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Recover From Trauma-Induced Dissociation

Recover From Trauma-Induced Dissociation

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Trauma can result from an experience that is too powerful to handle within too little time. Dissociation might be the only way to cope when a bomb goes off in your life. To create a different outcome, you can decrease the intensity by decreasing the power or increasing the time you have to endure it.

You can reinterpret the meaning of the trauma (to lower its power) or you can manage its effects over time. This is essentially what happens in therapy to recover from traumatic events.

Why Do People Resort to Dissociation?

What can you do if it rains 10 inches in your backyard overnight? How do you drain a lake? One bucket at a time. But what do you do with the water until you have the resources to deal with the problem?

Each of us has a limited ability to manage an overwhelming event. Let’s say that your capacity is like a 32oz cup. That might seem like a big cup. It can hold enough for you to survive one day.

A manageable event might fill your cup. Someone might pour you a glass of water. You tell them when to stop filling your cup and they listen. Perfect.

A traumatic event could be like someone dumping an Olympic swimming pool of water into your cup or, even a gallon every day for years. Where does it all go? It’s going to flood you with so much water that you won’t be able to cope. Or, the only way to cope will be to store the water until you can drink it.

Most of us don’t have the space for that much water. But our brains have the capacity to alter reality (hopefully temporarily) to pretend (deny that) the water (the trauma) isn’t there. Most of the time this ability, dissociation, is an involuntary response much like closing your eyes when an object moves toward you too quickly. This ability does have its limits. Stretch it too far and it can lead to more serious complications–it becomes increasingly difficult, though never impossible, to return to normal.

The more dissociated you are, the weaker your connections are to your memories and feelings. To be dissociated is to be numb or oblivious. As you probably realize, being numb can be beneficial if the pain has no purpose. For example, it’s easier to have a cavity removed without feeling the drilling. But what would happen if you didn’t know you had a cavity in the first place because you couldn’t feel the discomfort? In this case, being numb would be a liability.

How to Recover from Dissociation

Just as novocaine is meant to temporarily numb, dissociation is also only meant to be a temporary fix. After you’ve experienced a trauma, you should begin the work to deal with it as soon as possible.

To address dissociation, you reconnect what became disconnected. For example, if you are vacuuming and move too far away from the electrical outlet, the plug will disconnect and the vacuum will lose power. That could be desirable if lightning strikes your electrical system, creating a surge. To restore power, you must reconnect the vacuum to the outlet. To use the vacuum at a greater distance, you must add an extension cord to bridge the gap.

Likewise, to recover from dissociation, you create a bridge between present-day awareness and past events you have forgotten. If you only focus on today, you won’t be able to reclaim your lost memories and therefore, you won’t be able to heal. Yet, if you become too focused on the traumatic memories, you can become isolated from the truth you’ve come to know today. Both options are ineffective.

Instead, to optimize the healing process, attempt to form a bridge by keeping one foot in the present and one foot in the past. You can be aware of who you are today and at the same time, focus on remembering, feeling, and reinterpreting what you’ve been through.

This bridge allows God’s comfort to flow from this moment back into your painful experience. In this way, you can recover from day-old trauma or even decade-old trauma.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 ESV

Are you becoming aware of any lakes in your backyard or power surges you’ve been through? You will feel better as you clean up the mess and restore power to your life. Seek a professional counselor to guide you through the recovery process.

Read more about healing brokenness.
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Eliminate Shame By Believing God

Eliminate Shame By Believing God

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Shame is inevitable, but where does it come from? Why do we experience it? How can we overcome it?

When Adam and Eve first chose to disobey God, they believed the enemy’s words over God’s words. After they doubted God, they gained the “knowledge of good and evil” but felt shame for the first time. They gained knowledge but lost their secure connection with God.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:1-5 NIV

Knowing evil isn’t an advantage. That’s like knowing darkness. That’s like knowing the pains of torture.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Genesis 3:6-8 NIV

We Knew Shame on Day One

Shame exists because we are born feeling inadequate. Fortunately, God is at work to bring healing to us.

Every day of life is an opportunity to experience a positive reinforcement of your worth. You need to be validated, accepted, wanted, affirmed, and encouraged. This kind of love must come from a source outside of you. Even when others love you, the origin of that love is God.

Unfortunately, because of sin and the curse on this world, every day of life also holds the possibility of negatively reinforcing the feelings of inadequacy. You can make mistakes and even sin. You can fail to accomplish an important task or desired goal. You must find a way to cope with imperfection, defeat, rejection, and isolation.

In a negative environment, the devil’s lies multiply easily. Without faith, developing self-hatred is inevitable.

Shame Drives Us to Regret Being Created

Shame creates an impulse to hide. It’s humiliating to feel less than others. The desire to cover up is way more intense than you’d find in a game of hide-and-seek. The desire to hide is better described as wishing you could totally scrub yourself out of existence.

You can scrub a carrot clean. You can even peel it to remove the outer dirt. But if you believe there is something wrong with it and keep removing parts of it, hoping to find the defect, eventually you’ll have nothing left. The carrot is a carrot through and through. You are who you are supposed to be after God has cleaned you on the outside and inside.

As you can see, I like using analogies. I use them while I am providing counseling to help people understand what is going on with them in a much deeper way. Here is my analogy for shame: ‘Shame’ is to ‘believing God’ as ‘darkness’ is to ‘light.’ Darkness is not a self-sustaining powerful force. It’s better defined as the absence of light. Likewise, shame has no power over you as long as you have the faith to believe what God says about you.

You will only feel bad about yourself to the degree you can’t trust God. To the degree that you trust God, you also gain healthier self-worth. Meditate on this and start your journey to overcome shame today.

Read more about shame: Shame Is A Universal Struggle
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Shame Is A Universal Struggle

Shame Is A Universal Struggle

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Shame is a feeling that everyone has to contend with. It’s universally inescapable. You might think that shame is spread from person to person like a disease. Actually, all of us are born with the inevitability to feel shame.

Shame is there, buried deep within us. It’s buried because we’d rather not feel it. It’d deep because it’s been with us from day one. On our best days, we can keep our heads above the water. At times we don’t feel it, but other times we are completely immersed, terrified of drowning in it. This sense of defectiveness infects a person to their core.

Many people confuse guilt and shame, so let’s look at both so you can work on experiencing more freedom.

Guilt is Feeling a Failure of Doing

If you feel bad because of something you did or didn’t do, then you are feeling guilty. There is also “true” guilt and “false” guilt. If there is nothing wrong with what you did, but you feel guilty anyway, that’s false guilt.

If you have done something wrong, God would have you feel a conviction that drives you to repentance and to seek forgiveness from Him. Conviction is different than guilt. Conviction points to a positive restoration. Guilt points to a negative condemnation.

For the Christian who trusts in Jesus’s sacrifice, guilt is no longer necessary. The law’s purpose is to increase awareness of sin, but the law cannot save you from guilt. Sacrifices were only a temporary measure that could not permanently remove guilt.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

Romans 3:19-20 NIV

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.

Hebrews 10:1-2 NIV

But Jesus’s sacrifice has the power to remove guilt forever. God intends that you believe the following about yourself:

  • you have already been made perfect
  • you are in the process of being made holy
  • you are forgiven once and for all, so that no further sacrifice is necessary
  • you are cleansed from a guilty conscience
  • you can have full assurance of all this by faith

For by one sacrifice [Jesus] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

And where [sins] have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

…let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.

Hebrews 10:14, 18, 22 NIV

Shame is Feeling a Failure of Being

If guilt isn’t enough then there is also shame: that sickening feeling that results simply from existing. Shame results not from what you’ve done, but from how you feel about being you. The context of shame is always other people, how they must view you. Someone feeling shame desperately wants what is impossible: to remove and discard more of who they are.

When Adam and Eve were “naked and felt no shame,” this means they felt no embarrassment for who they were and what they desired (Genesis 2:25). They accepted how God made them without any concern.

Consider who you are and what you feel ashamed of about yourself. That part of you that you believe is defective, dirty, incompetent, unwanted, inadequate, or bad is what God says is good. He made you the way you are on purpose. After your sin is removed (which has already been done) all that remains is everything you are supposed to be.

I pray you are able to rest more and more in this truth that you are loved and accepted.

Steps to Overcoming Shame.
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Live As A Free Person

Live As A Free Person

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Do you live more like a free person or a slave? A free person lives without the burden of guilt and shame. Guilt is like a ball and chain. It slows you down and in some cases, it might completely immobilize you. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus died so you can be free of these horrible burdens.

God introduced the Gospel to us 430 years before He introduced the law (Galatians 3:8, 17). It’s the law that tells us we are guilty (Romans 3:20). The Gospel is based on the promise God gave to Abraham and Abraham’s response in faith. This established the means of salvation well before we even knew about the law.

Faith in God’s Promise Equals Freedom

Salvation is activated by faith (believing God honored His promise in Jesus Christ), not by works (self-righteous acts that attempt to fulfill the law). When you want to know if you are an heir to God’s promise, you only need to verify that you take God’s word (His promise) as the truth. If you believe it, then you are a child of God: a new creation with a spiritual connection to God.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Galatians 3:26-29 NIV

Anyone can activate their salvation, if they can believe. God does not discriminate between His creation in any other way. It doesn’t make a difference if you are a Jew or you are a Gentile, a slave or free, a male or female, you can gain access to God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Once you have this access by faith, you must continue to maintain the access by faith. God’s way liberates you from the burden of fulfilling the law through your own effort. Paul encourages those of us whom Christ has set free to never return to the old ways.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1 NIV

In fact, because of what Christ has done for us, attempting to follow the law is always a wasted effort. Anyone who attempts to achieve salvation through works must fulfill the entire law (Galatians 5:3). Our effort or lack of effort counts for nothing.

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.

Galatians 6:6, 6:15 NIV

Being a New Creation Equal Freedom

Are you a new creation? This is the same as asking if you have been born again. Have you experienced a spiritual rebirth (John 3)? If so, you have been set free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). You are no longer a slave; you are a child of God (son or daughter).

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

John 8:34-36 NIV

Reach John 8:31-47. Jesus makes a clear distinction between those who belong to Him and those who don’t know Him. What burdens are you carrying that you no longer need to carry? Set them down. You are free.

Read more about freedom by interpreting the Bible correctly.
Read more about gaining freedom by knowing God.
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Rejection Is Like A Painful Death

Rejection Is Like A Painful Death

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What has been your experience with rejection? I see it as the most painful experience. But God has overcome it with the power of His acceptance.

I recently watched the movie, Saving Private Ryan, again. In one scene a German and American soldier are wrestling for survival. The American pulls out a knife, but the German manages to use the knife against him. The American pushes against the German’s arm to prevent the knife from cutting into his chest, but slowly the knife moves deeper until the American dies.

In managing pain, it’s usually easier to face and get it over with quickly. A slow and painful death is bad enough. To face the humiliation of defeat and also endure excruciating torment is the worst. But isn’t this is exactly what Jesus faced on the cross? He was without personal guilt, but in carrying the weight of sin, He must have experienced the shame of our guilt.

“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

1 Peter 2:24 NIV

To die at the hands of another person is a physical rejection. To wither away because of another person’s critical words is an emotional rejection.

Rejection Is a Lie From the Devil

The devil wants you to feel cut off from God. He doesn’t have the ability to sever your connection with God. The best he can do is deceive you into believing God has rejected you.

When you experience emotional rejection, there is nothing true about it. It’s not valid. If you struggle with self-doubt, you become susceptible to believing the lie is valid. You might feel horrible as if it were true. This happens when you focus on the negatives rather than on God. It often leads to God-doubt such as, “God doesn’t love me” or “I’m too defective for God to love me.”

Jesus’s sacrifice saves you from destruction. He rescued you from the darkness–including its lies and shame.

For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.

Colossians 1:13-14 NLT

Because of this, no matter what you’ve done, you do not have to endure any shameful rejection. Don’t do that to yourself. You can graciously accept God’s discipline but you can reject the devil’s rejection.

God Accepts You as a Friend

Do you realize that God is for you? Because of Jesus’s death, you are blameless and without a single fault.

This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News.

Colossians 1:21-23 NLT

Because God has removed your sin and guilt, you have His complete acceptance. Others may reject you, but God will not reject you any longer. God wants you to cling to this truth. You are a member of His family. You are God’s friend.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

John 15:15 ESV

To fully heal from rejection, you must not avoid it. Only by feeling it can you realize how false it is. The process involves staring down the lie until it is no more. Facing the lie with the truth weakens it. Even though it can be absurdly painful, the lie will die, leaving you with freedom because of Christ.

Take some time to remember when you have felt most rejected. Allow the truth of God’s acceptance to wash away the lie.

Read more about overcoming discouragement.
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Overcome The Lies You Believe

Overcome The Lies You Believe

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Whether you realize it or not, you believe some lies about yourself. No one has perfect self-worth.

Where do these lies come from? They are like seeds sown for destruction. The more they take root in your heart, the more life will be a struggle for you. Just like if you want a fruitful garden, you must pull the weeds in your heart.

Experiences Promote Truth and Lies

Every life event you experience communicates some degree of truth and some degree of falsehood. For example, any interaction you have with Jesus or the Bible will always communicate 100% truth. And any interaction you have with the devil will always communicate 100% lies. When Jesus spoke to non-believers, He addressed them as “children of the devil.”

For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.

John 8:44 NLT

If everything ever spoken was always all truth or all lies, it would be easier to sort out fact from fiction. But people speak with words and actions that fall somewhere between 0 and 100% truth. So it falls to the recipients to sort through all their experiences to find and savor the truth and discard the rest.

Interpretations Promote Truth and Lies

Discerning between truth and falsehood is an invaluable skill. Unfortunately, it is not foolproof. It’s possible to interpret a true experience as false or a false experience as true. This sets up four possible outcomes for every experience:

  1. You believe the lie: the devil intends to harm you by being deceitful and you take it as if it were truth.
  2. You disbelieve the lie: you see through the devil’s deceit, and refute it for the lie that it is.
  3. You believe the truth: you experience love, accept it, and allow it to strengthen your self-worth.
  4. You disbelieve the truth: you doubt your positive experience, reject it, and prefer your low self-esteem.

Trusting Everyone Isn’t the Answer

Overly trusting, optimistic, or gullible people lean toward believing everything. These verses show that we shouldn’t trust everyone.

Don’t be stupid
    and believe all you hear;
    be smart and know
    where you are headed.

Proverbs 14:15 CEV

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8 ESV

Mistrusting Everyone Isn’t the Answer

Overly mistrusting, pessimistic, or paranoid people lean toward disbelieving everything. They throw the baby out with the bathwater. Or rather, they throw God out because of the hypocrites.

God is the only person you can trust 100%. Even then, God asks us to trust Him beyond any scientific proof. Sometimes the truth is harder to believe than the lie. That’s where faith comes in. God distinguishes a believer from a non-believer by the faith we have to believe what the non-believer considers to be unbelievable.

These verses show that God expects us to trust Him even when it seems like we shouldn’t.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28 ESV

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5 ESV

And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.

Psalm 9:10 ESV

If you want to overcome lies and grow in self-worth, the first step is to learn how to discern God’s voice of truth from the devil’s voice of falsehood. You can discern the truth because you have the Holy Spirit who guides believers into all truth (John 16:13).

More on the journey to overcome lies.
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