by Rhett Smith | Aug 21, 2013 | Parenting
Have you ever found yourself in the unenviable position of trying to rationalize and negotiate with your toddler who is having an emotional meltdown? All hands should go up. I mean how many of us haven’t found ourselves desperately trying to stave off a meltdown...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 13, 2013 | Marriage
What books on marriage do you recommend? I get asked that question a lot. Since I’ve spent the last 18 years working with couples in the context of church, community mental healthy and private practice, I’ve had the opportunity to read a lot of books on...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 12, 2013 | Parenting
Last week I posted on Strategy #2 of The Whole-Brain Child, which is Name it to Tame It: Telling Stories to Calm Big Emotions. But since I posted that blog I’ve had a few people ask me if I could expound on this strategy in more detail by giving an example. As I...
by Rhett Smith | Jun 17, 2013 | Marriage
Over the last few weeks I have found myself reading this passage out loud in premarital counseling to several different couples. This passage has always resonated with me as I think this struggle between dependence and independence is at the core of many marital...
by Rhett Smith | Jun 13, 2013 | Marriage
The issue of forgiveness is a huge issue in every marriage. Whether the issue seems small (hurt feelings), or really large (an affair), forgiveness is something that is part of every marriage. How does one seek forgiveness? How does one grant forgiveness? Though I...
by Rhett Smith | Jun 10, 2013 | Men
Fathers…how much time to you spend with your kids? I was intrigued by the article in the New York Times this last week, The Triumph of the Working Mother. Though there are parts of the article I would want to know more about and may dispute, what I found most...
by Rhett Smith | Jun 6, 2013 | Faith
“Dictionaries are wonderful tools and we would be the poorer without them, but in Gospel matters they are among the lesser helps. The reason is that everything in the Gospel is personal, relational, and embodied in particulars. There are no generalities. Every...
by Rhett Smith | Jun 4, 2013 | Men
Several weeks ago I started a video series on my new book, What it Means to be a Man: God’s Design for Us in a World Full of Extremes. I began with an introduction to the book, and today I talk about Chapter 1: Archetypes — The Making of Men. In this video...
by Rhett Smith | May 15, 2013 | Intentional Living
If you are like me, then your mind probably moves at time from one tangential thought to the next. And when you come to your current thought you can look back at the preceding thoughts that got you to where you are currently at. Does that above sentence even make...
by Rhett Smith | May 14, 2013 | Parenting
This week I’ve been working on an article for Fuller Youth Institute on the topic of failure. What do we do when our kid’s fail? Or more importantly, do we allow our kids to fail, or are we constantly rescuing them from it? It’s been a tough article...
by Rhett Smith | May 6, 2013 | Anxiety
How do you befriend your anxiety? This is a question that I have been wrestling with for a while. Befriending my anxiety has been something that has changed my life and I see it change the lives of those I have the privilege of working with. I even finished up a...
by Rhett Smith | May 3, 2013 | Men
The below TEDx talk was recommended to me by some marriage therapists that I network with. I work with a lot of clients who are struggling with porn or who have a porn addiction. And there is a lot of topics covered in this video. What I find fascinating is the...
by Rhett Smith | May 2, 2013 | Men
For my new book, What it Means to be a Man, I am going to be posting videos for each of the chapters. The videos will be short, and will describe the content of each chapter and why I felt that was an important theme for men to tackle. I hope that these videos will be...
by Rhett Smith | May 1, 2013 | Men
Amazon says the book launched on April 12th. But today is actually the official day of the launch of What it Means to be a Man: God’s Design for Us in a World Full of Extremes. I am very excited about this book, and it’s always cool to see an idea come to...
by Rhett Smith | Apr 30, 2013 | Men
When I initially set out to write What it Means to be a Man, I had in mind a picture of the typical guy who comes into my office for counseling. Probably somewhere between 20-55. Struggling with relationships. Has shut themselves off from their emotions and feelings....
by Rhett Smith | Apr 25, 2013 | Men
I’m currently working on an article for the Fuller Youth Institute on boys and emotions — more specifically how we as a culture tend to sabotage boy’s emotions — making it unsafe for them to express them. As I’ve been editing this...
by Rhett Smith | Apr 24, 2013 | Anxiety
I’m a huge believer in the good that can come out of our anxiety. I believe that we too often dismiss anxiety as something bad. We are too quick to try and get over it, or bury it, or pretend it doesn’t exist…all things that can lead to high levels...
by Rhett Smith | Apr 23, 2013 | Men
The above is a quote from Chapter 8 in my new book (coming out May 1) What it Means to be a Man: God’s Design for Us in a World Full of Extremes. Vulnerability is one of the major themes that has emerged over the last 18 years in my work with men. Many men want...
by Rhett Smith | Apr 22, 2013 | Anxiety
“When we can stand face-to-face with another human being in all of our anxiety, and we don’t have to try to run or hide from it, that is the beginning of a true relational connection.” One of the areas of life that we often tend to experience the...
by Rhett Smith | Apr 12, 2013 | Men
Here’s an interesting video excerpt from Terry Real on working with men in therapy. Specifically around the issue of grandiosity. Terrence Real writes: To understand the importance of leverage, you have to understand grandiosity, especially male grandiosity....
