Love therapy - New site launches

www.Love-Therapy.ca has been launched to provide content to people looking for information about sex therapy, marital intimacy, love bonding in marriage and so on.

The therapy highlighted is emotionally focused couple therapy. The theory and practice of this was developed in Canada.

Create a silent divorce

One question covered is: What are the ways that we destroy love and intimacy and end up in silent divorce?

I discuss how lack of trust (fear) leads in to control. Then control destroys love. The question addressed is: "How does fear and control block marital intimacy and create the silent divorce?"

I focus in on the avoidant personality. This can be studied in John and Paula Sandford's book: Transformation of the Inner Man. They call this Flight from life.

But there is more than one personality type that avoids intimacy. So we look at the topic personality types that avoid intimacy. I write: There are 7 Types of Intimacy Avoiders - Which Group are You in?

On the positive side I add Twelve ways to Strengthen your Marriage Bond. In this I discuss the many ways that a person can allow and encourage the personal connection, the bonding, and the love connection that God intends for the marriage relationship.

Getting around to sex. The first page on sex highlights a recent study that shows that great sex is more about love and connecting.

Emotionally focused couple therapy secures couple bonding in 12 sessions

Healing of pained heart in grief

Dear George,

My son, Daniel, passed away suddenly 10 years ago from a virus that attacked his heart. There are no words to describe the pain in my heart. I have an aunty and cousins who instead of expressing even the tiniest bit of compassion and caring, are always negative and complain to me about their problems which are very trivial. This has added to the pain in my heart. I just want them to leave me alone.

Tonight I handed my heart to Jesus for Him to heal this immense pain which has prevented me from moving on with my life. I feel that Jesus healed my heart and returned it to me whole and healthy. I felt a pale pink energy (love) radiating from my heart. I thank God and Jesus for coming into my life and healing my heart.

This letter expresses what many are searching for - heart healing. Here is how I came to develop this prayer for the broken heart.

I (George) experienced pain when my life seemed to fall apart. My wife left me, which meant, eventually, loss of contact with my two sons: David was 5 and Kip was 10 years old. I also lost a job I enjoyed with would mean moving away from the small town into which we had settled. It meant selling the home I loved and the first one I had ever owned.

I decided to put my heart in God's hands and physically I went through the motions of this. I did this so that I would not grow hard and bitter and be unable to love again. I needed to move away form hardness of heart toward a soft loving heart.

It worked. Over the years I have grown more and more able to love. Rather than closing down I am opening up. I have experienced the value of putting the pieces of my broken heart into God's care.

Only God can heal my heart. I used the broken heart prayer. See prayer in marriage crisis, broken heart and depression.

Witchcraft Prayer – Praying to Control

Witchcraft Prayers are prayers that control

Prayers where we set the goals without listening to God are witchcraft prayers. In are witchcraft prayers we decide how God will meet a particular need. As ambassadors of Christ we must represent accurately the will of God. To do this we must be following orders and staying in touch.That is the value of listening prayer.

An individual prayed that their family member would get sick every time they drank and that is what happened. As ambassadors Christians have a lot of authority. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. Because God is deeply committed to health I believe that it does not represent God well to speak sickness on someone so they will not act on their addiction.

It is especially controlling if the person with the addiction has not made the choice to be free. Nor have not asked to be made sick every time they drink (or smoke). Here we are going against the person’s free will by imposing our own will. Imposing our own will, ‘our good idea,’ is, I believe, controlling. It is therefore a witchcraft type prayer.

God is committed to our choice, our freedom to choose, and is not into controlling prayer, not into witchcraft prayer. I have explained - Fear and Control - that lack of trust always underlies the need for control.

More prayer guidelines on HealMyLife.com articles on spiritual warfare and prayer guidelines.

My model of inner healing

I wish I know my model of inner healing. The best example is what I do in a counselling sessions where inner healing is appropriate.

Honestly, many very effective counselors cannot put into words and rules the reason for everything they do. Those rules are not put into an organized system.

To get this into your hands we would need to tape my sessions. Put these into a typed form. Then sit down with some interested students and have them ask questions. Why did you do that?

We would then right down my explanations. We would observe to be sure that I was consistent in following the rules. Once confirmed we would have the basic rules of my model of inner healing.

Sort these out and organize them into a system and we would be able to construct my model of inner healing.

Maybe we should do that.

What is a curse?

What is a curse? A curse is negative energy. The opposite, a blessing, is positive energy.

Our essential being is spiritual. God's breath gave us life. God's Spirit sustains us, because we are spirit.

Therefore what we don't see with our physical eyes, or feel with our hands or hear with our ears can and does touch us. Good or evil is done to our spirit by spiritual forces. Curses and blessings have spiritual force.

That is why Jesus says that our hatred is like murder. Hatred has deadly force in the spirit. Hatred does murder to our human spirit. Hatred is a form of evil with energy equivalent to that of a curse. To be practical hatred is a form of cursing. We need to protect ourselves in Jesus name from curses in the form of hatred coming from those who hate us.

Spoken curses come in a variety of forms. You see how answering: "What is a curse?" is not always simple. Maybe at the end we can come up with something.

I have come to understand that abuse is any form of not seeing, welcoming and acknowledging the real you. When the family plays with a label for you, even benign of 'good' ones, the result is not seeing the real you. So one form of verbal curse is identity labels that miss the essential magnificent you. Your family labels you the "baby" and never acts as if you had any credibility or capability. That is a powerful curse! Christian prayer therapy of some depth and duration may be needed to undo a lifetime of reinforcement of this type of identity casting family label.

A medical diagnosis can become a person's identity label. An example is the repeated statement "I am bipolar." or "I am Schizophrenic." The truth is you are who you are. You are a child of God. You were created by God in love and redeemed by God with love.

We tend to believe the doctor when he gives his diagnosis and prognosis. He doesn't say "God willing" or "unless there is a miracle" when he says you have cancer and it is likely that you will die in six months. But God is sovereign over my life. God gives and God takes away. I put a doctor's diagnosis and prognosis under the mighty hand of God who calls into being that which is not. So as common a thing as a medical diagnosis can be a curse.

So far we have seen this:

1. A curse is a form of negative energy.
2. Hatred is a form of curse.
3. Identity casting family labels act as curses.
4. A medical diagnosis taken as one's identity is a curse.
5. A medical diagnosis and prognosis can act as a verbal curse.

This is a partial answer to what is a curse.

Christian Marriage Retreats

A retreat is not magic simply because you spend more time in therapy. That sounds a little overwhelming!

Here is what happens to me and my clients at a typical Christian marriage retreat.

1. Goal setting does not need to be repeated at each session. This saves some time.
2. The topics at each session are fresh in each our minds as we move on in the retreat.
3. Informal time together helps build trust and as we relax we become more creative.

The results are encouraging.

1. I discover new insights that help this couple.
2. These insights are so helpful that they become tools that I can use to help other couples.
3. The enhanced trust, creativity and focus means enhanced therapeutic gains for the couple.

So Christian marriage retreats are more effective than the same time spread out over months. There is synergy, creativity and deepened insight.

For those looking at this option, I would suggest a Christian marriage retreat as a wise investment of time and money and a good path toward a relationship breakthrough.

Avoiding Love

God calls us to close intimate relationships with others, to love one another, to establish a life partnership with one and cling to them, meaning bonding, attachment or emotional connection.

However, I find that many of us habitually and unconsciously avoid close intimate relationships.  Elsewhere, I have looked at the ways we avoid love: 7 ways or types of of avoiding intimacy.

This means that we will develop habits that allow us (unconsciously) to avoid close intimate relationships (love). These habits are like addictions. They only partially and artificially meet our real need.

Marriage is the institution many persons turn to for love, to meet the God-given need for close, safe, bonding with another.  God created us with the need for faithful love and intimacy and wants us to 'cling' to Him in the same way we develop a bond to a marital partner.  Jesus explains this graphically in John 15.

Marriage is a legal institution but it comes without guarantee of love.  Getting married does not mean that deep connection and bonding develops although it provides a foundation for that - a sense of security and faithfulness.  But if one or both marriage partners habitually, consistently and unconsciously avoid close intimate relationships, then whatever bond God provides is being put asunder by these 'love avoidant' partners.

It is likely that most partners who avoid intimacy are not even aware that they are doing it.  It is unconscious - a heart condition.  (I use the term 'heart' as the biblical-psychological term for the emotional brain.)  It is their heart - based on past memories - that systematically avoids having a close intimate relationship with their marital  partner. Bonding in such a marriage will weaken. The marriage bond eventually becomes strained and will break.  At that point the emotional and spiritual basis of this marriage is gone.

There may be other reasons to stay married but it will not feel like you are married if the bonding has broken.   Counselors call this state 'silent divorce.'

A couple may want to get professional help.  Here I suggest a marital therapist with skill in bonding focused couple therapy officially called emotionally focused couple therapy.

Some people will choose to stay in a marriage as a way to escape from real intimate relationship.  For such persons a silent divorce with a safe partner has many attractions.  Such a marriage will provide us with some companionship (so we are not alone), safety (another lives with us), the status of being married (how things look) and all without requiring the risk of love, the vulnerability of intimacy.

(Warning note: the persons who strongly choose intimacy avoidance can and do become nasty and destructive when you 'disturb their nest.'  Consolidate family, business and church relationships be frank and open discussion and 'heads up notices' because you will see the demonic side of person (as in "hell has no fury") emerge and attack, undermine and try to destroy everything in your life if you insist on change.  Prepare for what John Sandford might have called 'the attack of the Shrike.')

There is a hidden cost to such a relationship.  You are becoming too comfortable with pretense and living in denial.  You are not experiencing the fullness of love, the uplifting, affirming, comforting, and heart healing of being in a love relationship with a safe partner.  You are not facing your own heart issues and maturing in Christ.  You will drift away from life, love and God into death, sickness and hell, to put it bluntly.

For more about marriage addiction and our avoidance of the love bond see www.ex-harmony.com and
www.love-therapy.ca


An example: