What gets in the way of healing?

The following notes have been taken from this podcast: The Place We Find Ourselves: What Gets in the Way of Healing? 

God designed us to heal. We heal if the conditions for healing are right. So why don't we heal? You can block the natural healing process of trauma by doing any of the following things. There are four main reasons: 

1. Minimizing Your Story: Everyone minimizes their story -- no one comes into a counseling office saying, "this is the worst story you've ever heard!" We all minimize our wounds. You don't believe that your story from when you are a child is affecting you today. In Jeremiah 6 & 8, God says something fascinating. He gets angry because the leader of his people are minimizing the wounds of Israel. "They dress the wounds of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace' they say, when there is no peace." Most of us do the same thing with regard to our own wounds. We minimize our wounds, "peace, peace, everything is fine," when in fact there is no peace in our bodies. How many times have you said, "I shouldn't complain because _____ has had it so much harder than me." The point is, she shouldn't focus on her own pain. Why do we feel the need to compare our pain and story to another person? Anytime you compare your story, you are minimizing your story and dressing the wounds of yourself as a boy or girl as though it was not serious. You do not want your story to affect yourself as much as you did. You will feel the grief and suffering rising up, and your first thought is, "Okay, wait, but they had a bad story." It may be true that someone else had a worse story, but all you are trying to do is escape your own story and having to look it in the face. Why do you contempt for the younger you? Why do you want to dress the wounds of that younger child as if they do not matter? 

Here is another important thing to keep in mind. If you are asked to come up with positive memories and you do not have them, that is a big deal. If you have no memories, it means that the memories were devoid of goodness. Lack of memories indicates that there is tragedy. It is very hard to give weight to the absence of something. If there was an immense void of goodness, it can be hard to give weight to it because you are acknowledging the absence of something.

2. Spiritualizing the bad things that have happened to you. (This is a big one for people who have spent time in a church community!) This means that you have theology or the Bible to avoid engaging with what you have endured. You use these things to avoid feeling your feelings. This is another way of minimizing your story. The vast majority of churches are very skilled at creating environments at which the harsh realities of living in a sinful world are spiritualized away. We all have a way of not looking at how painful life can be and has been. Here's an example. You are talking about your parent's divorce. And when your friend presses in and says, "Man, that must have been hard," you respond with, "Yeah, it was hard, but I see how God used that in my life to shape my character and grow me as a person." You are spiritualizing away the big feelings that you would have felt if you had stayed with the reality of the heartache of the story. You are using spirituality to avoid feeling your feelings. You are appealing to God's goodness to avoid sitting with that eight-year-old girl when her parents got divorced. You are abating the dicomsfort of your own story by saying, "Well, I know God is using all things for His glory."

Please understand. I don't disagree that God does use all things for good. But why do you have to bring that up right when your friend was giving weight to your pain and empathizing with you and really being with you in it? This misguided optimism has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus. Misguided optimism wants to say, "There was no crucifixtion. There was only resurrection.

3. Self-contempt: Flashback. You are an overweight teenager and when you go to sit on a small chair while helping younger kids, another boy says to his friend, "I hope she doesn't break that chair because she is so fat." Instead of sitting in the shame which is intolerable, you join them in their contempt of you by thinking, "You are so fat. Why are you always snacking. Why can't you have more self-control? You are so lazy." And you stab yourself with darts a dozen more times. Did your classmate hurt you? Oh yes. But your self-contempt by the end of the day has done far more damage. From that day forward, how many times do you look in the mirror and berate yourself for your weight. This is the goal of evil. To seduce you to inflict violence on yourself. It is violence from you, to you. It is designed to protect you from feeling your big feelings which in this case, it would be SHAME. 

What is your posture toward the younger you? Look back at yourself as a middle schooler. How do you feel toward that little boy or girl? More often than not, our posture isn't very kind. It's this posture of, "He was so needy" or "She was so stupid to think her grandfather actually cared for her" or just "I can't stand her." Do you hear the violence in those accusations? When you are awash in self-contempt, you can't feel your feelings. When you are hating yourself, you can't access those big feelings! The anecdote for this is kindness! Can you soften your heart just a little bit? There has to be a growing kindness to yourself in order to heal

4. The Pace of Your Life: This is actually the fourth excuse that gets in the way of healing. Our frantic pace of life prohibits us from actually being present for ourselves! How much time do you spend noticing your inner life of thoughts and longings? Of just noticing your thoughts, feelings, and longings? Rather than attending to the tasks of your day? You must spend more time with yourself, with your heart, with all the swirl of activity in your mind. The thing that stops most of us from spending time with ourselves is actually fear of what might be lurking in there. It can be very scary to get connected to your true thoughts and feelings. The pace of your life may be driven by a fear of slowing down and just being with your own heart. This makes sense. 

You must create space for grief to emerge. You must stop to grieve. In The Poisonwood Bible: "As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there, but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped, did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat 'till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop." We are truly afraid that our grief will pull us under and we will never make it back up. But what if going down into the depths of grief is required for your body to experience the naturalness of healing.