Light is required for growth and healing. The problem is we have become very good at hiding and keeping light far away from places within we want no one to see.
One thing I have realized over the last 12 years as a Counselor and trauma specialist is how unaware we can be of the affects of our early life experiences and wounded moments. We see through the lens of our past hurts and are directed by the beliefs that were formed because of them. The great concern for me and why I have become an advocate for shedding light on things that are holding us back, is because destinies are at stake. Our unhealed wounds cloud our vision of who God made us to be.
In today’s post I hope to shed light on the ways we block the possibility of healing our inner hurts. I will describe 4 of the most common patterns I have seen over the years.
- Avoidance and Denial
It makes sense that we would want to avoid painful things.The urge to pull away is instinctual. However, we cannot heal what we do not acknowledge. We have succumb to a “put on your big girl pants” and just get over it culture. We deny our experience, we minimize its impact and try to convince ourselves that it no longer affects us. All the while our wounds are running more than we know.
Our brain is an extremely complex machine that has an innate ability to protect us. Sometimes that means locking away memories that our hearts cannot bear to accept. The problem is that avoidance may keep the details of your experience out of your awareness but it cannot keep the affects of those memories from pushing through the cracks.
There seems to be a strong draw to the belief that if I don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen or it will just go away. Avoidance is sneaky because it works temporarily to relieve symptoms, but in the long run it only perpetuates the pain and makes healing impossible.
The enemy’s great deception is to keep believers in the dark about wounds that are controlling them because then he can keep us far from our destinies!
Unhealed wounds are the cause for many of the behaviors we don’t like about ourselves. Paul explains this common dilemma in Romans 7:15 (MSG) What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.
We’ve all had moments where we think why did I just do that? It is in those moments we have to look for deeper roots. When we consistently see patterns of responding that keep steering us away from who we want to be there may just be a painful memory pulling our string.
- Dis-connection and Self-reliance
We can end up feel completely alone, and unable to trust when we go through something overwhelming. Trauma at its very core involves DIS-CONNECTION! Our painful moments close us off from the world. We end up abandoning ourselves because our emotions become too much to handle and then we shut everyone out! We can feel like we no longer belong, no one gets it, and if anyone knew they would surely reject us.
Our heart begins to close because we don’t want to be hurt again. So we hide – keeping our secrets locked away.
The thing we fail to understand is that shame thrives in the secret places. We need to open our heart and hurt before God and those that have proven their trustworthiness so that they can provide the light of truth that contradicts what we came to believe in our darkest moments. This breaks the chains of secrecy and shame. Light provides GRACE, darkness fuels SHAME.
- Fear
When life is unpredictable and painful we enlist any means necessary to control the uncontrollable and we end up letting fear run our decisions instead of God. Fear drives us to expect the worst, waiting for the next ball to drop, and lose all hope. We over-analyzing, ruminate, catastrophize, procrastinate, and find we are indecisiveness, defensive, and full of doubt. We fear failure, success, rejection, connection. We fear we will never belonging, but also fear being seen. We stay trapped in the confines of our own protective barriers yet fail to realize we’ve made ourselves a prisoner. We rely on what we can see and what our past has shown and never allow faith the opportunity to work.
John Bevere in his book, Breaking Intimidation, puts it this way:
“An intimidated person honors what he fears more than he honors God. What would happen if all believers functioned in their place? What tremendous things we could see… It is this Joint operation of these gifts the enemy wants to stop. When successful he can severely hinder our growth. He knows he cannot stop God from giving these gifts, so he is after our freedom to exercise these gifts.”
Satan uses the pain we have experience to create a fear so intimidating that our gifts lie dormant, we stay confined within our box, and never realize the potential God has placed within us.
- Self- Criticism
Our wounded moments created an opportunity for seeds of negative self-perceptions to be planted deeply into our soul. These beliefs entangle, separate, and block the entrance of anything good that could be nourishing or healing. Our painful moments create negative self-beliefs that fight hard to be heard and don’t like to be contradicted.
We project how we feel about ourselves outward and believe God and others must feel that way too. If you were to pause for a moment and say to yourself God delights in me. Are you able to feel it?…or do you sense a level of resistance that’s hard to explain.
Zephaniah 3:17(AMP) states, “The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Savior [Who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing.”
We serve a God who delights in us who rejoices over us with singing when we are in his presence. Yet our wounded moment say others-wise. In an effort to protect ourselves from ever messing up again and getting hurt we develop a relentless inner critic whose words are harsh and unforgiving. This drives our hearts farther and farther from the truth in God’s Word.
The bible makes in clear in Proverbs 18: 21 “Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.”
What I want you to hear today is words are not just words they are DIRECTIONAL MARKERS!
The messages we believe become the selves we see and determine the things we do. I believe we have the ability to choose our thoughts and redirect our life path, but we must first heal the wounds inside that are producing the beliefs that are destroying us.
If you have come to believe you are “unworthy, unforgiveable, hopeless, useless, damaged, or unloveable” where are the roots of these beliefs? We have to heal these places inside of us or else we will never accept the truth of how God sees us and the purposes He has for our life!
Take an honest look and see how you may be blocking God’s light from healing your most hurting places within. Look for patterns and reactions you find puzzling. There just may be a wounded moment running the show behind the scenes. These patterns when left unchecked, keep us from finding the freedom God intends for us to have.
Thanks for taking time to slow down from you busy schedule and soak in truth for your journey. Stay tuned for the next post regarding ways we can allow healing to manifest in our lives.
Be Blessed!
~Josie