Life & Faith

When our former pastor and his wife invited my wife and me to go together to Chiang Mai, it was not for a mission trip or a spiritual retreat. Instead, we took long walks in gardens and parks, visited local markets and museums, ate delicious northern Thai food and even indulged in spa treatments. We […]

  A client I saw last week has been married for close to 30 years. Over the last decade, he has been painfully aware that he has fallen out of love with his wife. They do not engage in open conflicts but rather, a cold war has descended upon the marriage. But as he is […]

One of my roles in my job as counsellor is to be a clinical supervisor for counselling interns. As counsellors in training, they are given less complex cases to stretch their counselling “wings” by practising, under supervision but on real-life cases, the skills and techniques they have learnt in the classroom. These interns soon learn […]

Noting both the Old and New Testaments mention sexual sin, a client remarked, “Why is there so much sex in the Bible?” The Bible does talk about the dangers of sexual sin, sometimes mentioning it together with the command to be faithful to God. Both are a call to holiness. They speak about being true […]

The other day, my client’s husband was taken aback when she said she was no longer sure that she wanted to give their marriage a second chance, as she doubted that he was really interested in rebuilding their marriage. He had agreed to counselling after being found out for infidelity. He dutifully came for each […]

Over the last four years, around the middle of each year, around May and June, my wife and I have taken leave from work to do long walks together—about 20 kilometres a day over a six-day period. We are sedentary urbanites who rarely walk more than 3000 steps on an average day. So how did […]

I opened the counselling session with one of my usual questions to the couple: “How have things been?” The wife did not answer first; she wanted to see how her husband would respond. He paused and thoughtfully said, “Overall, things are better. We are improving, but we are still quarrelling.” To appreciate his response, we […]

  As a family and marital therapist, I sometimes feel discouraged when working with a client who has decided to end their marriage. Like most of my professional peers, I see myself as helping rebuild marriages, not powerlessly witnessing their breakups. There is many a counsellor who wonders if they could have done more to […]

I once participated in a radio interview during which the presenter and I focused on the topic of emotional and psychological abuse by spouses. While some attention has been given to physical violence and laws exist to protect victims, there is so much more to be done for emotional and psychological abuse, which are not […]

People are creatures of habit. Some habits, such as a habit of saving, serve us well. Others, like broken records, churn out the same tunes with annoying repetition. Some interpersonal conflicts resemble broken records. Although we see the futility of engaging in them, we seem powerless to resist the urge to be drawn into them.

“But I am happy,” he said clearly and defiantly, his rigid posture and furrowed eyebrows betraying tension. Upon revealing his conviction that his wife of almost 20 years did not love him or perhaps had never loved him at all, Peter asserted he was still “happy”. Often, we think of happiness as an emotional state […]

The Christmas season draws out a mix of emotions. Many families celebrate Christmas with feasting and merrymaking. Others dread the rush to buy the obligatory presents. Still others may feel sad if Christmas is associated with loss or loneliness. For those who are struggling with the pain of loss or loneliness, I am confident that […]