Understanding Yourself Courses
 Step One
Why is it important to understand yourself?

Do you ever find yourself wondering -
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  • why do I feel such contradictory emotions?
  • is there any way of understanding what goes on in my head or my heart?
  • is it possible to make sense of the way I react to situations and other people and how they react to me?
  • why do fear or anxiety prevent me living life to the full?
  • people think I'm calm and in control, but do they really know what is going on inside me?
  • why is it that the relationships in my life seem to be falling apart?
  • can broken, painful relationships ever be put back together?

Life is about relationships. How we feel about ourselves determines our ability to form and sustain healthy relationships. There are a number of factors that determine our self-image; understanding our temperaments and those early formative influences will help us to answer these questions. Much damage can be done by unhealthy relationships and healing comes through a proper understanding of healthy relationships. 

What are temperaments?

Our temperament is the combination of basic traits with which we were born. Hippocrates (460-370BC, often given the title 'The father of modern medicine') discerned patterns in those traits that enabled him to distinguish four main temperaments. He gave those patterns names that have passed into our modern language - Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholic and Phlegmatic. We are born with our temperaments and cannot swap them; however we can understand the temperaments we have and use them to the full. An understanding of our different temperaments and how they interact within us helps us to understand the way we think and feel and makes sense of many of the dilemmas and contradictory emotions we all experience. For more detailed information about temperaments click here. However, this course is not primarily about temperaments - it is about relationships, but we have found that an understanding of the temperaments helps to build and maintain healthy relationships.
Why this course?
God wants the whole of who we are. We can only relate properly to each other - and to the Lord - when we are able to give ourselves away. However, many people are strangers to themselves and will live and die without ever experiencing even as much as 50% of who they are.

Unfortunately what we don't understand and live in tends to disproportionately influence our attitudes and behaviour. We can feel powerless to break patterns and make necessary changes and our relationships suffer as a result - with the attendant stress and frustration. It doesn't have to be this way - that is why we have developed this course which enables us to understand ourselves and others significantly better.

The teaching on this course is rooted in timeless biblical principles and it is only through the Christian faith that the course can be fully effective. However the principles are relevant to everyone and those who work through the material who do not have a personal faith can still benefit from the teaching.
Course content:
The course material includes -
  • why it is important to understand ourselves
  • the richness of our particular temperaments
  • how those temperaments interact within us
  • how that interaction affects the way we feel about ourselves and how we relate to others
  • the influences of our past experiences on our temperaments
  • how our identity is formed
  • the importance of affirmation
  • key concepts essential to meaningful relationships
Click here to go to the Step One course notes. ​
Return to Understanding Yourself courses - go to Step Two - Step Three - Step Four - Understanding How to Help