Transcription
Welcome everyone. Today, what I want to do is I want to get into 10 important keys when it comes to the subject of healing through trauma. So, welcome to the healing and freedom journey. Mark de Jesus here. I am your brother from another mother, bringing you insights along the way. I'm all about mental, emotional, and relationship health. And if you are too, you have arrived at a great place.
As I said, I want to get into these 10 areas. Many of these I'm going to do deeper dives in, and some of them I've already have. Some of them I'll continue to dive into and help you to work through this journey of trauma healing.
Now, what I want to bring to your attention is there are three enemies you need to be aware of. Now, it's not just three, but these are kind of the three main areas that you'll need to realize and address. At first, it's shame, self-hatred, and fear. Shame is like the front line of what we'll have to work through when it comes to any wounds or any trauma, any healing areas in our life. Self-hatred is the battleground where you begin to turn on yourself and you become your own worst enemy. It's this self-battle that's taking place. Third area here is fear. That involves your anxiety, your panic, those moments where you get uh triggered to a flashback. And often times what happens in flashbacks is you got a combination of fear and shame. It's like you're having a panic and shame attack at the same time. So, it creates a whole upheaval of emotions.
So, we want to set ourselves up for working through the healing process. And what shame is going to first do is it's going to rush you around all of these and keep you disconnected from all these areas so that you just get to, "I got to just run away from this shame and fear tag team. I got to get away from this," or and/or, "I got to hurry up and get fixed. Hurry up and get over this." So, what we're going to need to do is take a deep breath. We're going to slow down and settle a bit because there's some things we're going to need to learn. And where I want to center this is right here: compassionate grace. Compassionate grace. And I'm calling my brothers and sisters to become witnesses of compassionate grace to your own journey and to those around you. And it's very important because trauma has an effect on our thinking, our emotions, on our physiology that greatly need compassionate grace, or else we're going to, we're going to get into all these ditches. And where I'm addressing it is in how you relate to God, how you relate to yourself, which then relates into how you relate to other people. So, we want compassionate grace to soak into these areas because otherwise shame and self-hatred and fear, along with rejection and some other stuff, too, it's just going to want to dilute this, block it, and keep us from experiencing the beauty that's found in here.
Because compassion points to God's love. Love is who He is. Grace points to the work of Christ and how God interacts with us. Love is who God is. Grace is how He delivers His ways. So, we really need to tune in to what love and grace look like in the journey. So, if we're going to do that, the first thing we need to understand is what I call TULA: total unconditional loving acceptance of having an embrace of God's love, which tells us in our uncomfortable, our goofy, our struggling state, His love is there to embrace us. Christianity struggles with the concept of unconditional love and what that means and what that looks like. I talk about that in other videos, but this basically says, "It's okay that you're not okay. I embrace you in your pain. I embrace you in your struggle." We have a way of thinking that drives us. It's not good. And it tells us, "I'll be loved and I'll be okay when I get better." That's the language of shame and self-hatred. "You'll be loved when you get over this stuff because you're unlovable right now. You're unlovable in your current feelings, your flashbacks, your struggles, your difficulties." And so, when you get fixed, then maybe you'll have love. No, no, no. The love of God changes this. And He first loved us. And we need to learn how to embrace, number one, how Father God loves us, being renewed in that. But also shifting and changing how you relate to yourself. Because most trauma sufferers admit they have a very hostile inner world. It's not loving. It's anti-loving. In fact, it's often very hateful. So, this embrace welcomes you in, welcomes you into relationship, connection, instead of this persistent drive we have to fix ourselves and then, "I'll be loved." "I got to fix myself and then I'll be loved." We got to learn to switch that. "I got to be be loved now." And love actually leads me into the work of healing.
So, then the second level here is the world of patience. And patience is all throughout the Bible. It's all throughout the scriptures in the form of perseverance, in the form of uh the journey of overcoming, but it's woven right into Paul's writing when he talked about what love actually is. It is patient. Number one on the list. Patience is what love can handle. And patience says, "This will take as long as it takes." And I would say, I, I spend a majority of my time almost traffic control of slowing down the traffic when people come in and enter engage the materials that I teach. Like, we got to, we got to slow things down and get you tuned for a journey and get you more patient with yourself because God is patient with you. Therefore, be patient with yourself, which then reflects in you being more patient with others. And patience is something that we have to learn. It's, it's, it's something we have to develop as a muscle.
So, kindness is now, again, this is all under the umbrella of compassion is teaching us this, the total unconditional loving acceptance. Two, patience. Number three is kindness. Kindness is the environment by which we, we, we connect to God interacting with us. And how many of you are actually kind to yourself in your inner dialogue and how you react to what you're going through, how you even interpret what things you're processing through and healing through? It's often very, very hostile, and that's what trauma does. It creates a sense of disconnection from God, self, and others. Kindness is going to renew the environment. And many people need to, in order to tune into that frequency, take what you're going through, take what you're feeling, take your struggle, and ask yourself, "What would loving compassion, what would love say to this situation?" And that's going to help you tune into a more compassionate frequency in what it means to interact with yourself and what it means to process, interpret what you've been through and what you're going through. This now helps us to be set up more for renewal. And when I say renewal, renewing our perception, renewing the interpretation over what happened, renewing our belief systems. Because with trauma, it really tears at our belief systems, how, what we believe about God, our self, and, and our journey and other people. We make blanket statements about other people, right? For self-protection. Well, love helps to renew the lens and how we're seeing things. So, we're more empowered to take better steps of healing in our journey.
Okay. Now, over here on this right side here, we're now also bringing out the power of grace. We're, we're, we're pointing to compassionate grace. So, what we see here is right at the top, I'll put this as a number five because I'm talking about 10. Is grace points us to a journey mindset that God is walking along with us along the journey, taking steps one at a time, at time, facing our fears, at time, renewing ourselves in love, which breaks through shame and breaks through self-hatred because, um, what shame will do is not let the journey mindset happen. "Hurry up. No, you need to get well. What's the matter with you?" It really pushes back and it fuels condemnation. From a biblical standpoint, shame is highly tied to condemnation. So, it keeps this sense of rejecting where you are at, that you are, you are disqualified because of where you are struggling in your journey. You are therefore disconnected from God. A journey mindset helps us plug into, "This isn't about being fixed overnight. This is about learning. This is about growing."
And so, what grace is going to point you to is learning, number six, how to receive. And I put the cross there as a reminder of what Jesus Christ did and paid for, taking our shame on Him, taking rejection on Him, taking all of that on Him on the cross so that we could receive by grace the compassion of God and His cleansing work over our lives. And many who have trauma admit they really struggle with being able to receive. They either go into unworthiness, kind of deflect it back, or we go into this perfectionist performance mode. "What do I got to do? What do I got to do to like make this even, to check the boxes, right? To feel that I, I'm I'm worth being loved."
So, number seven is what grace is going to do is going to empower my steps. I'm all about empowerment because it's woven within the beauty of grace where God is always at work. There's nothing He cannot do. He's not limited, but He's wanting to walk with us and encourage steps of faith. Now, these empowered steps are going to cause us in layers to work through our fears because trauma creates deeply rooted fears, anxiety, worry, rumination, avoidance issues, list goes on and on. It can even fuel our obsessiveness, right? And so, but the empowered step is just one step at a time because compassion's always, always there. It's no need. It's no need to feed being overwhelmed, but we're going to step up and we're going to, we're going to be encouraged by love to in grace take renewed steps. The renewal and the empowered steps take place in my life. So, where, um, I might have shut everybody out, I'm going to be open to new conversations, open to new opportunities for relationships. I'm going to slowly be open to taking new steps again and involving my physiology in this because the physiology needs to be involved in our renewal, in our empowering steps.
In grace, we see everything, number eight, as learning. It's not about failure. It's not about your life being ruined. It's not about, "That was the end." Now, trauma may cause those areas to feel like that. But in grace, everything is learning. And so, now what happens? What you've been through becomes an asset, not a liability. Because a lot of us see a traumatic history as a liability. "Makes me unlovable. I'm so deeply flawed. Uh, you become one with what you went through. You become one with your mistakes. You become one with your pain." And it doesn't allow you to see the beauty of who you are in Christ in you, through the work that He's doing. So, everything in our journey as believers is learning. It's a journey of learning. We're learning to receive and step out what we have received and practice it, right? So, everything's for your learning. And what you've been through becomes an asset of your learning because the pain that we work through learning becomes in high definition. It's not just a theory any longer. It's also an asset to bless others because everything you've been through, in God's perspective, is going to be beautiful for what you can bless others with.
So, in the process of this compassionate grace, it brings in, number nine. I'm putting this here is the beauty of forgiveness, which involves not only forgiving others but also forgiving ourselves. And many of you know that coming out of trauma is very hard to forgive self. You go into a lot of shame spirals where you are blaming yourself, rehashing moments. "I should have done this, should have done that." And it keeps the war of self-hatred going on. And many need a breakthrough of forgiving themselves as well as forgiving others. Now, in the journey of healing, Christians often rush to this. "Okay, just forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive." And if they still feel pain, then they accuse themselves. "It's because I haven't fully, fully forgiven him." But yet, we haven't, we haven't understood that there's many areas. It's multifaceted. What we're needing to process through.
But number 10 is something that I remind people over and over and over again is the beautiful power in the midst of messiness, dirtiness, um, ashes is the power of grieving. And I want to say this: most of the difficult emotions that you go through with trauma, most of it has to do with depression, anxiety of some kind, some kind of fear response, and anger. Those are often the three emotions. They branch out into other words, right? The majority of those in mental health, in life, and especially in trauma are emotions that actually need to be grieved through. They're signals. Your depression is a signal you need to grieve. Anxiety is there. It gets in your chest. You feel it in your neck or you feel it in your stomach, or it, you, you go into your, your stress response, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, any of those, right? Or you get into a snap of anger, you lash back, right? You start shaking inside, and all that's happening and taking place. This is a very, very helpful insight and understanding is those emotions are signals that there are things, experiences, stuff you've been through, stuff you've taken in, it might be stuck in you and it needs grieving to work its way through you. Many of our negative emotions, we're trying to get rid of them. We're trying to avoid them. We're trying to live in such a way that they never ever happen. I want to shift your mindset. Many of the emotions you're going through that that kick up like that, especially those three, need grieving of processing through.
Now, it's very, very difficult to grieve if I'm not allowing these things to have a work. Very difficult because then shame takes the reins and you can't heal. You can't grieve under shame because you're locked in blaming yourself. Feel. I'm going to do some more talks on shame and trauma because this is, this is a very, very important area to work through and break through. But compassion opens it up and grace gets rid of the, the shame mindset of having to be better and, and trying to look better. We're all broken. We're all broken. And, and grace opens our eyes to the beauty of us all healing in our own journey, in our own process.
So, which of these areas, which of these 10 stuck out to you? And you go, "You know what? I need to be mindful of this in my processing, working through trauma." Which was most helpful to you? Do me a favor, comment on that. Let me know because I'd love to see what helps, what empowers people in their journey. And do me a favor. If you like this video, click that like button and subscribe. Go over to markdejesus.com where you can see more about materials, books, resources, all kinds of good stuff that I like to put together to help you in your healing and freedom journey. Lord willing and the creek don't rise. This is your brother from another mother saying, "I'll be back with more insights for your healing and freedom journey." But in the meantime, I'm out.