Counseling Corner: Recent Episodes
Isaac Johnson
The Bible is just as relevant today as it was when it was written two thousand years ago. It gives us practical advice and tools to help us deal with everyday issues like stress, anxiety, depression, parenting, finances, sex, etc. As a Marriage & Family therapist and pastor, Isaac Johnson utilizes scientific research and biblical truth, to help his listeners understand why they do what they do and how to do what they do better.
This is my last episode of Season One for this podcast. If God allows I hope to do a second season down the road. With that in mind, I thought it might be fun and helpful to highlight my Top Ten Topics and give one, overarching principle for each of them, kind of like a season in review. If you want more info on a particular issue from this episode, you can go back and listen to earlier episodes that addressed your interest in more detail.
Anxiety is one of those emotions, kind of like anger and sadness, that has gotten a bad rap. While none of us like feeling anxious that doesn’t mean anxiety is a useless emotional state. In this episode, Isaac gives four, practical benefits of anxiety and tells us what we can do to make anxiety work more for us instead of against.
None of us like the feeling of disappointing someone. We don’t want to hurt a person’s feelings, so we water down the truth. We do things out of guilt because we don’t want someone to “feel bad.” We even avoid disciplining our kids due to our emotional insecurity. In this episode, Isaac explains why disappointing others is not only unavoidable, it’s often necessary in order to love them the way God needs us to.
One of the lies that Satan has tricked many of us into believing, even people in the Church, is that Sexual Chemistry is something we either have or don’t have with someone. This justifies our attempts to discover it by sleeping around in search of our perfect chemical match. In this episode, Isaac uses science and scripture, to not only dispel this myth, but show us how we can develop the sexual compatibility we long for in our marriage, God’s way.
When it comes to temptation our natural tendency is to accept it and do our best to resist it. But what if there’s a better way? In this episode, Isaac explains why God doesn’t want us to just resist sin, in our lives, but actually strive to ELIMINATE it, Isaac also provides us with two, practical strategies to help us accomplish this task.
It’s Valentine’s Day week. Valentine’s Day is a holiday most women look forward to while many men dread. It’s not that men are anti-love, but they generally don’t like being told when and how they should show love, and let’s face it, Valentine’s Day often does feel like forced love. In this episode, Issac explains why men often unintentionally view loving their wives as a burden, when God intended it to be a blessing. Isaac also breaks down the four, main roles for husbands in marriage and shows how each of these roles actually enhances a man’s enjoyment of his wife and his marriage.
Knowing the WHY is a natural, human desire. But when it comes to making lasting, positive changes in our lives insight alone is rarely enough, in this episode, Isaac identifies two dangers in only pursuing the why, and gives practical steps we can take to help us turn our hopes into realities.
Knowing what direction God wants us to go in, especially in regard to major life transitions,is something all of us desire. But how do we know if we’re on the right path? In this episode, Isaac gives us Four Indicators that help us determine if we’re operating in God’s Will, or if we need to do a little more prayerful research.
Verses like Ephesians 5:22 and I Peter 3:1-2, which admonish women to respect their husbands in marriage have become a little controversial over the last 40 years in the church, and indirectly in society. In this episode, Isaac explains why God commands this of women and how God uses respect and submission to bless a woman, mature her, convict her husband, and protect the woman if God needs to judge the man’s unrepentant sin.
Not too long ago inviting people over to our house for dinner was the norm. But unfortunately, hospitality has become more of an anomaly these days, even amongst Christians. In this episode, Isaac shares with us why he believes hospitality has fallen out of style and what we can do to make it more commonplace in our homes, our community, and especially the church.
What can we do to be a blessing to someone in our lives who is suffering? And what behaviors do we need to avoid to make sure we are not an unintentional burden to them. In this episode, Isaac gives us Four Dos and Four Don’ts, to help us minister more effectively to people in crisis.
Research tells us that only 9% of Americans actually follow through on their New Year’s Resolutions. In this episode, Isaac gives us five, practical reasons why most of fail in this area and strategies we can implement, starting today, to make sure 2024 is the year we give ourselves the gift of a better version of us,
Christmas is supposed to be a magical time of the year where we look forward to spending time with family. But for far too many of us, Christmas family gatherings are something we dread rather than a time of fun and fellowship. This is because we tend to hope for the best, do nothing to change things, and then endure the worst for one more year. In this episode, Isaac gives us three action steps we can take preemptively, to increase the chances that this Christmas with your family will be memorable for all the right reasons.
Procrastination is one of those habits that most of us would agree is not healthy, yet find ourselves engaging in on a regular basis. In this episode, Isaac explains why we procrastinate and three, practical and Biblical strategies we can implement to combat it more effectively in our lives.
While the holiday season is generally a joyous time of the year, I know that for far too many of us it can also be an occasion marked by pain, loneliness, and sorrow, as we are reminded of loved ones who are no longer with us or past holiday traumas or tragedies that we feel forced to relive year after year. But God doesn’t want us to just survive, He wants us to learn to thrive in any season of our life. In this episode, Isaac gives us four, holiday-thriving strategies we can implement immediately in our lives, to increase the chances that this holiday season will be one we want to remember.
When it comes to our hurts, habits, and hang ups, which are just nice synonyms for our addictions, there are no easy answers. This is because most addictions are rooted in deep psychological, spiritual, and emotional wounds that typically originated in our childhood prior to age 12, and they cannot be healed by taking a pill, reading a self-help book, or just trying harder. In this episode, Isaac explains the destructive role shame plays in addiction, and three habits we can develop to defeat shame in our lives.
While most of us find conflict physically and emotionally unpleasant, and see it as something to avoid, both the Bible and Science show us that conflict can not only be extremely beneficial in relationships, but is actually essential. In this episode, Isaac shares three benefits of healthy conflict and why God wants us to initiate it and embrace it in our lives.
We’ve all heard the saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.” But this perspective is not only unhealthy, physically and emotionally, it is unbiblical as well. God, and people, don’t mind hearing our grievances, as long as we express them in a positive and productive manner. In this episode, Isaac uses the example of King David in the Bible to illustrate how we can complain without blaming, or building resentment and contempt.
When it comes to communication most of us would automatically focus on someone’s words and tone as determining factors of a good communicator; however, this would be an incomplete perspective. The truth is that people who demonstrate good communication skills listen way more than they speak. In this episode, Isaac shares with us why listening is so impactful and Four Listening Traits we need to develop in order to fully love others with our ears.
Divorce is one of the most traumatic experiences a person can go through in life. Yet too many people try to heal by going out and finding another relationship, before they are ready. In this episode, Isaac gives us five steps of healing a person should work through after a divorce, before even considering a first date.
It seems like the only thing that’s certain in our lives these days is Uncertainty. In this episode, Isaac shares with us three things we can do to not only get through uncertain, transitional seasons in our lives, but to come out better on the other side.
In this episode Isaac shares the four reasons why apathy is so dangerous and the three steps we can take to minimize, and even eliminate apathy in our lives.
The average person speaks about 7,000 a words a day, and I believe at least 70% of those words are for our benefit, not others. What we say, to ourselves and others, really has the power to mature us or unintentionally reward and perpetuate unhealthy, victim-oriented beliefs about ourselves and the world we live in. In this episode, Isaac shares two, common phrases that we need to try and eliminate from our vocabulary and action steps we can take to accomplish this..
In this episode Isaac gives the Ladies Five Principles they can implement in their relationship with their man, that will allow her to enjoy him, while God is doing the challenging and changing.
In this episode Isaac gives men Five Principles, that if implemented consistently, will help them make the woman in their life “feel” as loved and cherished as God created her to be.
The Bible tells us in Job 12:12 that getting older is a blessing and a reward. Yet many of us would struggle to agree. In this episode, Isaac shares with us practical ways we can, not only grow old gracefully, but see aging as an opportunity rather than a setback.
Humility has received a bad rap over the years, where people have perceived being humble as somehow being a pushover or a doormat. But when we view humility through God’s eyes, it becomes a powerful tool that God can use to protect us, make us more attractive, free us, and allow us to be used significantly in life to do amazing things.
Like Job in the Bible, many of us have experienced painful and overwhelming circumstances in our lives, that felt unwarranted or simply pointless. We ask God, “Why did I have to go through this?” and He often does not seem to give us a satisfying answer. In this episode, Isaac shares four, practical reasons why God doesn’t always give us the WHY and that God’s reasons are more loving than we think.
In this, the last episode of this three-part series, Isaac shares his final marital joy-killer and practical steps we can take to prevent it from getting into our relationship, or defeat it if it has already taken root.
In this episode Isaac shares with us the second of his three Marriage Joy-Killers and what practical action steps we can take to identify and defeat it in our relationship.
Too many marriages these days are not experiencing the joy and passion God intended. In this three-part series Isaac shares with you the three, Marriage Joy-Killers he has discovered, in working with hundreds of couples as a marriage counselor, and what action steps you can take to mitigate them in your relationship.
In this episode Isaac shares the Five, Side-Effects of Maturity, that many of us are caught off guard by, and ways we can recognize and manage them more effectively. If you have any feedback for Isaac, you can email him at isaac@lifespringak.com. And please write a review or share this podcast.
So often we mistake the challenging situations in our lives as punishment from God or evidence that we’re going in the wrong direction. But what if God is using these hardships to protect us from ourselves? In this episode Isaac uses 2 Corinthians 12:7-8, and examples from his years as a counselor, to illustrate practical ways God often uses uncomfortable situations in our lives to protect us from disaster.
All emotions have the potential to be destructive, when we don’t manage them effectively, but Loneliness seems to be the most dangerous. In this episode, Isaac explains why this is, and shares steps we can take to make loneliness work for us instead of against.
None of us want to relive trauma from our childhood, yet God often takes us back to those unsealed places because He wants us to learn the lessons now, as an adult, that we were unable to learn as a child. In this episode, Isaac gives personal examples, as well as stories from others, to show us why God doesn’t prevent pain in our lives, and how God uses childhood trauma to mature us spiritually and emotionally.
One of the main reasons we get frustrated with loving people in our lives is because our focus is on how our act of kindness benefited them. We want them to show appreciation, mature, or reciprocate. But this kind of approach, though natural, can make us bitter and unintentionally manipulative. In this episode, Isaac shares with us God’s design for love and ways loving others can be more fun and purposeful.
One of the areas where Satan has gained significant ground in the last couple of generations is getting men to believe that they don’t matter, and convincing women that they don’t need men. In this episode, Isaac shares the critical role God designed men to play in their marriages and families and how they can start actively walking in that role today.
Prayer is one of those things that many of us do but few of us really understand. As a result, many of us relegate prayer to something we do out of desperation, or to cross off our spiritual list each day, instead of seeing it as an opportunity to converse with the Living God and move Him to act on our behalf. In this episode, Isaac gives Five Reasons why prayer matters and why we should want to be doing it every chance we get.
The number one factor that will determine whether we will succeed or fail in life is our ability to manage our emotions. In this episode, Isaac explains why our feelings are a blessing but can also be a stumbling block and practical things we can do to manage our emotions more effectively, so they work for us instead of against us.
Dating can either lead us to the person we want to spend our lives with or create heartache and hopelessness, it’s all in how we do it. In this episode, Isaac gives us four dating principles that we can use find our happily ever after, and enjoy the ride along the way.
Just like our physical bodies need vitamins and minerals to operate at peak performance, our souls require Spiritual Gatorade to restore lost hope, joy, trust and connection with God. In this episode, Isaac explains the difference between relief and restoration and practical things we can do to daily restore our souls.
Projection is a negative, relational dynamic, where we unintentionally try and punish the person in front of us, for the sins of someone from our past. This can tear a relationship apart and stunt our emotional development. In this episode, Isaac explains projection and gives us four, practical steps we can use to keep it from preventing us from having the healthy and mature relationships God intended.
In this episode Isaac shows us that there is a positive payoff for every negative emotion, and how we can learn to lean into and learn from our negative feelings so they can work for us instead of against us.
People like to tell us they’ve changed, so that we’ll forgive them, reconcile with them, or stop holding them accountable. But how do we know if they have really changed on the character level or if they are just telling us what we want to hear? In this episode, Isaac gives us five characteristics of real, genuine change, that we can use to determine the real deal from the counterfeit.
Since about 10% of us will experience a major depressive episode in our life, knowing how to be proactive and manage depression is essential. In this episode Isaac shares a unique perspective regarding depression and practical strategies we can implement to deal with depression more effectively.
One of the issues in marriage that can be extremely destructive, but is not talked about that often, is the issue of Reactivity. Reactivity is when one person in marriage reacts immediately, almost involuntarily, to the other person’s mood, behavior, or beliefs. It usually escalates in a negative way and creates resentment and wounds, for no good reason. In this episode, Isaac Johnson shares what causes reactivity and action steps you can take to mitigate it in your relationship.
All of us have bad habits, and all of us have tried all kinds of things to break or eliminate them. In this episode, Isaac Johnson explains how habits form and how can use biology to help us get victory over unwanted behaviors in our lives.
There is an epidemic that is wreaking havoc in our society and has even infiltrated the church. It is destroying relationships and is behind much of the violence we see on the news or social media. And unlike Covid, there’s no vaccine. It is the epidemic of offense. In this episode, Isaac Johnson tells us some of the root causes of this epidemic and gives us action steps we can take to eradicate it.
Tolerance is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days on social media and even in the church. But is it really something God wants us to practice. In this episode, Isaac uses the Bible and science to show us why tolerance is not only unbiblical but psychologically unhealthy.
Many of us believe we are special, but for negative reasons. In this episode we look at three Lies of Identity Satan uses to tear us down, and we refute those lies with psychological and biblical evidence.
Learn how to face trials, struggles, and difficult circumstances in life in a way that allows you to laugh at the future.