Kate Motaung, Richardson Christian Counseling

About Kate Motaung

Kate Motaung is the Senior Writer, Editor, and Content Manager for a multi-state company. She is the author of several books including Letters to Grief, 101 Prayers for Comfort in Difficult Times, and A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging. Kate is also the host of Five Minute Friday, an online writing community that equips and encourages Christian writers, and the owner of Refine Services, a company that offers editing services. She and her South African husband have three young adult children and currently live in West Michigan. Find Kate’s books at katemotaung.com/books.

Teens, Social Media, and Body Image

Teens, Social Media, and Body Image

Sarah Gibson, Kate Motaung2025-02-04T05:04:46+00:00February 3rd, 2025|Christian Counseling For Teens, Featured, Individual Counseling|

Last night, I opened Instagram and began scrolling. I had recently searched for new recipes and workouts, so my feed was filled with these types of videos. However, amid the dog and baking recipe videos, I started seeing videos about calorie counts, daily gym routines to make my waist smaller, and ways to lose weight. I hadn’t searched for that content, but it was now automatically showing up in my feed. I realized I probably wasn’t the only one who was seeing these types of videos centered on body image. I couldn’t help but wonder how exposure to this content might impact a person’s self-esteem and body image, especially for a teenager. What is body image? Body image refers to the beliefs and perceptions we have about our own bodies – how we view our appearance, like our size, shape, height, and weight. A positive body image involves feeling confident in your appearance and accepting the natural changes your body goes through as you age (e.g., menopause, fluctuating weight). Negative body image is the belief that there is something wrong with your appearance. The National Eating Disorders Association defines negative body image as “a distorted perception of one’s shape and physical appearance. Negative body image (or body dissatisfaction) involves feelings of shame, anxiety, and self-consciousness.” Those who struggle with negative body image often find themselves frequently doing body checking (monitoring their physical appearance via scales, mirrors, or other methods), constantly comparing their appearance to others, or going to extreme lengths to change their appearance. Those who experience high levels of body dissatisfaction are more likely to suffer from feelings of depression, isolation, low self-esteem, and developing eating disorders. Negative Body Image and Social Media For individuals who struggle with their body image, social media can make these negative beliefs [...]

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Teenage Depression is Real: 3 Subtle Signs to Watch for in Your Teen

Teenage Depression is Real: 3 Subtle Signs to Watch for in Your Teen

Sarah Gibson, Kate Motaung2025-01-29T10:00:45+00:00January 29th, 2025|Christian Counseling For Teens, Depression, Featured, Individual Counseling|

As the number of instances of teenage- depression continues to grow in the United States, the importance of addressing this issue has become increasingly clear. In a recent study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), researchers found that 17% of teens (ages 12-17) experienced symptoms of depression. The Importance of Recognizing Teenage Depression Supporting teens on their mental health journey has emerged as a key focus for parents, educators, and society, prompting us to explore the most effective ways to help and empower the next generation. For parents, a crucial first step is recognizing the key signs of teenage depression. Depression is more than just feeling sad. It is a serious mental health condition that affects your teen’s mood, behavior, and ability to function at school, at home, or with their friends. It can be difficult to tell if your teen is depressed because many depression symptoms are also common adolescent behaviors, like appetite changes or lack of energy. However, with depression, these symptoms are usually more severe, and they last for a longer period (weeks or months at a time). How to Spot Teenage Depression For a teen struggling with depression, they might feel sad for weeks or even months at a time. Their mood does not seem to improve, or they do not “brighten up” when good things happen. To them, it might be hard for them to remember a time when they weren’t sad. They might have trouble concentrating in class, may not be interested in their hobbies, have difficulty sleeping, or sleep too much. Parents need to notice if their teen is acting differently. Did your teen previously hang out with their friends, but now they spend all their free time in their room alone? Or does your teen who was [...]

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Strengthened for Success: Setting Goals and Stacking Habits

Strengthened for Success: Setting Goals and Stacking Habits

Kate Motaung2024-12-31T09:23:57+00:00December 30th, 2024|Featured, Personal Development, Setting goals, Spiritual Development|

God hasn’t only equipped us with what we need for godliness, but also with all we need for life (2 Peter 1:3). Although there are uncertainties we face, the Bible is full of practical wisdom and speaks on the importance of vision. Having a strategy is important to support us in pursuing and accomplishing goals. Without it, dreams die. Yet, with it, we have direction. We are better equipped to run with the Holy Spirit into our destiny marked by hope and expectancy. If you’ve got a dream, surely the enemy will try to intercept it from without or within. While he cannot abort what God has predetermined for you, he often seeks to dismantle confidence in the identity and in God’s faithfulness to persuade you to lose heart and give up. Mapping vision gives you a structure to rest on when you encounter obvious frustrations as well as setbacks you didn’t anticipate. Though you might be tempted to abandon your aims when roadblocks oppose your efforts, you can activate both spiritual and practical strategies to account for the inevitable unknowns in the low places. Often, once we are on the other side of a struggle, having accomplished a goal, we realize that some of those more challenging lessons were essential in developing our character and skill. Whether we are refining our personal development through setting goals or forming habits, acquiring new skills helps us to forge endurance in difficulty. Without those experiences, we would lack some of the core competencies that life demands. Often, we don’t see our resilience or recognize how we continue to rebound from trouble. Yet, God retools these to fortify us, building our resolve and resilience for what's now and next. Systems for Your Success SMART Goal Getter Having a system such as the [...]

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4 Causes of an Insecure Attachment Style

4 Causes of an Insecure Attachment Style

Kate Motaung2024-11-05T06:57:02+00:00November 5th, 2024|Abandonment and Neglect, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

If you’ve been in a relationship, you probably know the feeling. Perhaps your loved one isn’t texting or calling as often, and so you assume they aren’t interested in you anymore. To preempt the inevitable, you decide to break up with them before they break up with you. But to your surprise, you find that you made massive assumptions and blew the relationship up without cause. You may be struggling with an insecure attachment style. The way we respond to others in relationships is shaped considerably by past experiences. You carry fears and expectations into new situations based on what you’ve been through before. Sometimes, these fears and expectations, which comprise your attachment style, can stem from a traumatic experience, and lead you astray and into unhealthy behaviors that undermine a healthy relationship. Attachment Styles and Their Effects Your attachment style is about how you behave and relate to others in your relationships. Some attachment styles are secure, while others are insecure. A secure attachment refers to healthy behaviors you exhibit in your relationships, flowing from the quality of the bonding experiences you had with your parents or caregivers as a child. When a child feels understood and safe, and their needs are met, they develop a secure and successful attachment. Their needs were rightly interpreted and met, which helps the child develop an expectation that it can express needs, and those needs will be met. A secure attachment in childhood will often translate into an adult who trusts others, is self-confident, can express their needs, and manages conflict well. The importance of these formative relationships becomes clear when evaluating instances where one’s needs are met inconsistently or not at all, or where they experience confusing and frightening things. If needs aren’t met or are misinterpreted, it leads to [...]

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Am I Experiencing Symptoms of Anxiety?

Am I Experiencing Symptoms of Anxiety?

Sarah Gibson, Kate Motaung2024-12-21T09:56:23+00:00October 28th, 2024|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Women’s Issues|

Anxiety vs. worry Have you ever thought, “Am I anxious or am I just worried?” For example, a high school student might be worried about an upcoming calculus test, but once the test is done and graded, they are not worried about that test anymore. Like this teenager, we have all been worried about something, but this worry usually goes away once the situation is resolved. On the other hand, what if that same teenager finds themselves constantly worrying about their grades to the point that they have trouble sleeping, become noticeably more fidgety, and start to have panic attacks? These are symptoms of anxiety and are distinct from worry. Those struggling with anxiety usually experience both emotional and physical symptoms, which if left untreated can affect your personal, professional, and spiritual life. Anxiety is widespread Anxiety is the most common mental health disorder in the United States, affecting over forty million adults, or 19.1% of the population. As the OCD & Anxiety Center explains, “For many, it has become increasingly challenging to feel “enough” in a culture that puts a lot of value on having it “all together.” The pressure and stress to achieve near-impossible goals in work and personal life can, in time, result in increased anxiety and even depression.” For those struggling with anxiety, the constant worries and stress can be overwhelming, because it feels like the worries will never stop. With anxiety, these worries can last for a longer period and there might not be a specific reason behind the anxiety. Ruminating thoughts These constant worries are a key feature of anxiety and are known as ruminating thoughts. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), rumination involves, “repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences.” Below are a few [...]

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Teaching Your Children Safe and Healthy Ways to Use Social Media Platforms

Teaching Your Children Safe and Healthy Ways to Use Social Media Platforms

Vanessa Gross, Kate Motaung2024-11-13T11:00:15+00:00August 8th, 2024|Christian Counseling for Children, Christian Counseling For Teens, Family Counseling, Featured|

Parenting has always been a daunting task, but with the advent of social media platforms and hyper-connectivity changing the social landscape, parental guidelines are getting even blurrier. It has become imperative for parents to be vigilant regarding the challenges the younger generation faces each day online. Knowing the amount of time your child spends on social media According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, kids ages eight to eighteen spend, on average, a whopping seven and a half hours on a screen for entertainment each day, four and a half hours of which are spent watching TV. Over the course of a year, that adds up to 114 full days watching a screen for fun. In effect, this means that children spend almost half of their waking hours each year engaged in online activities. Networks like TikTok, X, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook are designed not only to grab your attention but also to maintain your continued interest. In these first few months of 2024, the American government has been up-in-arms with TikTok over its controversial new TikTok-Lite promotional incentive that seeks to reward its users with gift packs for spending more time on the site. That means people will be paid to spend more time online, with potentially catastrophic consequences for their mental health. Children spending even more time on leading social media platforms like TikTok means the problems caused by excessive use of the internet are only exacerbated. How social media platforms can endanger children’s well-being In this day and age, the long-held moral stance of simply forbidding kids from socially immoral places to keep them safe is no longer enough to keep them safe or protected. Con artists, criminals, and every form of predator are now just a click away each time your child [...]

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How To Deal With People That Are Overstepping Boundaries In Your Relationships

How To Deal With People That Are Overstepping Boundaries In Your Relationships

Kate Motaung2024-10-30T09:12:11+00:00June 29th, 2024|Depression, Family Counseling, Featured, Group Counseling, Individual Counseling, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Issues|

You’ve just gotten home after a long day at work, and you’re sitting on your couch nursing a glass of wine while deciding if there’s anything worth getting into on Netflix. Your phone pings beside you, and you see a few messages that have just come in. One is from a sibling asking to borrow your car for the weekend. Another is from your boss, who’s just sent you an email that they need you to respond to in time for an early morning meeting the next day. The last one is an inappropriate text from a person you went out with once and things didn’t work out, but every so often they still send messages expressing their feelings even after you told them not to. In each of these scenarios, there’s a boundary that is likely getting violated. Your sibling may be asking for the car even though they know you tend to use it then and you’ve hesitated to loan the car to them since they had a fender bender. Your employer should know better than to send work emails outside of work hours and expect a response before the following morning. And if you’ve requested someone to stop sending you messages, they are likewise violating your boundaries and likely your sense of safety. In each of these cases, people are overstepping their boundaries in the relationship. What Are Boundaries? A helpful way to think of boundaries in relationships is to look at a physical real-world example. If you’re blessed enough to own your home, you’ll know that there’s a boundary that marks your property and also delineates what your neighbor’s property is. When you’re cutting your grass or doing some landscaping, you’re responsible for your patch while your neighbor is responsible for theirs. The boundary indicates [...]

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13 Healthy Boundaries in Marriage

13 Healthy Boundaries in Marriage

Vanessa Gross, Kate Motaung2024-11-13T11:00:32+00:00May 13th, 2024|Couples Counseling, Featured, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Issues|

When it comes to marriage you often fail to think about boundaries. You forget to be mindful of those small things that can make a difference in the dynamic of your marriage. Boundaries in marriage do not have to be authoritative. They simply have to define the expectation of acceptable behavior. What are healthy boundaries? Healthy boundaries are those that will protect your marriage but are not controlling in nature. They are essential in maintaining a marriage that will be the cornerstone of the family. Boundaries in marriage keep you from following the sinful nature of your flesh. Boundaries protect spouses, kids, and others. The first thing that every marriage needs to set healthy boundaries is godly love. Love that includes mercy and grace. Unconditional love. Not a love that is controlling or jealous. When you base your marriage on the love that God shows you then you will have a foundation that can uphold the boundaries that are healthy for marriages. Admire each other not others There is no way to keep you and your spouse away from other people. You need vacations. Date nights are more fun when you experience them doing something apart from everyday life. But sometimes these places can cause you to have your attention drawn away from your spouse. Human nature causes you to notice other people. The danger of taking too much notice can be avoided by learning how to keep yourself and your spouse out of those situations. Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. – Hebrews 13:4, NIV Understand happiness and freedom When it comes to happiness you cannot hold each other responsible for the amount of happiness you experience. You have to choose [...]

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How to Spot Subtle Toxicity in a Relationship

How to Spot Subtle Toxicity in a Relationship

Vanessa Gross, Kate Motaung2024-11-13T11:00:59+00:00May 6th, 2024|Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

We live in days when cancel culture is a hot-button topic in society. Celebrities, politicians, and people with any kind of influence are held to a level of scrutiny that does not allow for failure of any sort, especially moral failure. In discussions about toxic work environments and holding people accountable for injustice, it is often encouraged that we should apply the same type of critical evaluation to relationships. Intimacy is often found once we expose the most shameful parts of ourselves to each other and hold each other’s confidence. Relationships are frequently about forgiveness for failings, bad behavior, and mistakes. But where do we draw the line on this? How do we know what is simply a flawed, but lovable person, and what is toxic behavior that is best to avoid? Is there redemption for toxicity? What constitutes toxicity in a relationship? Many of us enjoy a good fight. There is a personality type that rises to confrontation with ease and even enjoyment, and they can express themselves well. These types enjoy it when a partner or friend matches their passionate energy, and they respond to criticisms or accusations with eloquence and ease. In many cases, this type of confrontation doesn’t do much harm. It can feel quite therapeutic to be direct and say what’s on our minds, even if it feels negative once we’ve said it. When two confrontational types are in a relationship, there may be a constant butting of heads. To someone who is not as comfortable with directness, their conversations or communication style might be alarming to witness. However, with hot and zesty folks, the anger, aggression, or passion that fires up usually dissipates as easily. After a heated conversation, it is not unusual for both partners to move on without any wounded feelings. [...]

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Play Therapy for Children: Benefits and How It Works

Play Therapy for Children: Benefits and How It Works

Vanessa Gross, Kate Motaung2024-11-13T11:01:14+00:00May 3rd, 2024|Christian Counseling for Children, Family Counseling, Featured|

Childhood is the season of life when we are least burdened by problems. Or at least, it is meant to be. The author Patrick Rothfuss wrote in one of his novels titled The Name Of The Wind that “When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.” Unfortunately, children go through experiences that rob them of their innocence, and they need help to process those experiences to make sense of them and overcome emotional and mental obstacles to their well-being. What is play therapy? One of the therapeutic techniques that therapists use to help children is called play therapy. Because of their young age, children are not always able to process their own emotions or articulate themselves enough to share their problems with parents or other adults in their lives. Play is one of the main ways that young children express themselves and navigate their world, and play therapy leverages this to create space for the child to explore their feelings and experiences. In everyday life, whether it is with or without the guidance of a mental health professional such as a therapist, children like to communicate through their play. For instance, a child who’s playing violently with their toys may be dismissed as simply being aggressive when he might be mirroring a violent domestic situation he has witnessed. If you know what to look for, toys can act as symbols and take on greater meaning as they allow a child to act out their inner feelings and deepest emotions. Play is a tool that children use to act out their fears and anxieties, to heal and problem-solve, or as a [...]

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