Ok, I love Joyce Meyer….so I was listening to a CD on my walk today when I hear her say, “I was abused as a child and I just had to CHOOSE to get over it”….This is the kind of verbage which I often hear in Christian circles that makes my head spin. It makes it sound so easy….”I just had to choose to get over it!”
When you hear statements like this, do you wonder if God has forgotten you? Or if maybe you’re doing something wrong? I don’t know about you, but just choosing didn’t work for me. In fact, it took a lot of work and a lot of help for me to get over the traumas which occurred in my childhood. While I do believe that God can heal us in an instant, He seems to often use a process to get the job done.
Maybe in order for us to have time to catch up with our healing and change those old habits of thought and habits of feeling. Back in the day, sufferers of unresolved trauma would just have to suffer with panic attacks, severe depression, dissosiative disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, OCD, phobias, etc. They were given diagnoses of Borderline Personality Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder, etc. But with the strides made in the last two decades in
the field of trauma and recovery some of these problems can be eraadicated – healed. EMDR, EFT, some of the new energy therapies, etc. are all boons to this field. And new medications which pinpoint serotonin, dopamine and other neurotransmitters have helped tremendously.. (more on that topic another time)….
There’s a saying in 12 step circles, “It takes what it takes”…and while in the end, I do have to CHOOSE to get well, sometimes that choice has to be followed by actions…..