience on how they are doing in their marriage. “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of his wife just as Christ is the head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes it and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.” If we truly are one flesh how can our spouses have issues reverberating so deeply within them and we not consider that we have those same issues? Our spouse’s problem is your problem. If you are in need of counseling or know someone who does, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
The Light
“Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home –
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene-one step enough for me.”
Blessed John Henry Newman
If you are in need of counseling or know someone who is, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
How Do You Live Your Life?
“What is it you desire? What kind of method or procedure do you paint for yourself in this life? What do you think serving God involves other than avoiding evil, keeping His commandments, and being occupied with things of God as best we can?” St. John of the Cross If you are in need of counseling or know someone who is, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/.
Know Your Fears
Psychologists from St. Augustine to Freud have seen fear as a universal, underlying experience of life. Fears usually begin in childhood and should be clearly recognized by every mature adult. Here is a list of our most common fears which tend to be pervasive and last throughout life.
*Fear of being hurt
*Fear of illness-sometimes called hypochondria
*Fear of rejection by others
*Fear of embarrassment
*Fear of being trapped in some situation
*Fear of being abandoned or left alone
*Fear of being without enough funds
*Fear of being controlled by some passion or compulsion
*Fear of death
Make a list of your most common fears which may include some of the above and some unique to you. Fear can motivate us to do good or to do bad. Fear can make us wisely cautious and warn us of real danger. However fear can also paralyze us and cause us to hold back, or never begin what we should have started. “Know your fears!” If you are in need of counseling or know someone who is, please contact Lamar Hunt Jr. or see his website at http://lamarhuntjrcounseling.com/