Hope Bigun
Hope Bigun
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Key Concepts in Hope-Focused Marriage Counseling
The number of people looking for marriage counseling is big. Actually it is bigger than the number of people seeking help with many well known psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, crisis and past trauma.
A lot of couples seek help from their pastors when their marriage challenges are getting too complicated to handle on their own. The advice that the pastors offer them often isn't effective and their disappoitment and frustration will often cause the couple to divorce as well as leave the church.
Statistics say that professional marriage counselors are able to help fifty percent of the spouses that seek therapy to save their relationship. It is likely to beleive that pastors have a similar rate of success. Therefor it is required for pastors to be able to give effective counseling advice, this is where hope-focused marriage counseling comes in.
The book Hope-Focused marriage counseling was written by Everett L. Worthington, Jr., Ph.D to help couples with big marriage issues in a compassionate and effective way. Instead of focusing on problems like many other methods do, this method is focusing on hope. The method help couples finding out that change is possible.
In his book he offers a three-part hope-focused approach that teaches couples methods they can use to help them change and to strengthen their determination to wait on God.
We all have our areas of weakness that we should consider working on. Worthington's method help couples correct their weaknesses and the book is further exploring eight areas in which couples often experience marriage issues.
The main focus of this therapy approach is building hope between the lovers, using principles from the Bible and depending on the Holy Spirit to work in the couple and help them work with challenges and conflicts. A variety of psychological theories are integrated with Christianity to make this counseling method.
In hope-focused marriage counseling, hope is defined as having willpower or desire to change, knowledge of how to change, as well as having waitpower or a faith that Jesus is always there and helping us get through it. Hope is required to change and is therefor emphasized througout the counseling sessions.
For many marriage counselors and spouses the goal is to improve marriages and reduce the divorce rate, while others opinion is that the goal is figuring out what is best for each individual person. In hope-focused marriage counseling divorce is considered a failure, however, that does not mean that saving the marriage is always the most important thing to consider. The safety of the couple seeking marriage counseling is always the most important consideration.
Find more Christian marriage counseling advice to help improve your marriage. Learn how the key concepts in Hope-Focused marriage can help you experience that change is possible.
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