Many people live with emotional pain subtly directing their daily lives.
It can surface in different ways—ongoing anxiety before presentations, a habit that refuses to loosen its grip, or a conversation with a loved one that you avoid because it hurts too much.
Why did I do that?
Why can’t I just be myself?
Why do I always mess things up?
You may try harder and harder to be better—to manage yourself, correct your behavior, or push past what hurts. But eventually the question surfaces: Where is all that effort actually getting me?
Exhaustion and discouragement often step in right there. And that’s understandable—but they don’t have to be the end of the story.
At CrossCounsel, we use a simple and powerful process called MELT to help people understand their current pain and discover where it is coming from. While present circumstances matter, much of what people experience today is often intensified or sustained by deeper, unresolved places from the past.
As those places are healed by God’s experiential Truth and Love, the pain that shows up in daily life begins to lose its power. People don’t just cope better; they move forward with more freedom, confidence, peace and deeper maturity.
The MELT Process
Memory
Our responses to life are shaped not by memories or experiences themselves, but by how we interpreted them. Research has shown that many of our most deeply embedded beliefs form early in life—often before our teen years—shaped by experience, relationships, and repeated patterns - and they continue to influence how we respond today.
MELT helps people connect with the memories beneath their reactions, including those that logic alone cannot access. By engaging emotion—the God-designed link between feelings and memory—we remain present rather than analytical.
As emotion is engaged, memories often emerge that surprise people. Revisiting these memories allows what was formed there to be addressed rather than repeated.
Emotion
We feel what we believe. Emotions are a reliable barometer—they reveal what is held in the heart—but they are a poor thermometer, because they do not always reflect reality accurately.
Rather than dismissing or suppressing emotion, we learn to treat it as a warning light—an indicator pointing us toward the beliefs beneath it.
Some push past or ignore emotions—the “sticks and stones” approach. Over time, this tends to bury pain and reinforce distorted beliefs, often creating new problems rather than resolving old ones.
By staying with our emotions instead of managing them away, we are able to uncover and address the beliefs that are driving them.
And for those who struggle to feel emotion at all, we help create a safe, guided way to reconnect.
Lie/Belief
Once your heart is emotionally engaged and connected to a memory, we help you uncover the core lie—the false belief that took root in that moment and continues to produce pain. These beliefs can feel true, but they are never true in light of who God is and how He created you. Common examples sound like, “I’m worthless,” “I’m defective,” or “I don’t matter.”
Many approaches never reach this core level. They manage symptoms or reframe thoughts without identifying the belief driving the emotion—and even when beliefs are identified, logical truth alone rarely reaches the heart.
Bear in mind that memories themselves do not cause pain; the beliefs attached to them do. Painful memories that contain beliefs about our value, identity, or worth may never change in content—but when our hearts are positioned to receive God’s perspective, what changes is not the memory itself, but how we understand ourselves within it. A memory can remain awful in content without continuing to define our value.
When people don’t know how to recognize these beliefs—or how to remain emotionally present while doing so— God’s truth has no place to land, and freedom remains only theoretical.
Truth/Transformation
In the first three movements of the process—Memory, Emotion, and Lie—we are working on what could be described as the horizontal level. These are places we can notice, explore, and sort through, but they cannot bring lasting change on their own. The true shift happens at this point because we come to an honest recognition: we are powerless and hopeless to fix ourselves. It is precisely in that place of helplessness—not effort or insight—that transformation becomes possible.
As false, core beliefs are acknowledged and taken responsibility for, and resistance is set aside, we remain present with both the memory and the emotion connected to it. In that place, the lies embedded in the memory are offered to Jesus.
We have witnessed God bring His Truth experientially into those moments—in deeply personal and often creative ways. When God’s Truth is encountered there, the lie in that memory is undone, and the emotional charge of the memory shifts, regardless of how traumatic it was.
The result is genuine peace and transformation—resolving lies rooted in the past and opening the way for a different trajectory ahead, sometimes across generations.
MELT changes lives
“I’d learned how to abstain from alcohol but not how to overcome my secret battle with the bottle. I believed I was totally unacceptable and that led me to drink. Through CrossCounsel, I found that Jesus was calling me to Himself with open arms. I’m thrilled to report that there has been no desire to drink since I worked with CrossCounsel and learned that I am accepted.”
– Greg
“I don't know what my life would be like without this process! It has deepened my communication with Jesus on so many levels!”
– Lindsey
“Weakness dominated my heart for years. When I opened the door, the Lord showed how much he was protecting me, even in those times. This beautiful, transformational experience set me on a path that I couldn’t have imagined even a year ago.”