As described in chapter three of the big lion book, building and living an Immanuel lifestyle is so much more than just learning to facilitate Immanuel Approach sessions. Learning/building an Immanuel lifestyle can be challenging, practicing the daily discipline of an Immanuel lifestyle can sometimes feel burdensome, and persisting with an Immanuel lifestyle can be especially challenging. As you build and live an Immanuel lifestyle, it is very helpful to be part of an Immanuel Approach community. (View PDF, 3 pages)
How Can I Help Spread the Immanuel Approach?
I get quite a few e-mails along the lines of, “I love the Immanuel Approach! I and my family (and friends, clients, parishioners, etc) have experienced (fill in various poignant benefits and blessings) through the Immanuel Approach. Is there anything I can do to help spread the Immanuel Approach?” Here are a few quick thoughts. (View PDF, 1 page)
How Long Will it Take for Me to Be Healed?
People sometimes read our stories of recipients who have had dramatic, rapid Immanuel
approach breakthroughs, or they watch our live ministry DVDs that present dramatic, rapid
healing in breakthrough sessions, and then they understandably expect/hope that their own
healing work will be just as dramatic and rapid. However, emotional healing can sometimes go much more slowly. And when moderate and minor trauma are included, we embrace ongoing healing as a lifestyle. (ViewPDF,8 pages)
Variations That Are Still Immanuel Approach (Potato Salad Analogy)
I want to encourage Immanuel Approach facilitators and trainers to adapt the Immanuel Approach to fit best in their particular context. But I also want our providers to facilitate and teach the Immanuel approach as opposed to something else. It is important for the Immanuel Approach community to care for both of these concerns. This essay discusses the importance of balancing these two concerns, and describes five variations that I consider to still be genuine Immanuel Approach. (View PDF, 8 pages)
Informed Consent: General Comments and Sample Form for Immanuel Approach Emotional Healing
Going through a careful informed consent process with the Immanuel approach recipient is one of the simplest and easiest things one can do to decrease the risk of misunderstandings, relationship breakdowns, and lawsuits. This essay briefly discusses the concepts and practice of informed consent, and includes a sample informed consent form for Immanuel approach emotional healing work. (View PDF, 12 pages)
Difficulty Finding and/or Connecting with Positive Memories
Occasionally, the recipient will have persistent difficulty with finding positive memories. This essay presents the possible causes for this difficulty, and then also discusses how to care for each of the possible underlying causes. (View PDF, 7 pages)
Safety Net Scenarios that are more Difficult
With most group exercises and most Immanuel Approach sessions, if the recipient has had time to share her pain story, if she feels heard and understood by the facilitator, and if they have been rummaging around in traumatic memories without resolution, when they get to the end of the available time the recipient will be more than happy to cooperate with the facilitator in deploying the safety net – she will be more than happy to let the facilitator help her get back to her original positive memory and connection with Jesus. However, there are several situations in which deploying the safety net is more difficult. This essay discusses how to recognize and care for these situations. (View PDF, 7 pages)
The Deadly Perils of the Victim Swamp: Bitterness, Self Pity, Entitlement, and Embellishment
(New 2001, Revised 5/5/2006) If a person “stands straight” in the pain of being wounded as a victim, he is in a good place to receive healing. The pain motivates him to seek healing, and “standing straight” in the pain is a spiritual and emotional position “open” to the Lord’s healing work. However, if a person gets mired in what we call the victim swamp, his bitterness, self pity, entitlement, and embellishment will hinder any attempt to heal the original wounds. This essay shares our thoughts about and experience with the victim swamp, and also includes sample prayers for releasing these patterns of thought and behavior. (View PDF, 10 pages)
The Direct Eye Contact Technique for Engaging with Internal Parts
Note: This brief “how-to” essay about the specific technique of direct eye contact does not provide information about the wider context of internal child parts and dissociative phenomena. Please do not use this tool until you have a basic understanding of internal child parts and dissociated internal parts. (View PDF, 5 pages)
Discerning Truth in Memory (Recovered Memory, Suggestion, and Memory Error)
My perception is that some who work with “recovered” traumatic memories lose credibility by denying all memory error concerns in their reaction against the “false memory” movement. I believe that it is much wiser to non-anxiously acknowledge any legitimate concerns about memory errors, along with careful discussion of the evidence showing that repressed and dissociated memories are real phenomena that contain historical truth. In this essay I discuss legitimate concerns about the possibility of memory errors. I discuss why it is so important to not suggest specific details regarding traumatic events and to not use imagination/guided imagery tools to “search” for traumatic memories, and why it so important to be cautious about making specific accusations on the basis of remembered traumatic events. In this essay I also discuss the compelling evidence proving that repressed memories and dissociated memories are real phenomena, and the evidence indicating that most “recovered” memories have a core of historical truth. I discuss why it is so important to not dismiss all recovered memory because of the possibility of memory errors. (View PDF, 17 pages)
The Immanuel Approach in the treatment of clinical disorders, and the Immanuel approach and other forms of psychotherapy: The purposes/goals for the following thirteen essays are: 1) Build bridges between different schools of thought, so that different therapists and/or ministers can avoid needless misunderstanding and conflict, and work together as much as possible. 2) Continue to clarify the “big picture” by identifying more aspects of how the Immanuel Approach fits in the wider context of other therapy principles and techniques. 3) Confirm/support the Immanuel Approach principles and techniques by recognizing where they are consistent with and/or shared by other established methods, and especially by identifying where they have been indirectly research validated as parts of other methods/techniques. 4) Provide additional information that will help mental health professionals present the principles and techniques of the Immanuel Approach in language (that is truthful and accurate) that insurance companies will understand and accept. 5) Provide information regarding several specific mental illnesses — how I approach them from a perspective that integrates medial psychiatry with the Immanuel Approach.
The Immanuel Approach and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (View PDF, 7 pages)
The Immanuel Approach & EMDR: F.A.Q.’s and Common Misunderstandings (View PDF, 14 pages)
The Immanuel Approach and Exposure Therapy (View PDF, 8 pages)
The Place of the Immanuel Approach In the Treatment of Clinical Disorders (View PDF, 13 pages)
Mind And Brain: Separate but Integrated. NOTE: a dramatically improved update of the condensed version, along with a dramatically improved update of the full version, are now available as a book
Immanuel Approach Emotional Healing, Mental Illness, and Medication (View PDF, 4 pages)
ADD/ADHD and Immanuel Approach Emotional Healing (View PDF, 10 pages)
Autistic Spectrum, Dismissive Attachment, and the Immanuel Approach (View PDF, 2 pages)
Mood, Monthly Cycle, and Immanuel Approach Emotional Healing (View PDF, 2 pages)
Psychosis and Psychotic Symptoms: Definitions and Diagnostic Considerations (View PDF, 8 pages)
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the Immanuel Approach (View PDF, 3 pages)
Distinguishing Between Demonic Spirits and Internal Parts
Demonic spirits and internal parts are both common, and can easily be mistaken for each other. (I have seen wounded, scared, angry, and deceived internal parts manifest with just about every “demonic” presentation you can think of, and I have also seen demonic spirits try to present as internal parts.) It is important to distinguish between demonic spirits and internal parts, because demonic spirits must be removed and internal parts must be treated like “persons” who need healing. This need to differentiate demonic spirits from internal parts was one of the most intimidating challenges I faced as I was discovering that both demonic spirits and internal parts are commonly encountered in routine prayer for emotional healing. The good news is that I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that this distinction is much easier to make than I had initially thought. This essay shares my observations regarding the similarities and differences between demonic spirits and internal parts, and also describes two simple techniques/tools that have been especially helpful.Note: This brief “how-to” essay about the specific technique of direct eye contact does not provide information about the wider context of internal child parts and dissociative phenomena. Please do not use this tool until you have a basic understanding of internal child parts and dissociated internal parts. (View PDF, 11 pages)
On the Art of Being Relationally Angry, Or, “I Have A Pet Tiger”
This is the manuscript for the presentation Charlotte gave at the 2016 Life Model Works Annual Gathering. It explains why anger is not inherently sinful, describes the appropriate, healthy functions for anger, talks about what it means for anger to have a short shelf-life, explains how judgment and anger are different, and describes how judgment gives anger a bad name. (View PDF, 12 pages)
The Immanuel Approach with Children
(New 6/5/2002, Last revised 8/27/2024) We have had only very limited opportunity to work directly with children ourselves, since we don’t have any specialty training with children and we live in a large city where there are many child specialists. (So if we worked with a child and made any mistakes, we could just skip the court process and go straight to giving all of our money to the lawyers.) However, we have worked with a number of parents, grandparents, emotional healing ministers, mission teams, and child therapists, coaching them as they work with children. And we have also received stories from a wide variety of people who have been using the Immanuel approach with children. In this essay we offer thoughts from our own experience, and have also tried to collect useful material from parents, grandparents, ministers, mission teams, and therapists who are using the Immanuel approach with children. (View PDF, 13 pages)
Immanuel Approach Intercessory Prayer
Have you ever struggled with intercessory prayer? Do you find that intercessory prayer can
sometimes feel wearisome and impersonal? Do you sometimes find yourself focusing primarily on the problems, with only a vague awareness that God is actually present and listening? (Or maybe you don’t have any sense of God’s presence, and only hope that he’s present and listening?) The good news is that intercessory prayer in the context of an Immanuel Approach interactive connection is consistently engaging, satisfying, poignant, powerful, personal, and above all relational. (View PDF, 2 pages)
Suicide Related Phenomena: Suicide Risk, Suicidal Behavior, Mimic Suicidal Behavior
Many people (and especially lay ministers) are intimidated if a person receiving ministry mentions suicide, or makes a comment that even might allude indirectly to the possibility of suicide. The general purpose of this essay is to dispel some of the confusion and intimidation regarding suicide-related phenomena by showing how some aspects of suicide-related phenomena are not as complicated, difficult, or dangerous as they are often perceived to be. (View PDF, 54 pages)
We all encounter painful experiences. When we encounter pain, our brain/mind/spirit system tries to process the painful experience, and there is a specific pathway that this processing follows. When we are able to successfully complete this processing journey, we get through the painful experience without being traumatized – we emotionally and cognitively “metabolize” the experience in a healthy way, and instead of having any toxic power in our lives, the adequately processed painful experience contributes to our knowledge, skills, wisdom, and maturity. However, various problems and/or limitations can block successful processing. If we are not able to complete the processing journey, then the painful experience becomes a traumatic experience, and traumatic experiences have toxic power in our lives. This essay describes the processing pathway, discusses the problems that can block successful processing, and describes ways in which the Lord’s Immanuel presence can resolve these blockages. (View PDF, 106 pages)
Immanuel, Emotional Healing, and Capacity: Part One
Enhanced Manuscript of lecture available as online course/DVD/VHS by the same title, from October 2005 seminar in Bolingbrook, Illinois, revised 11/3/2012 (View PDF, 15 pages)
Immanuel, Emotional Healing, and Capacity: Part Two
Enhanced Manuscript of lecture available as online course/DVD/VHS by the same title, from October 2005 seminar in Bolingbrook, Illinois, revised 6/8/2012 (View PDF, 18 pages)
At one of our seminars, after we finished talking about the Immanuel Approach and our material from Outsmarting Yourself, a gentleman in the audience asked, “So what about plain old sin? Does all this stuff about trauma, triggering, implicit memory, the VLE, central nervous system extrapolation, immaturity, and non-relational mode explain away sin as a cause for hurtful behavior?” Here are our thoughts (View PDF, 2 pages)
Thoughts regarding the Life Model “Pass the Peace” (PtP) version of the Immanuel Approach
The Pass the Peace (PtP) version of the Immanuel Approach, developed by Dr. Wilder and Life Model Works, is so dramatically different from the process that I teach that many cannot even recognize it as the Immanuel Approach. In fact, people in the wider Immanuel Approach community have come to me in varying degrees of confusion and distress, asking why those using the PtP version even refer to it as the Immanuel Approach. Hopefully the explanations below regarding the dramatic differences between the Pass the Peace version and my version will be helpful. (View PDF, 5 pages)
A Brief Summary of Theophostic Principles and Process
A brief summary of the most important Theophostic principles and a brief summary of the Theophostic process. (View PDF, 2 pages)
Summary of Transition from “Traditional” Theophostic® to the
Immanuel Approach for Life
The key transitional steps in my journey from traditional Theophostic,® through the Immanuel Approach for emotional healing, and then finally to the Immanuel Approach for life (View PDF, 2 pages)