Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Healing

Proactively Pull Triggers to Prevent Pushing Buttons

Proactively Pull Triggers to Prevent Pushing Buttons

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Reading time: 3 minutes

I have been triggered. You pushed my buttons.

Why are you angry so often? Stop doing things that make me angry.

How often do you hear or say these phrases? Being triggered has the idea of releasing a trap. Unresolved emotional wounds are like a set trip wire. When someone stumbles across the wire, it creates an unpleasant chain reaction.

After becoming triggered, some people spiral inward. They become deeply discouraged. Others spiral outward. They attack whoever is closest to them. The Bible has some helpful alternatives.

Be Responsible for your Triggers

Whether a person accidentally or on purpose trips your trigger, you are fully responsible for your behaviors. In the moment, it might seem like the other person is responsible. After all, everything was fine until they came along. But the condition of your heart is your responsibility. God wants each of us to accept responsibility and work toward becoming more confident in who we are.

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:5 ESV

The more confidence people have, the less they depend on others for happiness. Or, put another way: the more people depend on God for happiness, the more confident they will be, no matter how others behave.

Most people don’t set traps for other people. But just by existing, we have vulnerabilities that can result in strong reactions for even small offenses. Being triggered means that a weakness has been exposed. When it happens spontaneously, it can catch a person off guard. This can result in a swift protective cover-up.

No one likes to feel ashamed. Shame is a feeling resulting from a belief that you are defective and there is no cure.

Instead of waiting for someone to come along and step on your toes, why not proactively take care of your emotional wounds? Some vulnerability is good, allowing people to be close to other people and God. But other vulnerabilities can make you an easy target. You can take steps to disarm your triggers by becoming increasingly aware of your weaknesses.

Be Aware of Others’ Buttons

No one is perfect. Most people are doing the best they can, not trying to intentionally lay a trap for you. Even so, stumbling into someone else’s ignorance, sin, or foolishness probably will not be a pleasant experience. Know your limitations, but also be aware of others’ limits. Just because something isn’t your fault, doesn’t mean it won’t be excruciatingly painful or difficult.

It is safer to meet a bear robbed of her cubs
    than to confront a fool caught in foolishness.

Proverbs 17:12 NLT

Even when people are trying their best, they can make a mess of things. You can be involved, but you should be prepared to manage the consequences of your involvement.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:1-2 ESV

The problem may originate with someone else, but it can quickly become your problem too. The more you are capable of letting go of the offense, the more you will keep yourself free from the trap.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8 ESV

No one owes you anything, at least not in any way that you can practically enforce it. Anything good we have is ultimately a gift from God. No matter how you become hurt, whether by your sin or another’s, only God has the power to heal you.

Read more about triggers.
What does 1 Peter 4:8 mean?
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Remember Your Past For A Healthy Present

Remember Your Past For A Healthy Present

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Reading time: 3 minutes

How does remembering your past help you today? Think of re-membering as bringing scattered parts of your life together. It’s like gathering the parts of a jigsaw puzzle and assembling them together where they belong.

God wants you to see the whole picture of who you are. Have you ever worked on a puzzle only to get to the end and realize some pieces are missing? It’s frustrating because it feels so incomplete.

I’m fascinated by my past. I’m not thinking of historical facts. I mean my psychological and emotional journey. Memories are important because they are the key to setting a person free from being trapped in the past.

You can’t change what has happened to you but you can change its meaning. You decided how much a particular memory has the power to define who you are. They answer the question: How did I get to where I am today?

How you first experience something has long-lasting implications. Your journey is, in many ways, a series of first-time experiences. To put the pieces of your life together, you must revisit your first-time experiences to create follow-on experiences. Healing can be both strengthening the positive memories and weakening the negative ones.

Questions to Help You Remember

Your relationship with your childhood memories can tell you a lot about yourself. Here are some questions you can use to explore your emotional health:

  • How do you feel about your childhood?
  • Do you feel like you are still a child?
  • Do you feel like you are stuck in your childhood?
  • Do you feel extremely distant from childhood, almost like it was another lifetime?
  • Does childhood feel real to you or more like a fantasy?
  • Does childhood seem unimportant or highly relevant to you?
  • Do you remember a lot or a little?
  • How much was childhood the same or different every day?
  • What positive memories come to mind?
  • What negative memories come to mind?

Did you skim through these questions or pause on each one and give a real, in-depth answer? Are you willing to embrace your childhood or do you think you’d be happier if you never thought about it again?

Even if you considered only one of the questions, you’ve got a taste of what it’s like to move toward emotional health. You dipped your toe in the water. If you considered more than one, you might feel overwhelmed as you swim in a pool of emotional memories.

As I said, memories are fascinating. They aren’t part of who you are. Yet, in another way, they are part of you. You’re not five years old anymore. But you might feel five years old sometimes.

Remember the Past, Compare it with the Present, and Plan the Future

Here are a few more questions for you to consider: In what ways do you feel the same, today, as you did when you were a young child? In what ways are you the same? In what ways are you different?

Life can lead you away from being in touch with who you are. The pressures, demands, and trauma open a chasm between your performance and who you are. It’s possible to become so familiar with present-day performance (life responsibilities) that you forget what it’s like to enjoy life on your own terms.

Here are three more questions that should help you “pull yourself together.” What day would you most like to relive? What makes life worth living today? Now, what new day do you imagine you would like to live in the near future?

In answering all these questions, look for two things. First, look for any infections: emotional wounds that haven’t fully healed. Second, look for peak experiences: emotional highs that give you energy.

If you’d like more practice at developing follow-on experiences, then you should try a book from my Journal Your Way series.

More about the benefits of exploring your past.
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Last updated 2022/12/11

Transform Fake Happiness Into Genuine Joy

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Reading time: 3 minutes

You can only be conscious of a few things at any one time. But there are many thoughts and feelings that live beneath the surface. The important ones will attempt to surface, especially the negative and painful ones. Chances are, you’re not excited about allowing them to surface. That’s why you might choose fake happiness instead of genuine joy.

To explain the problems with this situation, I like to use the analogy of a child and a parent. The child wants to express the pain and be comforted. The rational-focused parent says, “not now, I’m busy.” There is definitely a need for the rational parent, because most of the time, it’s not practical or healthy to let a complaining child have full control.

However, “not now” can easily become “never.” It’s easy to procrastinate when uncomfortable feelings are pushing their way to the surface. A balance is needed. The head (the parent) should remain in control, but the head should provide the needed time for the heart (the child) to share its concerns.

Without time to express feelings, a person will become more and more compartmentalized. A small to moderate amount of compartmentalization is helpful when it’s time to be a responsible adult. But the deeper a memory is buried with passing time, the easier it becomes to believe the memory isn’t a part of the real you. And, that’s a dangerous position to be in.

Your personal history shouldn’t be erased because doing so will increase the likelihood of repeating your mistakes. If you can’t remember what you already tried, including how it turned out, you may be doomed to repeat history. Instead, there is another option: transform your personal history through healing and forgiveness.

Everything that happens to you provides an opportunity for you to identify and understand who you are. If you attempt to ignore your memories, you will lose a part of yourself in the process. Every time this happens, you become a little less authentic. That is because buried negative experiences continue to leak lies into your self-image. They poison your self-worth. To heal you must bring the truth in contact with your experiences.

If your primary goal is to be happy, then you might choose to ignore unhappy thoughts and feelings. But this will only lead to the need to invest increased amounts of energy to keep up the appearance of being happy. You’ll have to fake it, and, unless something else changes, there’s no way to “fake it until you make it.” You can’t fake your way into genuine joy.

When you fake your happiness around other people, you’ll likely suffer greater depression when you are once again alone. The size of your problem hasn’t necessarily grown. But you will experience it as more painful because you haven’t been able to share your true feelings with another person.

Happiness will endure so long as your circumstances are positive. The minute you experience a setback, your negative feelings will attempt to surface. However, when you learn how to work through difficult feelings, you learn how to maintain joy regardless of your circumstances.

Compartmentalization is an avoidance technique. It produces an immediate strength to get you through the moment, but left in place, it results in permanent weakness. It’s similar to accepting a numbing agent when you have surgery or dental work. You miss out on the sharp pain while you correct the problem. But it would be dangerous to your health to remain numb forever. Likewise, if fixing the problem is too easy, you might let yourself fall into the same trap again.

As you feel pain in life, try to remain aware of it. Include God in your awareness. You can bring the “child” to the “parent” for true healing. In order to grow stronger and healthier, you must give God access to the weakest, most vulnerable parts of yourself.

If you want to become joyful, make time to be completely honest about how you feel about what has happened in your life. Ask God to help you see the truth.

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Is Your Forgiveness Incomplete?

Forgiveness

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Reading time: 3 minutes

What is Forgiveness Good For?

Forgiveness is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. It heals conflict within people, between people, and between people and God. Forgiveness removes bitterness, a cancerous blockage that infects and destroys people and relationships. Forgiveness and healing go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

Failure to forgive is often the main obstacle to moving forward in freedom. “Forgive” can be broken down into “give for”. God gives to us, we give to others, and others give to us.

What Forgiveness Is

  • Being aware of what someone has done and still forgiving them (to cancel a debt you have to know the fullness of the damage)
  • Choosing to keep no records of wrong (the debt has to die and not be resurrected later)
  • Refusing to punish (punishing creates more hurt and usually can’t bring back what you lost)
  • Relinquishing any debt (no longer expecting repaying)
  • Not telling what they did (not gossiping)
  • Being merciful (because God is merciful)
  • Absence of bitterness (this only denies that God cares about you)
  • Looking to God to make things right by bringing healing and making repayment as He sees fit

What Forgiveness is Not

  • Approval of what was done to you (it is possible to cancel a debt and still see the truth of its wrongness)
  • Excusing what they did (this only minimizes it)
  • Justifying what they did (this only minimizes it)
  • Pardoning what they did (this is a counterfeit because the hurt is not really confronted)
  • Reconciliation of the relationship (forgiveness enables this, but does not guarantee it)
  • Denying what they did (essentially the same as pardoning)
  • Forgetting (it is possible to remember but not be bitter if you have truly experienced healing)
  • Refusing to take the wrong seriously (this is minimizing it)
  • Pretending you are not hurt (this is not honest)

Reflections on Forgiveness

He who cannot forgive another breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.
– George Herbert

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
– C.S. Lewis

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
– Leo Tolstoy

The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart.
– John Welwood

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
– Dr. Robert Anthony

Nothing is easy to the unwilling.
– Thomas Fuller

Resources on Forgiveness

Book – Total Forgiveness by R.T. Kendall
– provides a comprehensive explanation of what forgiveness is and what it is not

Book – What’s So Amazing About Grace by Phillip Yancy
– provides a compelling case for no strings attached forgiveness

Prayer
Heavenly Father, I choose as an act of my will to forgive [person]. I forgive [person] for [list of specific offenses]. I release [person]. I ask you to forgive [person] for all these things as well and that you do not hold these things against [person] on my account.

Heavenly Father, I ask you to forgive me for holding unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, etc., in my heart towards [person]. I receive your forgiveness and cleansing of my heart from all unrighteousness.

Heavenly Father, forgive me for holding resentment towards you and for allowing these hurts to happen to me. If I have any more negative feelings stored up in me towards [person], I ask you to cleanse them from me now. I open myself to replace these negative emotions with the fruit of your Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience…)

Heavenly Father, I ask you now to heal the wounded places in my soul. Heal every memory of those offenses so I can look back on them, realistically accepting they were hurtful, and trusting you have healed the hurt. Enable me to use this experience to help others with whom I come into contact.

Heavenly Father, bless [person] with your abundant mercy. Prosper [person] in every way. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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Last updated 2022/11/20

3 Signs Of A Healthy Emotional Life

3 Signs Of A Healthy Emotional Life

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Reading time: 4 minutes

No one likes to feel pain but facing pain is the only way to a healthy emotional life. Everyone has some uncomfortable memories. It’s never fun to remember them, but it is rewarding. Those who don’t face them leave a minefield of suffering waiting to be triggered.

Here are three ways you can know you are emotionally healthy.

Healthy Sign #1: You Can Recall Memories From Various Ages

If you feel fine today, but don’t want to revisit memories because they are too painful, you aren’t as emotionally healthy as you could be.

I believe Jesus has access to all of His life experiences, including His years growing up as a child. God doesn’t forget anything (except perhaps our sin when He forgives). An emotionally healthy person can easily access important memories and can review them for encouragement. Even painfully traumatic memories, once healed, become a source of encouragement.

At any given moment you might want to gain encouragement from a memory that is related to what you are presently going through. It’s important that you have many such memories, even if they were nasty and are healed today, rather than only a minefield of pain.

The healing process involves scanning through your life to find the mines, disarm them, and plant something better like a tree. The more healing you have, the more you can look back and see a forest of encouragement. Even though the trees are from different times, you can see them as one forest–a place where you’d want to take a hike.

Healthy Sign #2: God is More Important than Anything or Anyone Else

If you value your job, parent, friend, spouse, pet, or anything else more than God, you aren’t as emotionally healthy as you could be.

The healthy person trusts God with their life. If you can’t trust God, you aren’t as emotionally healthy as you could be. Trauma can result in feeling betrayed by God. Why didn’t God prevent this horrible thing from happening?

Trusting others more than God is a sign of priorities being out of order. If you lose something you value more than God, it can create a barrier between you and God. In this case, you’ll be angry at God because He allowed you to lose.

But, there are some things you can never lose, if you can keep your trust (your faith) in God. When you trust God, life doesn’t have to be fair or even make sense for you to feel at peace. You’ll be at peace if you can let God do the heavy lifting regarding your quality of life.

God has a purpose for your life. It works out better if you can let Him evaluate your life. You can do the best you know how, but it’s up to God to use your efforts for His purposes.

Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.

Philip replied, “Even if we worked for months, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed them!”

Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. “There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?”

“Tell everyone to sit down,” Jesus said. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. (The men alone numbered about 5,000.) Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish. And they all ate as much as they wanted.

John 6:5-11 NLT

God already knows what He is going to do with your life.

Healthy Sign #3: You Know Who You Are

If you have to ask your spouse, ‘What’s my favorite _________?’, you aren’t as emotionally healthy as you could be.

To be healthy, you must know yourself. What opinions do you have? What do you like? What do you dislike?

To be healthy, you must be able to stand on your own, even when others seem to be against you. This has to include people who are supposed to be on your side. Sometimes, due to their own weakness, people will fail you.

But if you’ve done the work to heal and you’ve made God most important and you trust Him, you will survive the criticism, betrayal, and nastiness. Jesus did. So you can too.

Read more about trust.
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How To Live Worry Free

How to Live Worry Free

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Worry is an automatic behavior for many people. It’s an attempt to control something that cannot be controlled. Therefore, the more you worry, the more frustrated you’ll become.

There is plenty in life that happens against our wills, so there is plenty of opportunity to worry. In our wisdom, we don’t know what to try to prevent and what to allow. But God has perfect wisdom.

If worry is a behavior then it is also a choice. When a person is accustomed to worrying it might feel involuntary. That can happen when the belief system that allows worry is buried out of awareness.

Anxious worrying involves fear. What is worrying you? Is it more physical like health (fear of suffering) or finances (fear of powerlessness)? Maybe it is more personal like your worth (fear of rejection). Whatever it is, the underlying belief system has something to do with trust.

Ridding yourself of worry requires trusting God with the parts of life out of your control. The more you focus (without considering God) on what you can’t control, the more anxious you’ll become. The more you live in fear, the more discouraged you’ll become.

Encouragement is the Antidote to Worry

Anxious fear brings depression,
but a life-giving word of encouragement
can do wonders to restore joy to the heart.

Proverbs 12:25 TPT

The only way to live worry-free is to give up your attempts to control the outcomes of your life. This doesn’t mean giving up on trying to make a positive difference in this life. You can love God with everything you have, but still accept that this life rarely goes exactly how you want it to.

There’s always a greater reality beyond what you see immediately in front of you. Encouraging words never need to be empty promises. Whatever is encouraging must be based on a promise of God. Evil may appear to be winning during this life. Evil might look like it has defeated good, but God always has the final word. His voice brings victory.

The horse is made ready for the day of battle,
    but victory rests with the Lord.

Proverbs 21:31 NIV

Maybe you are caught up in fear. Maybe you aren’t allowing a life-giving word of encouragement to reach your heart. Maybe then you are putting too much hope into your own efforts. We can (and should) prepare for battle, but it is only because of God that we can win.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:56-57 NIV

Living intentionally by telling God you want to be more hopeful. Agree that you want to open your heart to encouragement. Imagine God encouraging you. Which of the following would be most life-giving to you?

  • You are unconditionally loved.
  • You are safe and secure.
  • You are wanted in a relationship with me.
  • You are significant and valued.
  • You have a place in my kingdom-house.

Fortunately for us believers, all of the above are true. Then why don’t they often feel true?

Discouraging Wounds are Real, But God’s Encouraging Words are More Real

None of those statements require that your circumstances are always pleasant or desirable. They are spiritual truths more than they are facts fulfilled by this current life. Spiritual truths last forever; circumstances are temporary. Don’t confuse the two. When you believe your circumstances are forever and the truth is temporary, you will understandably be afraid. So if you’re struggling, ask yourself which way you’re believing.

Spiritual truths remain true, even when they don’t feel true. Who you are (all the good that God made you to be) remains true, even when you don’t feel good about yourself.

When terrible, painful things happen, we are supposed to feel sad, but not discouraged forever. If you lose a loved one, develop a serious medical condition, or face humiliating rejection, you will feel it, and you should.

No doubt that life circumstances can be obstacles to faith. No doubt there is plenty to be sad about. Just not sad forever. The reality of who God is brings joy to the heart.

Wounds are real, but what God has to say counts infinitely more. Open your heart to life-giving encouragement.

For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.

1 John 5:4 NLT

Read more about trusting God.
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Last updated 2022/11/06