Helping You Make
Peace With Emotions
So you can experience peace with others, yourself and the world around you.
Embracing The Journey
In every great story, the hero embarks on a transformative journey, facing challenges,
seeking guidance, and ultimately emerging victorious.
Your life story is no different.
Among the many obstacles we face, one of the most
misunderstood challenges is what to do about our difficult emotions:
should we resist them or embrace them?
I help people become friends with difficult emotions like fear, sadness or frustration
so they can become emotionally healthy, build strong relationships,
and live adventurous, meaning-filled lives.
About Steve
"What's wrong with me?"
Hearing this sentiment truly breaks my heart. Over the 20 years I've been in the helping profession, first as a pastor and now a psychotherapist, it's something I hear sadly much too often. While clients might typically say “I don’t want to feel this way", many clients will also add, “I shouldn’t feel this way ". People who struggle with with feeling what they're not ''supposed'' to feel, end up feeling what they don't need to feel: guilty, frustrated, anxious, confused, alone.
My hope is to foster conversations where emotions are acknowledged as essential to our journey, transforming feelings of isolation into opportunities for connection and growth.
Discover Your Path To Peace
I offer workshops, retreats and presentations designed to help you:
Experience Meaningful Relationships
Break Free From Unhealthy Habits
Loosen the Grip of Anxiety, Guilt and Shame
Handle Stressful Situations With Wisdom
Live An Authentic, Meaning-filled Life
Workshops
My workshops and seminars provide a safe and supportive space for individuals to explore the complex relationship between their faith and emotions. Through practical exercises, group discussions, and evidence-based psychological insights, attendees will gain strategies for managing unwanted emotions in ways that enhance, rather than conflict with, their faith. Expect to leave these sessions with a greater sense of emotional awareness, curiousity and compassion for yourself and others.
Retreats
The retreats I offer are designed to invite individuals, couples and groups to pause, reflect, and engage with their inner lives in a supportive environment. Participants will be guided through a series of teaching, reflective practices, and activities aimed at deepening your appreciation for the complexity of human emotions and how they fit within a life of faith. You can expect to leave the retreat feeling rejuvenated, with a renewed sense of connection with God, with others, and your own mind, body and soul.
Speaking
At churches, conferences and retreat centres, I aim to ignite conversations around the significance of emotional health in spiritual life, addressing the misunderstandings that often surround this topic in Christian settings. Drawing from my extensive experience as a psychotherapist and my Christian faith, I invite you to into a new relationship with your emotions. Attendees will be enlightened and equipped with the knowledge and motivation to live more rich, full and meaning-filled lives.
About the Book
In his newest book, "The Emotions In The Room," Steve offers a compassionate guide to making peace with difficult emotions and harnessing them as sources of strength and insight. Drawing on years of expertise as a psychotherapist, he presents an innovative approach to emotional wellness that invites readers to explore the profound wisdom hidden within our everyday emotions, especially the ones we'd all rather avoid. He empowers readers to cultivate deeper connections with others, themselves and the world around them so they can live more resilient, authentic, and meaning-filled lives.
"When we connect with difficult emotions instead of trying to correct them,
we discover they're allies, not enemies. This realization awakens us
to the purpose of our deepest desires, hopes and fears,
and guides us through life with newfound wisdom and freedom."
"Working with Steve Abma has been wonderful. His guidance and support helped us navigate a very difficult period in our marriage, and we are so grateful to have worked with him in therapy."
Jenny and Robert
What Clients Say
"Steve has a gift of helping you see things from a new perspective and find the courage to take action on some changes I'd putting off for a long time. I cannot recommend him enough!"
Jessica B.
"Steve's workshop was life-changing. I had been stuck in a loop in my head, and wasn't coping well. I learned that it's ok to be anxious sometimes. And now I'm a less anxious person.
David R.