“Me” the person I am is ultimately shaped by whom I love and the pain I attempt to avoid. As I grow and as my identity is shaped, I constantly, but unconsciously face a conflict within as to which of these emotions will end up controlling me, love or fear. One of my greatest goals in life is to avoid as much pain as possible and yet I am hard-wired to love; thus, the dilemma to love, or to protect, becomes an unconscious decision and determines much about my emotional development, or the lack thereof.
John tells us “perfect love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:18), and we are created in His image. We can never be complete and whole and “know who we are until we find our own truest selves in God.” (C.S. Lewis). God has certain non-transferable attributes, but He does share transferable attributes with us. In His likeness, we all have a longing for beauty, greatness, fascination, and intimacy. He created us in love, for love, and to be loved. In other words, we are hard-wired with a longing for connection, to be seen, noticed, cherished and deeply known. This creates and “fires off” the joy center located in our right pre-frontal cortex (PFC). God is jealous over us. (Ex. 20:5). He knows that it is in our best interest to have a relationship with him; thus, the command to protect our heart from yearning and longing for anything more than we long for Him.
Trauma affects all of us in some form or fashion. “Any life event that leaves us feeling alone without help can be experienced as traumatic” (Jim Wilder). It is not the type or the intensity of the pain alone that determines whether or not events will become traumatic, but feeling alone, with no one to share the impact of our hurt, causes brain circuits to misfire. In those alone times, if the pain exceeds our mental capacity, we become traumatized. This is certainly true when we experience painful events as children, since we do not have the capacity to process pain and grief appropriately. Thus, if painful life experiences in the past were not consistently comforted, it can be very difficult to feel we are not alone in the present. These memories become fragmented and our brain cannot metabolize or process them to a resolution. They remain fragmented and when something happens that triggers either an implicit or explicit memory, we react in our current relationships in a way that reflects this unresolved pain and aloneness from the past. We may not even be aware of that or be able to connect the dots, but it is there none the less, for we all have the same brain functions. For us to process painful experiences they must go through a pain-processing pathway for the brain to fully metabolize them for emotional healing. The therapy protocol EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) can help with this.
to read more...click the link
John tells us “perfect love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:18), and we are created in His image. We can never be complete and whole and “know who we are until we find our own truest selves in God.” (C.S. Lewis). God has certain non-transferable attributes, but He does share transferable attributes with us. In His likeness, we all have a longing for beauty, greatness, fascination, and intimacy. He created us in love, for love, and to be loved. In other words, we are hard-wired with a longing for connection, to be seen, noticed, cherished and deeply known. This creates and “fires off” the joy center located in our right pre-frontal cortex (PFC). God is jealous over us. (Ex. 20:5). He knows that it is in our best interest to have a relationship with him; thus, the command to protect our heart from yearning and longing for anything more than we long for Him.
Trauma affects all of us in some form or fashion. “Any life event that leaves us feeling alone without help can be experienced as traumatic” (Jim Wilder). It is not the type or the intensity of the pain alone that determines whether or not events will become traumatic, but feeling alone, with no one to share the impact of our hurt, causes brain circuits to misfire. In those alone times, if the pain exceeds our mental capacity, we become traumatized. This is certainly true when we experience painful events as children, since we do not have the capacity to process pain and grief appropriately. Thus, if painful life experiences in the past were not consistently comforted, it can be very difficult to feel we are not alone in the present. These memories become fragmented and our brain cannot metabolize or process them to a resolution. They remain fragmented and when something happens that triggers either an implicit or explicit memory, we react in our current relationships in a way that reflects this unresolved pain and aloneness from the past. We may not even be aware of that or be able to connect the dots, but it is there none the less, for we all have the same brain functions. For us to process painful experiences they must go through a pain-processing pathway for the brain to fully metabolize them for emotional healing. The therapy protocol EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) can help with this.
to read more...click the link
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