Author: jeffreypeeples

During my sixth grade year in 1975, Miss Baker [not her real name] was the P.E. teacher for our self-contained classroom.  She was an athletically stocky woman in her thirties with a soft voice and a motherly attitude.  During sunny days she took us outside to experience a variety of team sports activities.  On rainy [...]

When I tell people the areas that I work with in counseling, I usually say, "anxiety, mood disorders, male mentoring, and spiritual abandonment." The last one is the area that many people don't understand. I define spiritual abandonment as, "any action on the part of a spiritual leader or institution that leaves a member of [...]

When I was a college student, I worked as a library page at a public library.  I loaded and shelved books for the Book Mobile Department, supervised by four ladies in their sixties.  These ladies could have been characters in a southern gothic novel.  One was grandmotherly and chipper, one was sarcastically witty, one was [...]

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.--Malcolm XThere are a couple of things I have to make clear before I begin the story: The story is only from my perspective.  Because of this fact, I have only stated things [...]

  Our bodies, in our fight or flight reactions to pain, try to protect us by avoiding difficult situations.  Physical anxiety is merely our bodies' protection response, providing us with more energy than we need to problem solve, but enough to escape the threat.  However, most of our threats aren't physical.  There are not animal [...]

For those of us with anxious tendencies, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other seasonal holidays can present their share of tensions as we deal with our own expectations and people overwhelm.  The fact that we want to enjoy these times, can make the experience even more stressful.  These are the points in life when we need to [...]

For many of us who struggle with anxiety, spiritual references provide a more objective source of comfort during anxious times—a tool much more stable than the voices taunting us in our heads.  One Bible verse that brings us solace is from 2 Timothy 1:7: "For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but [...]