Listening is an art & my ministry.
We live in a world where everyone is connected, so why do so many people feel just the opposite? Active, fully engaged, compassionate listening isn't just an art, it’s my ministry. When life is crashing in on all sides and well-intentioned advice and anecdotes just aren’t enough, someone who really listens can be a lifeline. My passion is to make every person I meet feel genuinely listened to and cared for. When we part, my prayer is that you are at least a little better off than when we met.
While temperament therapy is Christian-based (in it's original theory and as the lead research scientists are Christian), this system is also scientifically-proven and is absolutely applicable to anyone, regardless of faith or belief system. We will HAPPILY meet you where you are, NEVER pressure you, and will RESPECT your beliefs and boundaries ALWAYS.
Temperament Counseling
If you're feeling hurt, discouraged or even considering giving up, you need help. I strive to provide a safe, caring place to discover how to live a life full of purpose, joy and contentment in any circumstances, while being true to the unique person you were made to be. Our office offers pastoral, temperament-based counseling, which was developed with the belief that we are all created by God as unique individuals. This form of counseling, pioneered by the National Christian Counselors Association, is Bible-based, scientifically supported and provides temperament evaluation results that have been proven over 95% accurate.
I strive to provide a safe, caring place to discover how to live a life full of purpose, joy and contentment in any circumstances, while being true to the unique person you were made to be.
Why Temperament Counseling has an advantage.
Here's a quick video of Dr. G talking about how the APS Report provides a unique understanding of your motivations, behaviors, and desires, which helps counseling sessions laser focused and provides measurable results.
Dr. G on Temperament
Does your counseling offer the APS advantage?
Temperament Breakdown
How temperament blends work and what it all means for your session.
Temperament Therapy Is Completely Different
Instead of talking in circles, a common complaint of those who have tried therapy, temperament counseling helps you understand who you really are at your core. Understanding your temperament is the missing link so often missing from modern therapy as it provides a proven and measurable way to help you meet your personal needs in a healthy and productive way.
Often, introspection is an unreliable and unscientific method for understanding human behavior. However, through temperament analysis, you can understand your unique strengths, challenges, and motivations, while also revealing the unmet needs causing stress and conflict within you and in your relationships. Together, we can use temperament as a guide to help you recover from your past, while helping you make better, more informed choices in the future.
Understanding your temperament, and thus better understanding yourself, is an invaluable tool that can help limit guilt, shame, and sadness, while providing greater personal fulfillment, peace and joy.
Meet the Five Temperaments
Everyone has a unique blend of the five temperaments listed below. In temperament counseling our temperament is measured in three categories: Inclusion, Control and Affection. Our temperament score in each category provides highly personalized insight into our deepest needs and how we relate to people and the world around us.
Most people are a blend of the 5 temperaments. Variation is common as different individuals measure higher or lower in the dominance of a temperament or in a particular category. This is why temperament therapy is so unique and personalized!
Which one (or few) sound like you?
According to the National Christian Counselors Association, "Our God created temperament, our identity, is the inborn part of us that determines how we react to people, our environment and the world around us. It affects our perceptions of ourselves, the people who love us, and our relationship with God Himself. Our ability to accomplish tasks, make decisions, and handle stress are all tied to our temperament. It determines our basic needs and how we respond when those needs are not met."
Understanding The Melancholy Temperament
Quiet, reserved and intelligent, the Melancholy is an introvert with a clever, active mind. The Melancholy is always thinking or working on something. Sensitive, smart and creative, the melancholy craves alone time to think, create and regenerate.
Understanding The Sanguine Temperament
Bright, bold and bubbly, the Sanguine is the ultimate extrovert with lots of friends and big ideas. They always have a place to be. Impulsive, fun-loving and energetic, the Sanguine is happiest when they get as much love as they give.
Understanding The Phlegmatic Temperament
Consistently calm, cool and collected, the Phlegmatic has the ability to relate just as well to tasks as they can with people. Highly protective of their time and energy, often by using their razor wit, the phlegmatic is hardworking, cool-headed, and reliable.
Understanding The Choleric Temperament
Naturally born to lead the way, a Choleric is truly a force to be reckoned with. An extrovert powerhouse with big dreams, big plans and a (sometimes) a big ego, the Choleric is ambitious, motivated and unstoppable when their mind is made up.
Understanding The Supine Temperament
Thoughtful, giving and considerate, the Supine is always ready to help out, pitch in and serve. Always putting others before themselves, the Supine is a loyal friend, an extremely hard worker, and makes it their mission to make everyone feel special.
A Closer Look at the Three Areas Where Temperament is Measured
The APS report measures and identifies the three distinct areas of needs, personal characteristics, and motivations, including how we relate to people and the world around us. You can have a different temperament for each of the categories below, or a combination.
Inclusion
Your Inclusion temperament defines your need to establish and maintain a satisfactory relationships with people in the area of surface relationships, associations and socialization including career, activities, social gatherings, and people who come in and out of your life every day. Inclusion needs can range from a desire to have involvement with many people or only a select few. Inclusion also includes the cognitive or intellectual functions and the way you receive and process information. At your core, your Inclusion score determines your needs for your sense of significance or belonging.
Control
Your Control temperament is your need to establish and maintain a satisfactory relationship with people in respect to issues of control and power, as well as your ability to self-motivate. Your Control score indicates how to what degree you want to control people and situations and how much we will allow people and situations to control us. It corresponds to your will power, whether you are a leader or a team player, as well as your decision-making process and style. At your core, the temperament needs in Control highlight your confidence and your ability to be effective, decisive, and influential.
Affection
Your Affection temperament is your need to establish and maintain a satisfactory relationship with others in regard to love and affection, including deep one-on-one relationships such as spouses, girlfriends or boyfriends, parents, children, and trusted friends. This area deals with deep relationships involving intimacy, vulnerability, personal feelings, and innermost desires. It indicates how much love and affection you express and how much you want to be shown. At your core, your Affection score indicate your personal sense of worthiness, including feeling lovable, valued and deserving of love.
The Challenges of Traditional Counseling
A famous doctor, Sigmund Freud, pioneered the modern day theory that we are all born a "blank slate" until environment and circumstance make us who we are. Just ask any parent and they will agree that their child was their own person from day one. It may surprise you to know that many modern counseling methods are still based on this "blank slate" kind of thinking Freud pioneered. Nature vs. nurture arguments abound while people continue to suffer.
The most common form of therapy used today, based on the work and ideas of Carl Rogers, is called "Person Centered Therapy." This technique encourages individuals that seek their own inner wisdom, facilitated by a professional, in order to grow and heal. In short, many find they are expected to "talk it out" and arrive at their own conclusions. Others spend countless hours learning "who is to blame" only to become stuck there without progressing towards healing by remaining stuck in the past.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Biblical Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
We also use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), or for those who prefer it, Biblical Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (BCBT) techniques. The theory of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that many of our difficulties stem from the way we think. Many believe that an event where something negative or hurtful affects us, causing emotional distress.
However, CBT and BCBT show us that it is not the event but a person’s belief about that event that causes the emotional disturbance. God's word says that we should bring every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
We will help you see how the way you think affects how you feel, how you feel affects how you behave, how you behave affects how you think and feel about others and the promises of God. In short, it all begins with how we think. Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as he thinks within himself, so he is."
Working together to examine unhealthy or ungodly thought patterns that may result in unwanted behavior and consequences, we can reclaim 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, "...we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed."
Understanding Enables Lasting Change
Temperament therapy is based on the belief that you were purposefully made by God with your exact temperament, giving you a very special set of gifts, desires, talents, and struggles. Unlike tastes, moods, situations and even personalities, temperament is who we are at our core, it never changes.
Temperament determines how we interact with our environment and the people around us. Temperament also determines our perception and understanding of ourselves and of the people who love us. Often we learn or select behavior that is very different from our inborn temperament. We call this a "mask" as it only hides the true temperament. When the "mask" is dominant, a person's temperament needs are not met, and he/she feels stress and suffers conflict.
After 22 years of research, Drs. Richard and Phillis Arno created a system that has been proven over 95% accurate, with clients reporting higher satisfaction as compared to traditional therapy. With your personal APS report, we determine your unique, inborn temperament in three areas: inclusion, control and affection.
As the foundation of Temperament Counseling is Christian, we believe that attempts to meet our temperament needs apart from our relationship with God creates conflict. By attempting to meet our needs apart from God's plan, we expend too much energy meeting some needs while ignoring others, creating conflict, stress, and often, unhappiness.
No Discrimination or Pressure. Ever.
This is a safe space for everyone. Period.
I believe trust is earned and that everyone deserves to be meet with love and respect right where they are. Temperament therapy is Christian-based. The theory is rooted in Christine doctrine and the scientists that pioneered the research are Christian. However, this system is also scientifically-proven and is absolutely applicable to anyone, regardless of faith or belief system. This office will never judge or discriminate.
How you do (or do not) express your unique temperament can be affected by your upbringing, education as well as your personal relationship with God (if applicable), your understanding of a higher power, or lack thereof.
Ready to Learn More? Let's Do This.
I'd like to invite you to join my mailing list. I'll share a bit more about my offerings, including temperament counseling, and dive into the specific temperaments. So come join the cyber crew, we'd love to have you. (I promise to knock it off with the rhyming.)
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18
Disclaimer: This Is Not What I Signed Up For, LLC, is owned by Gianina (GG) Knoth. This website and all content contained within is not a medical office, mental health facility, or state licensed counseling office. No information provided within this website in any form should be construed or medical, psychiatric, or nursing advice and is intended for informational purposes only. No information, opinions, or information expressed or shared in any form contained within the site or any call or telehealth session is designed to take he place of advice from a licensed health professional based on your personal history. We do not claim to "cure" or "heal" anything. We do not assume liability for any information provided herein. Please note, Gianina Knoth is not a medical doctor or state licensed counselor, but voluntarily submits to the Code of Ethical Standards of the National Christian Counselors Association and operates under the exemption for members of the clergy who are called to serve in specialized ministry such as pastoral counseling.” The NCCA credentials are not equal to a “state license”. The authority that allows pastoral counselors to serve in pastoral counseling ministry, is their ministerial credentials, being licensed, commissioned or ordained as a minister and regular reporting of their ministerial duties to the body that bestowed their ministerial credentials upon them. We strongly advise maintaining a working relationship with a primary care physician and a psychiatrist or other state licensed mental health provider if recommended by your doctor. Call 911 for emergencies. While all attempts have been made to verify the information provided, neither the creator nor contributor/s assume any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretations on the subject matter herein. Any perceived slight of any individual or organization is purely unintentional. This website should not be used as a substitute for psychological, medical, legal, or any other kind of professional advice. Neither the creator nor contributor/s shall be held liable or responsible to any person or entity with respect to any physical, psychological, emotional, financial, or commercial damages, including, but not limited to, special, incidental, consequential or other damages, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information or programs contained herein. Every person is different, and the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. Our rights are the same: You are responsible for your own choices, actions, and results. See full disclaimer here.