Have you experienced religious trauma? 

By religious trauma, I mean the pain caused by or in the name of religion, religious leaders, or those bearing religious doctrines (maligned as they may or may not be) in their hands and breast. It can be as devasting to the soul and spirit as other forms of trauma such as covert incest or emotional incest.

Few drugs in life are more powerful than new love.

The mere thought of it drives fantasies, hopes, and even entire life directions. It’s no grand revelation to say that love is a universal human pleasure, the ultimate passion. A great many say that it is the very purpose of life itself.

In celebration of February, the month of love in the United States and elsewhere in the world, and as we celebrate Valentine’s Day on February 14th, let’s explore love, what makes it so challenging, dealing with red flags and the past, and how to have a healthy, loving relationship.

As you might guess, the beginning of a new year is a busy time of year for therapy and counseling.

A lot of people are either coming off of the Holidays depressed, faced with family sh*t once again, or really shook up. Similarly, many other people are diving into the new year and wanting a fresh start or are just sick of the old ways of thinking, feeling, and being.

Whatever the case, this is a time when many people want to reach out to a therapist for change and have questions. In this article, you’ll find answers to your questions about therapy and counseling.

For so many people, this is the time of year when the hardness of life seems to increase. For some, this increases negative self-talk, self-loathing, withdrawal from others, and increased loneliness and hopelessness. Is this you? Are your negative feelings pulling you down? Does it get worse this time of year, or is it pretty much bad all year?

Whatever the case for you, there can be little dispute that depression and its kissing-cousin anxiety are a beast and can suck the very life out of life.

And so, what we’re stuck with in life is the grand question of what the heck to do with it? Is there even anything that can be done with it or to it? Or is it simply a burden that must be shouldered but never escaped?

‘Dealing’ with the holidays. Isn’t that a fascinating word choice? And yet it accurately depicts how so many of us have been forced by life to look at the holiday season.

For plenty of people, the holidays are something to be anticipated with trepidation, anxiously micro-planned to minimize damages, tap-danced through, and ultimately recovered from. For these folk, it truly is about ‘dealing with’ the holidays, rather than enjoying the holidays or even mostly enjoying the holidays.

Have you wondered how to be good at parenting?

After all, that little magical land known as parenting is the destination, whether intended or not, of a great many relationships. And, a great many writers and other parents will then go on to tell that couple in a relationship that parenting is not some magical land. It’s sweat, tears, frustrations, aches, and on and on. And that juxtaposition where magical meets ugly-hard is the simplest way to understand parenting, particularly in those early years. It’s no different from anything else in life that you might endeavor that you wish to be a great experience – a relationship, career, travels, or anything else. There’s ugly and there’s beauty; hard and smooth.

What comes to mind when you hear the term ‘disciplines’? Do you consider the term negative and the equivalent of punishment, or rather, a positive that can help keep your body and soul on track?

From a Badass Counseling perspective, disciplines are intensely positive and play a critical role in helping you keep your soul and spirit in the best condition possible.

There’s something about long-distance relationships (LDRs) that brings out agony, ecstasy, and fear. Agony and ecstasy are hard to remove from an LDR. However, when it comes to fear, the solution is trust.

How do you develop trust? How do you nurture it so it keeps the fear at bay?

Here’s Badass Counseling's perspective so you can prepare yourself and protect your relationship.

If there's one whopping cliché sitting smack-dab in the middle of the world of counseling and healing and psychology stuff it's this whole idea of 'inner child' stuff, whatever that is.

• “You have to heal your inner child,”

• “His inner child is obviously wounded,”

• “My inner child was instantly triggered.”

To people who use the idea of it, it makes total sense. To a whole lot of other folks, it can sound dopey or like someone is just stuck in the past, all of which is understandable.

Having a badass life coach can be transformative. That’s the kind of person who pushes you hard so you can go deeper than you’ve ever gone to discover how to be true to your own self. It’s not for everyone. Rather, it’s for those who are desperately committed to extricating themselves from misery, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and more. In other words, having that badass life coach means that you’re making a pact with yourself to change. And your life coach is there to keep you on track as you progress through the Badass Counseling method to reach your authentic greatness.

Are you familiar with the phrase ‘soul detox’? Doing a soul detox is a powerful way to purge the toxic crud that poisons your soul.

In this article, you’ll learn more about soul detoxes, what they are, how to do an effective one, and how they can benefit you from a Badass Counseling perspective. 

Did you know that the book “There's A Hole In My Love Cup: The Badass Counseling® Method For Healing The Soul And Unleashing Greatness” truly captures the Badass Counseling methodology, and is unrivaled in its effectiveness? To better understand what makes “Love Cup” so effective, we caught up with author Sven Erlandson to ask him questions about why he wrote the book, how it has helped people, and what’s next.

Emotional incest is a topic that troubles many adults. It comes up a lot during the Badass Counseling podcast as well as counseling sessions. In fact, Emotional Incest: Parent-as-Friend and the Very Real Problem of Parental Over-sharing is one of the top-read articles on BadassCounseling.com.

Badass isn’t a conventional way to name a counseling business. That said, it perfectly captures the kind of counseling that Badass Counseling provides. Read on to learn more.

I ask you this question, do you think this notion of children having their own ideas of what would make them happy, and parents having their own ideas of what their grown child should do (to make the parent happy, perchance), is a new phenomenon?

He told the story of standing next to his father, who was talking to their new country pastor, saying, “Pastor, if I'm teaming up my horses in 50-below weather, I expect more than a 30-minute sermon,” proud of the fact that it was he and his brother who had helped their dad feed and yoke the horses that morning, in the dark.

I'm a good Midwestern/North kid. But, I was nobody in the world of religious studies, American sociology of religion, spirituality, and the like, no one even knew the book, or I, existed. I was first, yes, but a nobody, nonetheless. No sales. No money. No notoriety. Nuthin'.

"People reveal their character in patterns. They reveal their secrets in anomalies. And both are driven by fear. Name the fear and you've named the person." -- Sven Erlandson

Of course, I now tuck that phrase quite perfectly into the Swedish-Minnesotan piety in which I long stewed that believes there are no greater crimes against humanity than A) Immodesty, and B) Imposing on anyone for anything, ever, for any reason whatsoever.

The long term effect of constantly trying to direct your child is that the teen/young adult is then forever looking for external sources of guidance -- parent, spouse, boss, friend -- rather than trusting his or her own inner voice. The effect is that other people wield an enormous amount of influence over the young person, even as they progress further into adulthood. That sense of dependency not only grows, but an inner weakness grows with it.