A Christian men’s forum provided this question that I was asked to provide a view on. I love the opportunities to wrestle with questions such as these, because I find it much easier to think and pray and write than give a ‘great’ answer on the spot (i.e., I need God’s help). This is obviously a general and considered response, hopefully written to men and women.
Let’s consider that any broad question like this requires a holistic — all of person — kind of answer to even go close to potentially satisfying the person asking the question.
First of all, I want to say two things from the outset: 1) we must believe that we can recover with God’s help, and that 2) healing is a practice. It’s something that we commit to doing and then do; as a discipline.
Not only will the practice of healing disciplines help us one day at a time in our recovery, we also trust our recovery one day at a time to our Lord. Spiritual practices, therefore, are a work of trusting God. They follow the replacement principle that the apostle Paul outlined in Philippians 4:8-9.
Now, I need to say this:
You are believed;
it happened, it was horrible, and it is horrendous.
But you can also be more than
what you have experienced.
It is part of who you are. It happened.
But you don’t need to be forever defined by it.
Let’s turn to the holistic areas of focus in our search for effective recovery methods:
Physical
Sleep, diet and exercise. I could probably leave it at that. Many things that happen in our bodies as a result of trauma are effects of the deeper psychological fissures that have been grooved into our psyches.
We must trust God that in honouring our bodies to the extent of catering for the basics of sleep, diet and exercise, we will do all we can for God to renew our physical being.
Get sleep right (as much as it’s possible; some have sleep disorders) and we take out a large proportion of the direct causation of mental health maladies.
Get our diet right and we add years and sometimes a decade or more to our lives, and we stave off chronic disease to a large extent.
Exercise gives us the wellbeing of endorphin release. There is nothing quite like a good exercise regime.
All this is about getting the basics right as much as we can; it’s the practice of disciplines.
Psychological
Cognitive function can be aided by many things, but what I want to focus most on are the two aspects of thinking around betrayal and self-forgiveness.
I counsel people not to judge their thinking. Using what I learned from Richard Rohr on dualistic and nondual thinking, we hold open space not to judge our thinking — there’s absolutely no benefit to us or anyone else in it. Psalm 37:8 indicates this thinking causes only harm. If there’s something we need to correct, we correct it without judging it.
Nondual thinking, again, is a discipline.
As an example, it took me about two years to master taking myself into a trance for middle-of-the-day napping through an eyelid relaxation technique that God gave me to master. Now it’s second nature.
It takes time to establish these disciplines, and there is no time like the present to commence such a thing. Essentially, through the process of contemplation — a conscious contact with ourselves and God in our thinking — we trap right/wrong, good/bad, judgmental thoughts and repent of them.
This is not a repentance that has anything to do with feeling guilty or ashamed. We just simply turn and go back to our appreciative thinking processes.
Emotional
I want to raise here that none of our emotions are to be judged, because they can better be cherished. We feel how we feel. Rather than say, “naughty boy (or girl),” we’d be better to observe the feeling — sorrow, fear, worry, etc — and sit in those moments and find a way to thank God for divine presence in the midst of them. This is what is termed divine lament or the practice of spiritual lament. It’s an honouring of the truth.
We don’t need to run from it through denial. Neither do we need to berate ourselves or attack others in our anger, for much sorrow and fear protrudes as anger and as I said it only leads to heartache (Psalm 37:8 above).
Healing is the quest to acknowledge all emotion as beautiful, God-given and God-ordained. Our emotional truth is where God is. In our lament we will find God, and most assuredly we will know God more through an intransigent love that we cannot comprehend.
In Christian circles, and particularly for pastors and elders, there has been too much quashing of the emotions — our faith has become too cerebral. We are entire beings capable of experiences we cannot even unpack, such is the global mystery in and about us. See how fearfully and wonderfully made we are?
Spiritual
The spiritual dimensions in recovery can never be underestimated. We’re spiritual beings living in a spiritual world where there are many spiritual forces at play.
Spiritual warfare is real and we quickly realise when we’re under spiritual attack that we’re not dealing with flesh and blood but of evil schemes of powers and principalities in the demonic realm. Sound a bit kooky? To some it does, I know. But it’s real.
We do well to imagine narcissists don’t care because they know no other way, and they’re being used as instruments of wickedness and evil even though they too are made in the image of God. We must remember this.
The role of wise intercessors is important from the spiritual dimension. That people pray when and as they feel led. The best intercessors also have much gifting in wisdom and discernment — a compassionate spirit — and they’re committed to doing no harm.
Relational
The relational dimensions of healing are crucial. The empathy of those who believe our story overall, but who don’t take sides, because they know that that is not only pointless, but that it’s both inappropriate and incongruent with the goal to heal.
What is wrong will not be made more right by more words, but in support we can still listen and affirm so the pus from the wounds may seep free.
There is much healing in safe expression; in listening and empathising. We focus on the feelings without constantly pathologizing the situation that led to the trauma, but some allowance for this needs to be made, particularly early on. Sometimes it will feel like Groundhog Day, as the trauma spills forth again and again. There must be space, patience and grace for it. It can co-exist with a forward-looking narrative. Processes that allow for the forwards-backwards-forwards flow of a recovery journey are important.
There is also healing in having an accountability partner who can gently guide a redemptive repentance when trauma bleeds into impacting others. All situations are redeemable provided we’re humble enough to own our contribution to conflict. There is no punishment in repentance, only freedom.
We need those who can hold us in our pain, withhold judgment, and who urge us on toward hope for a purpose beyond the pain — how God will use it for divine glory, like in the theology of 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, when Paul talks about how we pass onto others the comfort we receive from God through others. This is usually what makes ministers out of us.
This is the redemptive purpose in suffering and it always offers hope if we can just ward against the folly of getting stuck down the salty marshes of resentment and bitterness of Ezekiel 47:11 and move on downstream to Ezekiel 47:12 where good fruit blossoms from within the healed heart and becomes apparent in the fruit of the Spirit.
Those who sit shivah with us in our traumatic grief are paraclete friends, indeed with wisdom that rubs off in tangible healing.
~
Recovery from abuse is a complex and necessarily slow process. Safe harbour is needed. A place where grace and the fruit of the Spirit abides. There is only growth when there is safety.
Photo by Yousef Espanioly on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment