People

Today's 5 minute Friday prompt is PEOPLE and I love this because...Wow, what a broad subject to try to write about in 5 minutes!

I have made it my career to help people and to be a student of human behavior. People of all races and ages are bonded by their common humanity, and when we see what we have in common we are more likely to draw on compassion when interacting with those who have different views or seem different than us.

I believe all people have both a beauty and a brokenness. I just learned through a trauma conference that all individuals give off a fresquency of light. And that actually makes sense to me in terms of our Imago Dei ( the fact that we are made in the image of God) But all humans are also broken. This comes through the fall, our fallen nature, our tendency to seek those things other than God when God is what we need.

So as a Christian therapist, part of my job is helping people to understand what is beautiful and wonderful and precious about them (The Imago Dei) and what of their brokenness gets in the way. In terms I use with my clients, I help them utilize their strengths, to overcome unhealthy coping skills. To help them understand when they use avoidance and escape to cope with pain. To understand faulty beliefs about themselves that keeps them from seeing their great worth. To help them see what parts of themselves actually work against what they really want. We often are not aware of our inner conflicts that war with one another. One common example is the desire for closeness to others that wars with the fear of being hurt by others. By gaining understanding of our inner conflicts we are able to choose intentionally how to live. Learning about our emotions and how they give us information helps us to learn how to tolerate and regulate them. Learning that we may have never been taught how to sooth ourselves or to attend to our needs, helps to be gentle and to develop self compassion

But the most important thing is to learn that we were created by a God who loves us in the way we all long for and to develop a relationship with that loving God who tenderly cares for us and meets our needs. The more we get that, understand that, trust Him, the more we can develop that deep compassion toward ourselves and toward other human beings. We are called to do two things, love God with all our heart soul and strength, and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. And I believe it is the work of God's people to help remove the obstacles that get in the way of those two things.