Man Alive

When the world gets to be too much, who do you take it out on? If you’re like most men, it's your wife. In fact, the number one place where the residual symptoms of your childhood wounds flare up is your marriage (or it will be if and when you get married).   Do any of these sound familiar? You regularly overreact—or underreact—to your wife. You’re prickly when she suggests you might be wrong...

When men try to put into words what’s holding them back, many say something like, “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t overcome the destructive behaviors that keep dragging me down.” Christian men are not exempt—and no matter how much a man loves God, it’s especially hard to move forward if he's stuck in his past.   The good news is God has a plan for men to get unstuck, including you and...

All of us who have ever been broken boys will have flare-ups because, to some degree, we all live with the residual pain of what happened to us. We all have an emotional limp.   Join Patrick Morley and learn how to evaluate how much pain you’re still in, some examples of what residual pain looks like, and where you are today compared to when you started this journey. Understand God’s larger p...

We have been talking about how to honestly assess our family relationships and approach them with the mind of Christ. Now it's time to explore how we can actually communicate with our parents. Join Pat Morley and learn a tension-reducing way to start an awkward but crucial conversation. Whether your family's level of dysfunction is low, moderate, serious, or severe, we've got you covered.   W...

Healing and rebuilding relationships takes time and mutual commitment. What's the current state of your relationship with your parents and siblings? What's the level of ongoing dysfunction? How receptive are you to restoring a relationship with them? How receptive are they? Do they and you both have the communication skills to pull it off, or do you need a facilitator? Do you have the right attitu...

Chapter 11: Rethinking Your Parents’ Story To be sure, our parents are responsible for how they wounded us, whether they knew it or not. Maybe they were good people who made serious mistakes, or maybe they were uncaring, toxic, or even evil. Nothing can minimize, justify, excuse, or change that. What happened to you or your loved one happened. But what happened to them? It’s a worthy question. So...

If your parents wounded you, they are responsible for that, whether they knew what they were doing or not. But without forgiveness, the future will look no different than the past.    Forgiving your parents is not dismissing what they did, or pretending that your wounds never happened. After all, there would be no need for forgiveness unless someone had done something wrong. So what does...

Did you know that all successful recovery programs address spiritual needs? There's a reason for that: A relationship with Jesus can give us the rest for our souls that no amount of human effort will ever be able to provide.   If you're on your way to being mended, you have faced the truth of what you experienced. You are no longer in denial, and you have grieved what was taken from you. Grie...

Something was taken from you, your loved one, or friend. You didn't have the childhood you wanted, deserved, and should have experienced. You have been afflicted. You feel the loss deeply. Now that you've faced this truth, you need to grieve what went wrong. In this practical lesson, Pat Morley will help you understand grief, the stages of grieving, how to grieve, and what to expect. It's going to...

Denial can be tenacious. Facing difficult, painful, or humiliating facts from your or your loved one’s childhood can be hard. Most worthwhile things are. I commend your bravery to tackle the truth. But it can also to be so liberating and soothing that you’re going to feel like you’re seeing things as they really are—perhaps for the first time ever. Join Pat Morley for a deeper understanding of den...

What’s it going to take for you, your loved one, or a friend to start healing from childhood wounds? Healing is all about pain—acknowledging it’s there, identifying where it’s coming from, and then knowing how to face it, grieve, accept it, take control, and heal. Join Pat Morley for an overview of the stages of healing. God’s promise is that no matter how deeply you or your loved one have been wo...

Do you regularly find yourself feeling insecure and looking for reassurance? Do you experience big mood swings, but don’t know why? Are you especially responsible or immature for your age? Do you have a negative experience, word, thought, or voice in your head from your childhood that stills torments you? Are you estranged from any family members physically or emotionally? Join Pat Morley for Part...

The following questions might apply to you or a loved one: Do you struggle to believe that people really care about you? Do others accuse you of being oversensitive or taking things too personally? Is there something that routinely triggers your anger? Is there a particular area of your life where you struggle to understand what normal, healthy male behavior looks like? Join me, Pat Morley, and le...

If your parents were never properly parented themselves, that put them at great risk to repeat the cycle with you. And that puts you at risk of repeating the vicious cycle all over again. If you or someone you love is caught in a cycle, can put a stop to your family’s intergenerational dysfunction. But first you must become an emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy person yourself. The sta...

There are millions of us. We carry around leftover pain from childhood wounds. As a result of this unprocessed pain, we act out in ways that damage our relationships. We’re easily offended. Fragile. We lash out. We withdraw. We’re baffled by our behavior. Frankly, we’re not even sure what normal behavior looks like. We all want to silence the voices of the past, but the way forward is shrouded in...