Transitions Counseling Blog
The Blog Archive contains a complete list of posts.
April 17, 2021 (Updated Apr 19, 2021) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: General
Going for walks and hikes is always good for my soul. It is good to be out in nature, of course. But it is also good for me to have space to think, to process, and to just be. And, by stepping away from screens and breaking out of routine there’s more opportunity for a little unexpected adventure, perhaps bringing greater potential for me to learn something new about myself and about life.
Sometimes on hikes there will be a stream to cross. In warmer weather it can be fun to take my shoes off and wade through. But I also like making a game out of trying to find a way across without getting wet (a la the wonderful, imaginative childhood game of pretending the floor is lava!). On this recent hike it was a chilly day, and thus icy, cold water was not feeling appealing. So I visually surveyed up and down the bank for a place where there were either some rocks to step to, or perhaps it would be narrow enough to jump. And thus I eventually found myself at the edge of the bank, contemplating a “leap of faith.”
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July 8, 2016 (Updated Jun 29, 2019) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: General
Video: 2 Minutes
Sadness, pain and loss are a part of everyone’s life. We all experience loss, not only in the form of losing loved ones to things like death or relational brokenness, but also in myriads of other big and little losses throughout daily life. Loss is a form of disappointment–the experience of having expected or hoped for one thing, and instead experiencing something much less desirable. How we respond to the daily (and seemingly “little” disappointments) sets the stage for how we will respond to our sadness about much more noticeable losses.
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June 15, 2016 (Updated Jun 29, 2019) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: Dating, Married
Video: 10 Minutes
Infidelity is devastating to a marriage–the hurt, loss, confusion and anger take their toll. But an affair does not automatically mean the end of the relationship. If both parties want to repair and rebuild the marriage, then it is possible to do so. And the couple can actually end up with a healthier, stronger relationship than they had previously.
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June 2, 2016 (Updated Jun 29, 2019) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: Dating, Married
Our culture is in love with the fantasy of the perfect spouse who will meet all our needs and never fail us. But in reality, a significant part of developing our capacity for meaningful long-term relationships is learning how to bear with one another’s imperfections. I’ve touched on these themes in other posts previously (including some videos), but wanted to share an excellent article I recently came across that gives a nice overview of how Romanticism (as a common philosophical approach to relationships) has distorted our expectations, and ironically made it harder to experience the kind of relationship it promises to deliver.
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February 12, 2016 (Updated Jun 29, 2019) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: Christians, General
This is Part 4 of 4 in the series Forgiveness: One of the Hardest (And Most Important) Things We Can Do for Ourselves and Our Relationships.
Video: 8 Minutes
Forgiveness (and the underlying grieving required) is one of the hardest (and most important) things we can aspire to do, in part because of how it touches so many vulnerable places within us. Whether a relational infraction is little or big, the work of forgiveness (of working through our pain) is the same: We have to learn how to let our self matter, without trying to make the other person matter less. This distinction is both a hallmark of real forgiveness and a necessary prerequisite to reconciliation. In essence, we cannot healthily move towards reconciliation until we have worked through (or at least begun working through) the pain and grief of forgiveness.
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February 11, 2016 (Updated Jun 29, 2019) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: Christians, General
This is Part 3 of 4 in the series Forgiveness: One of the Hardest (And Most Important) Things We Can Do for Ourselves and Our Relationships.
Video: 5 Minutes
Stepping into our grief and engaging our pain is very challenging (though incredibly rewarding) work. Given how scary this work can be (especially if we don’t have people in our life walking with us through it) it should come as no surprise that we are prone to developing all sorts of unhealthy coping strategies in an effort to survive without having to do the actual work of facing our pain.
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February 10, 2016 (Updated Jul 9, 2016) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: Christians, General
This is Part 2 of 4 in the series Forgiveness: One of the Hardest (And Most Important) Things We Can Do for Ourselves and Our Relationships.
Video: 4 Minutes
Forgiveness necessitates our remembering and grieving our pain. Fortunately, this remembering is not contingent on our remembering perfectly. To put it differently: In order to forgive we must grieve what we experienced, letting our pain matter to us, even though we know that our memory is imperfect.
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February 9, 2016 (Updated Aug 27, 2016) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: Christians, General
This is Part 1 of 4 in the series Forgiveness: One of the Hardest (And Most Important) Things We Can Do for Ourselves and Our Relationships.
Video: 3 Minutes
A common (and mistaken) approach to forgiveness is to “forgive and forget.” This is problematic for a number of reasons, the most fundamental being that real, healing forgiveness requires that we remember. And embedded in this truth is one of the reasons that I believe God calls Christians to forgive.
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March 23, 2015 (Updated Jun 29, 2019) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: General
This is Part 3 of 3 in the series Love Talk Film Festival, Expert Panel (2015).
Video: 6 Minutes
Growing up in a broken world, we each can have places inside of us that we can be afraid to go. This stems from repeated experiences of not having the resources (within ourself, and/or in our closest relationships) to grapple with certain emotions. When we encounter various forms of pain in life, and we aren’t able to healthily work through the emotions accompanying those experiences, then those emotions get stuck within us. And they stay in that stuck state, festering, until we encounter a relational context that can help us build the emotional muscles that we’re lacking.
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March 16, 2015 (Updated Mar 26, 2015) by Sean Slevin — Intended Audience: Dating, Married
This is Part 2 of 3 in the series Love Talk Film Festival, Expert Panel (2015).
Fellow panelist Aaron Bacue, M.A., ABD, (a communications instructor at James Madison University) shares some of his thoughts on how couples can keep their relationship vibrant, and I springboard off of his thoughts with some concepts about how our brains work with patterns. (This video is ~3 minutes long.)
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