Christian

Today we're talking about the trauma recovery journey. The trauma recovery journey and how you can actually think more positively even when your thinker is not very clear. So, remember that trauma is a wound. Trauma is a painful past learning experience. It means that something happened that was not optimal, and it impacted you beyond your ability to have the resources that you needed to take care of it. When we are recovering from that, we miss out on knowing that we survived because our system gets so focused on making sure that never happens again.

That scary thing that felt like we wouldn't survive, that it puts up amazing scanners under the scenes that say that will never happen again. And then we come up with all kinds of coping skills, whether helpful or not helpful, to prevent the very thing that hurt us. And then those coping skills end up hurting us, so they don't work. They worked for a time, or they worked for a developmental stage or when we were kids, we thought they worked, but then as adults we run into things where they don't work and then we're kind of left wondering what in the world to do next?

Today, I'm going to help teach you how to think as you are recovering from trauma. Maybe you've been in therapy for a while and you're like, but when I hit this pain point again, I thought I had already worked through it. I thought it had already healed. I don't understand why I'm spinning my wheels again. And I want to tell you, you're not. And when you think, why am I not able to get past this? I still have to keep working and trying to get past this, I want to tell you that you are. So, you are getting past it. You are doing the work. Just because something is familiar and because it may be the way it feels, it does not mean that you're not progressing. It does not mean you haven't survived. It does not mean that hope isn't right there with you or that healing isn't completely on the horizon.

Now, I can't promise complete healing in everybody's circumstances all the time. But when you really do the work, you will then have the tools to be able to keep on the path towards healing and it will get smoother as you go. You don't need to still survive. You don't need to try harder to survive. You already have survived. Now you need to basically pick yourself up when you wobble. It's not that you're still surviving, it's that your system doesn't know it already did.

I want to give you the analogy of a bike ride, okay? If you're on a two-wheeler, you're a kid, you've learned how to ride a two-wheeler and you've crashed, and your bike is toast. I mean, you're banged up, your knees are skinned, your bike got all bent, your tires flat, everything's a mess. You don't want that to ever happen again. So, the next time you get on your bike, your new bike, you start to wobble a little bit because you remember, uh-oh, I fell last time, yet you keep going. You may have to stop and go to one side and kind of catch your balance with one leg down while you hold the bike against you. Then maybe you get back up and you try again and keep going. But every pedal, every time you push the pedal around, you are further on in the process of getting back on the bike and getting away from the experience of the accident. You survived your bike accident, and now you're on your way to a wonderful ride. If you keep thinking, I have to survive an accident, I have to survive an accident, you take away the power of the ride that you're already on in your bike. Now, does that mean you'll never wobble? No, of course not. Does that mean you'll never skin your knee again? Of course not. Does it mean though, that you're going to completely crash and lose your bike and never be okay again and break all kinds of bones? It doesn't mean that either. What happened to you in that first bike crash is over. If you have a new bike and you're pedaling, you survived it.

Now it's a matter of maybe carrying some extra tools with you. Maybe you want to wear your helmet when you ride your bike. Maybe you want to have some knee pads. If you wore ten knee pads on each leg, that would be overkill and that would cause more of a problem than it would help you. See, your coping skills can be out of proportion to what you need them to be. So, in what ways are you trying to protect yourself that are actually getting in the way now? But there's nothing wrong with maybe carrying with you some quarters to put in an air machine at a gas station so that you can pump up your tire if it gets a little low and that's what's causing the wobble. Or maybe to put a little basket on the bike that has a bottled water in there because you might get thirsty and that might help keep you hydrated while you pedal. When you have things that are helpful, you just pull out the tool that you need. Maybe carry a Band-Aid in your pocket in case you need to slap one on. If you do fall and skin your knee, it's not buying a whole new bike again and recovering from that huge crash you had. You've already done that. You're already on your new journey. You may need to have some tools in your toolkit that will help you to optimize when you wobble and fall. But it doesn't mean it's a catastrophe. Taking you back to that catastrophe that you had had that big wound trauma that put you on your guard and wanted to make you put every elbow, knee pad, helmets to the extreme on you. No. Just use caution. Be wise, look out for potholes, keep pedaling, enjoy the new journey. You're already on it.

I wanted to encourage you with that because that's the difference between traumatic memory and actual chronological time you are present, you were hurt, you might still feel like you have a black and blue mark or a few of them, and you don't want them to get bumped. Again. Totally understandable. But if and when they get bumped, you can tend to them with compassion and care, or find others now who can tend to them with compassion and care. And you can process and heal because you survived that initial catastrophe. And the way I know that is because you're here now. You would not be if you were in immediate survival danger. Using your logic, maybe having some sips of coffee while you read. If you were really in fight or flight danger right now, a survival mode, you wouldn't be reading and thinking about how this applies to you. So, you have survived 100% of the things that you've been through. If you're still bruised, it's because you were wounded. And if you're still feeling those spots are tender, then tend to them. Comfort them, get them the support they need, the healing, the processing. But please don't mistake that you are no longer on the journey of the trauma. You are on the journey of recovery from that trauma. When you can acclimate to present time and space, it helps you to realize that you are no longer powerless, that you have power.

Let me just say that I was waiting for months for Inside Out 2 to premier in theaters, so I was thrilled when it came out a day early in my area.

Five new emotions were introduced as characters: Ennui, Embarrassment, a touch of Nostalgia, Envy, and arguably the star of the show...Anxiety.

Demolition Day came to the mind of Riley, the newly turned 13-year-old main character and these new characters took over the "controls" of her mind, feeling, choices, and actions. I'll leave the plot pretty much alone as far as this blog goes, but I do want to call out a few key points that really stand out to me:

        1.      Emotions are powerful and can sway us if we let them, but being aware of the complexities of feeling more than one thing and thinking more than one thing at a time can help us to take back the internal steering wheel inside us and point our choices and actions back to our values, and for the Christian to the Holy Spirit's gift of self-control.

        2.      More than one emotion can exist at a time as can more than one motivation and desire. When we go against our core values and the ways of the Holy Spirit, things can often get complicated and messy. Since we don't need help for emotions and thoughts to be messy as they often naturally feel that way, aligning with God's truth and the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives can offer clarity and a light to our path when things get overwhelming or confusing.

Galatians 5:22 says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

        3.      It's interesting that in Inside Out 2, Joy, a fruit of the Spirit, is the one with a helpful and mostly optimistic outlook.

        4.      Sometimes we feel down, angry, sad, embarrassed, jealous, or anxious, but those are able to be felt, processed, endured, and dealt with appropriately. They give us good information on how our external and internal experiences are affecting us, but we get to decide how to steer our ship.

        5.      Taking time out to sit in a comfy chair, breathe, sip some tea, and pray or Bible read is a great way to stop the panic of the mental scenes that anxiety tries to forecast in our imaginations. While anxiety is trying to help us by preparing us for what we can't see that could hurt us in some way, it turns out that it's a partly helpful feeling that goes awry when not kept in check and can cause more harm than good to our nervous systems, even to the point of triggering panic attacks, dissociation, and freeze responses when the input either real or imagined is too intense.
Emotions are a part of the human experience, and they aren't bad in and of themselves. However, when they are allowed to direct our paths instead of wisdom, God's Word, our Christian value system, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we can end up in some pretty dark places. It is hard enough to manage the variety and depth of emotions and thoughts as a human, but without steering ourselves back to the solid foundation of the things of God, things only get harder.

Christians can suffer from mental illness and distress, and it does NOT necessarily mean that it is a moral or spiritual failing. It can simply mean that we are human with a human nervous system that is trying to care for us and has been overloaded in some way by the input from our experiences. Knowing this can empower us to both keep our eyes on the Lord and seek mental health care when our emotions are taking over and hurting too much.