The Therapy House- Whitney Akins, M.A., LPC Associate

08/05/2025

08/02/2025

🤪 Feeling overwhelmed or need a refresher ?

Here are a few of my favorite local “soul refreshers” in Parker County:
🌿 PAV Yoga Páv Yoga
🌸 Chandor Gardens Chandor Gardens
🏞️ Holland Lake Park
📚 The Library Weatherford Public Library
☕️ PIC Coffee Pic Coffee Roasters

Each of these spaces gives me room to breathe, pray, release some stress, and MOVE !

Q: What’s your favorite local spot to slow down and recharge?

08/01/2025

When Anxiety Wants to “Do Something”: The CIA Approach

Anxiety often feels overwhelmingly loud and restless, urging us to take immediate action: “Do something. Fix it. Make it stop.”

Here’s the empowering truth: anxiety may crave action, but not all action is productive. The key is learning how to channel that anxious energy into purposeful direction.

One powerful tool I often share with clients is the CIA approach:

1️⃣ Control – What do I have the power to change in this moment?
2️⃣ Influence – What can I encourage, support, or move forward, even if it’s beyond my complete control?
3️⃣ Accept – What do I need to surrender to the universe or release, knowing it’s outside my control?

This practice grounds and centers us, giving our anxiety a constructive outlet instead of getting caught in “what ifs.”

When we give anxiety a meaningful role—naming what we can control and releasing what we can’t—we transform from frantic to focused, discovering peace in the process.

If anxiety has been dominating your life lately, perhaps it’s time to redefine its role: from fixer to trusted helper !

07/11/2025

Suffering That Points to God

🙏 Not all suffering is wasted. Some of it becomes a mirror that reflects God’s grace.

“Who sinned, this man or his parents…?”
“No, this happened so the works of God might be displayed…” — John 9:1–3

🙌 Your pain could become someone else’s lifeline.
Your healing could inspire hope in others.

Q: What has your pain taught you about God’s goodness?

07/11/2025

When You Feel Too Weak to Go On

💬 “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” — 2 Cor. 12:9

Some days, you’re not strong. You’re not supposed to be.
Your weakness isn’t a failure—it’s the exact place where God’s strength shows up.

Q: What would it look like to stop striving and start surrendering in your weakness today?

07/10/2025

Is God Doing Something Bigger?

👀 Sometimes suffering doesn’t make sense… yet.
But God has a habit of turning broken things into beautiful ones.

🧩 “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good…” (Gen. 50:20)

Q: Can you imagine a redemptive outcome from your current struggle, even if you don’t fully see it yet?

07/09/2025

Holding Both Joy and Pain

✨ Being human means we carry both joy and sorrow.
Jesus did too. He wept and rejoiced. He suffered and trusted.

In my therapy practice, I help clients learn how to hold both.
You can grieve and laugh.
You can feel hope and hurt.
Compassion says: there’s space for it all. 💛

Q: Have you ever experienced joy and sorrow in the same season? What helped you hold both?

07/09/2025

When you've lived through trauma,
your body doesn’t just “move on.”

It stays wired for survival.
Your heart races without warning.
You flinch at sounds.
You overthink everything.
You shut down—or lash out—without meaning to.

This is what a dysregulated nervous system can feel like.
It’s not you “overreacting.”
It’s your body remembering the danger—even when you’re safe now.

You’re not broken.
You’re healing.
And it starts with understanding what your nervous system has been through. ꩜🕊️♥︎ Ella

🌸 July marks the launch of our RESIST campaign—created for the women in our community who are rising against abuse, violence, and oppression, reclaiming their voices, and refusing to disappear.

When one woman rises, we all rise.

Your tax-deductible donation keeps our mission alive—making trauma-informed programs, group coaching, peer-to-peer support, and our private online community, the Village, accessible to every woman who needs it.

Healing is revolutionary.
Be part of the uprising.
Resist what tried to bury her—help her bloom.

➡️ Donate via top link in our Linktree (in bio) or by clicking the fundraising button at top of our page.

07/08/2025

When Faith Feels Tested

🕊️ “Consider it pure joy… when you face trials…” (James 1:2)
That verse hits differently when you’re walking through something painful. 😔

➡️ But what if this trial isn’t to break you—but to build you?

Q: What’s one area of your faith that feels stretched right now?
Sometimes the stretching is actually strengthening. 💪

Let’s talk about it. I wrote a blog exploring 8 reasons God may allow suffering—and how hope still finds us in the middle of it.

📖 Read here: https://www.thetherapyhouse.net/blog/why-does-god-allow-suffering-8-biblical-reasons-to-hold-onto-hope

Whitney Akins is a trauma-informed Christian counselor in Weatherford, Texas. She helps clients who feel stuck in emotional pain, spiritual confusion, or poor relationship patterns find healing through evidence-based mental health practices and a compassionate faith. Whitney integrates Internal Fami

07/08/2025

What if your “coping” is actually causing more harm than good?

Sometimes the way we survive ends up stealing the peace we long for.

Whether it’s numbing out with your phone, overcommitting to avoid stillness, or snapping at loved ones when overwhelmed—these are not character flaws. They’re maladaptive coping behaviors that once served a purpose but now block your healing.

🧠 CBT teaches us to name the distorted thoughts underneath:
👉 “If I stop, everything will fall apart.”
👉 “If I don’t lash out, I’ll be ignored.”

💬 The truth? Your worth is not dependent on your performance or your pain.
🙏 Psalm 46:10 reminds us: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Want to learn what coping skills are helping and hurting? I’ve created a simple Coping Skills Assessment to get clarity and start shifting your patterns.

📩 Message me for a free copy.

07/07/2025

Where are we afraid? Where do we need to see God’s power and glory?

Suffering is part of human nature , no one is immune to it. As faithful, we can choose how to walk through it and also receive blessings in the midst of it.

The title of our next study is “The Plot Thickens.” I want to read for you the next section of Exodus 1, verses 12 through 22.

“But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and you see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you cast into the Nile.”

What a turn of events! Even though they were horribly and cruelly mistreated, the children of Israel continued to multiply. Even in the midst of slavery, God was with his people, and he was prospering them. And that plan of God to multiply and prosper his people could not be stopped by Pharaoh, could not be stopped by slavery, could not be stopped by the harsh treatment of taskmasters–there's simply no stopping the plan of God! And it may look for a while like God is absent or without power, but his will will be done, and his plan for his people will come to pass.

So, in fear of this multiplying group of people, Pharaoh commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill all the Israelite male newborns. But there was something that dear old Pharaoh did not understand–he was not the supreme power in the eyes of these women–God was! They feared God more than they feared Pharaoh, and so they disobeyed Pharaoh's orders. So, God's people continued to multiply and grow strong. And God rewarded these faithful midwives with families of their own. I mean, here is just a wonderful picture of the triumph of faith over fear. In fact, maybe this is the best way to say this, “It's only fear that can conquer fear.” It's only a greater fear of God that can diminish any other fear we would have in our lives. By ”fear of God,” I don't mean terror that would make you run from him, but awe that would make you run toward him, rest in him, and obey him. What an amazing picture!

May God produce the same in our lives.

Where are you afraid?

What creates anxiety and worry?

Maybe the way to ask the question is, “Where do you need to remember God's awesome power, his awesome presence, his holiness, his wisdom, his faithfulness, his grace?

Where does awe of God need to overwhelm things that would otherwise paralyze you?

May fear of God overwhelm any other fear that would grip and rule our hearts!”

Join me each week for The Gospel One Rescue At a Time
https://www.paultripp.com/exodus

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