Trauma Recovery
-
Some Things that have Helped Me in My Struggle with Anxiety
If you ever want to see who your true friends are, struggle through trauma therapy after being assaulted. Man. Real friends can BRING IT. Love. Anger. A text that actually makes you laugh out loud moments after you were just wondering if you’d ever laugh again. Prayer. Presence. Sure, an occasional link to a helpful article or sermon. Cards, books, and one friend in the last two years even sent a meal! (Big T!!) But really, the mark of love for me has simply been when people felt the awkwardness of what happened to me and then the REALLY awkward reality of my physical and emotional collapse—and they didn’t necessarily…
-
Peeling Back the Layers of our Complex Pain: Our past is important, but not determinative
Angry people are sometimes sinfully angry; and sometimes angry people are fearful people who have no idea how frightened (and frightening) they are. Avoidance of duties may be sinful laziness and sloth, but sometimes it can be genuine exhaustion that comes from our trying (consciously or unconsciously) to stomp down and avoid deep grief and pain. Some of us are sinfully proud and foolish re: receiving criticism; but some of us want to listen to criticism and want to be readily teachable and growing in wisdom, but the graceless criticism of today sometimes presses on a shaming memory with such ferocity that even we are shocked by how quickly and high we “jump” or “kick” emotionally in response. Like…
-
I couldn’t sort out my feelings, but now that I have, it’s too late …
“I couldn’t sort out my feelings, But now that I have, it’s too late. Right now, more than anything else, I wish that time could wait.” Earlier this weekend, I found this (poem? prose? sliver of a journal entry?) on a crumpled piece of notebook paper in my “I’ll get to it One Day or my kids will throw it all out for me one day when I am gone” area of my work space. Do you have an area like that? I used to PRIDE myself on NOT having an area “like that.” But then I woke up one morning and realized that all of the people I trusted…
- Avoiding Inadvertent Retraumatization, Child Protection / Abuse in the Church, Surviving a Childhood of Neglect and Abuse, Trauma Recovery
When Your Friend is Raped or Beaten
[A repost from enCourage] The very week that the #MeToo campaign began to dominate my social media relationships, a woman in my community told me that she was being physically hurt by a family member. Of course I immediately did everything I could to help her. But I also remember thinking at the time: Would most women in the church know how to wisely respond to a friend who is being physically and/or sexually assaulted? Having worked as a Christian mediator for over twenty years, and having taught thousands of women at conferences and retreats during that time, I have many examples of responses that make things worse, and of…
-
How NOT to Respond to a Friend Who Tells You She Has Been Assaulted
I am always honored to write for the PCA Women’s Blog, enCourage, and this post was hard–but no exception: When Your Friend Is Raped or Beaten We have a strict word count–so this article doesn’t have all of the biblical citations and encouraging quotes that I wanted to share. We also have a very limited length for a title–and this one was hard to do. What I really wanted to call it was: “Oh My Stars! Have You Ever Had Your Friend Tell You Something SO Hard and SO Painful for Her that You Were Momentarily Frozen??!! You know … you want to wrap your arms around her, but you’re not sure physical touch…
- Avoiding Inadvertent Retraumatization, Child Protection / Abuse in the Church, Redeeming Church Conflicts, Trauma Recovery
God has called us to look at our own shortcomings as pastors. He has allowed us to seek and receive forgiveness from those we have failed.
For every Christian family that has been attacked or abandoned by local church leaders … can you imagine what it would be like for your (heartbroken) children to hear these words from their former shepherd-overseers? For the pastor’s wife who saw her husband ripped apart by fellow ordained leaders? The traumatized woman retraumatized by the very men who had sworn before God to protect her … Listen to the balm in Gilead! See what fresh air, light, repentance, and LOVE do to the boiling caldron of acidic grief and pain that is the result of your wounding words, actions, and inactions. It’s not too late. You can face what you…
-
#MeToo Recent Survivors of Assault? It Gets Better.
Even on a normal day, I am not very active on social media, so “viral” things usually pass right by me, unnoticed. On Mondays, however? I am even LESS likely to notice something “out there” in the land of memes and hashtags, etc. because my Mondays are spent with a classroom full of teenagers discussing the topics that I assume you all know are easily the most favorites for teens: Philosophy of Theology, Epistemology, Worldview, and Apologetics. (If you think I’m kidding about how much teenagers love these topics, you are mistaken. Teenagers are natural philosophers! But back to my goal with this article …) Today I could not help but notice all of the…
-
Vandalizing Shalom
From one of my favorite books … C. Plantinga’s, Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be–A Breviary of Sin: “None of our lives is an accident. We have been called into existence, expected, awaited, equipped, and assigned. We have been called to undertake the stewardship of a good creation, to create sturdy and buoyant families that pulse with the glad give-and-take of the generations. By the sins of attack, we vandalize shalom. By the sins of flight we abandon it. We ‘hate the light and do not come to the light’ (John 3:20). [BUT!] Don’t forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it…
-
Trauma, Anxiety, and Hope
If we don’t interact in real life or on Facebook, you may be slightly concerned about me, since I am currently not blogging on a regular basis. Please don’t worry about me! 🙂 I am doing very well, but just busy writing for publication, preparing for my busy fall speaking season, and living real life. If you are in search of a few things to read, I highly recommend these two articles. The first one has stuck a particularly strong note with my Facebook followers—and, yes, with me. (As always, I am only recommending things that helped me. A lot.) Childhood Trauma Leads to Lifelong Chronic Illness: So why isn’t the medical community helping…
-
Turning and Facing the Specifics of My Assault. (A brief primer on trauma recovery and anniversary dates …)
Last Spring, when my trauma counselor first gave me a homework assignment that included me figuring out the exact date of my sexual assault last fall, I instinctively recoiled and said, “No way!” I was in counseling to get over this terrible thing that happened to me. I didn’t want to focus on it. But, of course, my very wise and experienced counselor knew far more than I did about how God has created by our bodies and souls, and specifically how the physiological and emotional responses to trauma often intermix and follow certain patterns. For example, many trauma survivors experience increasing distress around anniversary dates and other exposures to specific numbers tied…