Relationship Problems? 5 Ways to Figure Out What’s Wrong (Christian Relationship Counseling)

how can you find the root problem in a relationship in this video I’m going to give you five questions that you can ask yourself which will help reveal the root of the problem these five questions can be applied to a specific relationship or just how you approach relationships in general hey everybody I’m mark from apply God’s Word calm a place where we apply the Bible to your life this is such an important topic because it’s really hard to figure out what’s actually going on in relationships especially when it involved yourself I think we all have had that experience where we see other people and it’s really kind of obvious what the main problem is you know maybe this girl has a an issue with committing to certain relationships she’s had multiple guys who seemed like really great Christian guys who would have been excellent husbands but she just finds it very hard to commit always bails when things start getting serious you know that her parents split when she was early she’s had all these wounds regarding her parents divorce so it’s kind of obvious to you like that seems like you have some commitment issues based upon your past experience with your parents for that girl it’s very difficult to deal with that because it’s her you know we all have this sensitivity towards pain and a coping mechanism is to just avoid the pain by staying away from it in doing that we often stay away from the root problem because the closer we get to the root problem the more pain we feel so sometimes we have to come at this a little bit different from a different angle so the first question you should ask yourself if you want to find the root problem in a relationship or in your approach to relationships in general is when do I get defensive so sometimes people are defensive because they’re just kind of struggling with self-esteem or they’re just kind of thin-skinned oftentimes people get defensive when there’s some sort of wound inside of them that’s getting triggered by the events that are occurring in their life so for example maybe you’re a guy and your girlfriend asks you hey you know what did you do yesterday I didn’t see you all day and you like snap back I was at the gym what do you care you know and you’re like geez why did I do that why did I snap like that and you have to figure out what why am I being defensive in that moment because maybe she asks you another question totally unrelated to what you were doing and just says hey how was how was your day yesterday and she phrases it differently and then you’re totally fine maybe you had a really controlling mom or dad out who was always wondering where you were or maybe you cheated before in your past when you weren’t walking with God and you haven’t forgiven yourself so you feel guilty about it and you think everyone thinks you’re a cheater still and you know on and on the the reasons could go bit long story short one way to find the route problem in a relationship is to ask yourself when do I get defensive and that question will help you kind of answer the secondary question of like what am i protecting in myself what wound am i trying to protect right now in this situation you know what is getting triggered in me when I get into this certain situation that makes me snap the second question that can be really helpful in discovering the root of the problem is when do dangerous unwanted patterns of behavior happen in my life when do I start acting out and doing bad things that are damaging to myself so for example you know around the holidays a lot of times people over indulge in alcohol or drugs and for some reason it seems like around the holidays that keeps happening why around the holidays do you start you know showing this dangerous type of behavior this unwanted addictive type of behavior or maybe you struggle with pornography or some sort of lust or masturbation or something like that you know when do you start struggling with those things more you know is it when you feel disrespected you go home and you just need to look at porn after that or you know if you get into a fight with your spouse do you feel like you just have to start drinking when do you start those addictive behaviors so when you can start seeing the pattern of behavior in your life and when what are the triggers that are causing those addiction fictive behaviors you’ll start seeing the root of the problem a lot easier question 3 what do you avoid thinking about a lot of times is very common to have the opposite problem where you’re addicted or you’re struggling with something and it’s causing you to think about it a lot you know that’s that’s also a way to identify a root problem what are you thinking about all the time but something very helpful and maybe less thought about is what do you avoid thinking about all the time sometimes the root problem will be revealed when you see that your life is totally pattern around avoiding this certain thing maybe you don’t like having hard conversations or maybe you don’t like going out to social circles and you avoid crowds all the time what are you constantly trying to avoid physically and sometimes even more importantly mentally what are you not trying to think about is something that really can help you identify a root problem in dr. Jerrold maids book called addiction and grace he says sometimes an aversion addiction is simply an addiction stated in Reverse for example if I’m addicted to cleanliness who’s to say whether I’m basically drawn toward neatness or repelled by dirt so again if you you know if you have the root problem unlike being a neat freak well maybe the real root problem is that you’re afraid of dirt and obviously we’re talking about relationships so you can apply that principle to relationships this thing thing can be seen in in extreme ways like sexism racism you know genocide these types of people who are sinning in those ways are so obsessed with avoiding this the opposite sexual avoiding a certain race or killing off a certain type of people you can see that the root of their problem isn’t what they’re trying to avoid now obviously we’re talking about something a little bit different here in relationships but that same principle can be seen so what are you often trying to avoid and what do you avoid thinking about when you can answer that question sometimes that’ll help you get to the root of a relationship problem number four what really annoys you about other people or this person that you’re dating or in a relationship with sometimes what annoys us is a big indicator of the root problem so for example if you’re someone who just really gets ticked off by prideful people like you go to a party and some guy what finally walks in and he just totally dominates the room and trying to be the center of attention and if this just like really irks you a lot of times the reason for that is because you have pride in you and the pride in you is upset about the pride in that person or let’s say you get really upset with very opinionated people someone walks into the room they just start blabbing their opinions or telling you what they think about everything and when you they leave you’re like Megan that person was so annoying and then you just spout out all your opinions about this other person so oftentimes what we don’t like about ourselves is sometimes revealed in what we complain about in other people in Romans 2 21 through 23 it says you tell others not to steal but do you steal you say it is wrong to commit adultery but do you commit adultery you could that you condemn idolatry but do you use items stolen from pagan temples you are so proud of knowing the law but you designer God by breaking the law so in summary I think we often condemn in others what we feel guilty about in ourselves and number 5 ask yourself the miracle question if I woke up tomorrow and everything was better my life would look like and then you explain what you are after so when I in seminary I got my master’s in pastoral counseling and we were taught a counseling method called solution focused counseling and it’s a little bit different than clinically based counseling or traditional counseling where you basically start with a diagnosis and then you come up with a solution to the diagnosis I’m certainly not against that type of counseling or mental health treatment because it has a lot of advantages but in a pastoral setting this was sometimes helpful because you usually have a shorter period of time to deal with an issue so rather than try and diagnose all the problems a lot of times you can get to the root of the issue by asking the person what are you after what would the end goal look like and then by identifying what they want you can then identify what’s stopping you from getting that so a lot of times someone can walk into your office and they’ll just spill and vomit just everything that’s going on in your life their life you know maybe you just met this person and they’re like my mom just died last month I lost my job you know I started drinking again and now my girlfriend just left me she called me right before I came and she wants to break up and you know what should I do and you’re just like look back out of me like I don’t know I don’t know what do you mean this is you just told me four huge really big problems so rather than me guess what the biggest problem is and just start randomly giving advice sometimes a helpful solution would be to say all right well let’s say you woke up tomorrow and something magical happening just magically everything was better and you felt better what would it look like and whatever they say next can sometimes help you identify what the root problem was maybe they would say well you know I wouldn’t be grieving over my mom’s death anymore is that okay well that seems like the biggest problem that led to the other problems you’re still grieving your mom’s death therefore you started drinking you lost your job you lost your girlfriend so let’s talk about how to overcome that grief so long story short if you want to identify a root problem yourself the miracle question if I woke up tomorrow and everything was better what would my life look like well thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video 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