Entry 3: Toward Wholeness
Wholeness
Putting the pieces back together again, this time with Love.
Do you sometimes feel you are just trying to get by, push forward, and put on a smile?
Sometimes it may feel like you don’t have the time in your busy schedule to sit in stillness with God, you know to tell Him really how you are truly feeling. Maybe you don't yet have a deep 2-way conversational relationship with God, or any human being you truly trust.
In the book Safe People, written by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend, two Christian therapists, they share that isolation is a common trait among people who have not been properly seen and heard by their primary caregivers while growing up. Often times people who have never been properly emotionally attuned with suffer from depression because their authentic expressions were never safely held with care and attention.
That is why one of the most important things that I focus on with my clients is coming out of emotional numbness, and into vulnerable EXPRESSION.
Coming back into Wholeness happens naturally when we are able to access and feel our emotions, and then share with God or another human being who is equip to skillfully listen without advice, judgment, fixing or rescuing. The important thing is that we feel safe to express ourselves, and that we also know how to effectively express ourselves. If you grew up in a home where effective expression and listening was absent, you may find that being in connection for long periods of time is quite hard, and exhausting. But you can learn how to connect. It is never too late!
Some examples illustrating how relational breakdown happens include:
Abandonment - Some people are left emotionally by a significant person. This may be a parent, a spouse or a friend. The important thing is that you have to be attached to be abandoned. That is, you had the person close to your heart for a period of time, and they mattered to you. Then, for various reasons, the person leaves. This can be physical abandonment, and it can also be emotional abandonment, when someone simply removes the emotional connection and support. Whatever the situation, this creates a brokenheartedness and where there is no comfort or connection to be found a sense of abandonment results.
Inconsistent Attachment - Some people are loved in an unpredictable manner. If someone in your life was a rollercoaster and up and down quite a bit, it may have been either feast for famine, and you never knew what to expect. It is also common to experience inconsistent attachment when a primary caregiver or friend or spouse is sometimes close and then not at all engaged for periods of time. This is an example of inconsistent attachment and it causes relational breakdown.
Attack - Some people are out to deliberately hurt. There are many reasons this may occur, and when it does happen to you, you may have someone in your life who criticized or even abused you for having the need for love and connection. Some people, projecting their self-hatred on others, have a deep contempt for the needy because they can project their own neediness onto others and make them feel badly about their needs. These people are most likely suffering themselves from their own unhealed trauma and this has opened doors for demonic oppression and/or possession.
Self-Sufficiency - Some people avoid relationships all together, or limit the amount of time they spend with significant others because in order to protect themselves in childhood from an unhealthy caregiver, they had to become relationally self-sufficient. The problem with relational self-sufficiency is that this person operates in his/her own world. He/she runs his emotional affairs like a one-sided business or transaction and the emotional philosophy might be something like: “I take care of my own problems” or “I don’t burden others with my problems” or “I can handle my problems myself, thank you” or “I am fine, really” or “No really, I am fine…”
WHAT IS WRONG HERE? God does not create us to be relationally self-sufficient. God loves us to need one another and He teaches us that our needs are healthy, and that relational self-sufficiency is a product of the Fall… in the Garden of Eden.
Coming out of these patterns or healing from relationships where these traits were exhibited is a process and a journey. If you identify with any of these patterns, know that you can be healed from these coping mechanisms and from these relational dynamics. Coming out of these patterns requires honesty, vulnerability and confessing that you need support. Admitting that you need help. Confessing you need help is to finally tell the truth, and to surrender to the fact that you do need people, and you do need God to help you. As you confess this problem to safe people, a wonderful miracle happens over time. Self-sufficiency will melt and give way to need. And your vulnerable and honest expressions will eventually bring people into your life who really want to be there for you, in healthy and loving ways.
You are safe to let the love God has provided for you, in. God wants to melt the cold, hard ice of your self-sufficiency, abandonment, attack, and inconsistent attachments.
When our inner hurts can be fully seen and heard by a loving ear and a servants heart, a return to wholeness happens over time.
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So, When the storm is raging…
When the hope is gone…
When the pressure is on…
And you don’t know where to go…
Who to turn to…
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You may need a little extra support during these times. If you haven’t found your voice to express the pain, that’s what I offer as a primary
path to arriving at wholeness, putting the pieces back together with love, care and skillful connection. Inner Healing blossoms Wholeness, which is built through every emotion coming up and out of silence.
A QUOTE FROM ‘SAFE PEOPLE’
“Our hearts aren’t all that strong. God has constructed us with certain needs and certain limitations.
Our most basic and primary need is to be loved by God and people.
We can put that need off, we can meet it in crazy ways, and we can try not to feel it,
but it’s simply a spiritual reality.
Paul illustrated that need well when he wrote,
“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’
And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ (1 Corinthians 12:21).
SCRIPTURE TO SUPPORT
I looked for sympathy, but there was non, for comforters, but I found none.
(The aching heart simply turns itself off)
Psalm 69:20
In John 13:34-35, Jesus said to His disciples:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another;
as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
By this all will know that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another.
The best relationships are those that are filled with Christian love.