Top Two Factors in Healing Well

It is so overwhelming to know where to start when you have wounds that need to be addressed, when you are still being abused regularly, when you feel like you have no resources.

It can be an excruciatingly lonely, dark time. If there has been abuse, your abuser may have made sure you were isolated or that you burned the bridges (friends, relatives) you had in the past.

There are two things that must occur when healing. The first is out of your control, but there is no way around it. It takes time. The second is doing the work.

I struggled the most with the time factor- how long it seemed to take and why I couldn't just get from zero to whole in a few months.

This is actually a biological fact. Caroline Leaf is a neurologist that specializing is the neuroplasticity of the brain. This means our brains can change. We can literally grow new neural pathways. However, based on decades of highly specialized research in how we use our brains to do that, she discovered it takes 21 consecutive days of working with a positive thought to create a new pathway. Here is the harder pill to swallow. It takes THREE cycles of 21 days to remove a negative pathway. The good news is that our brains have the capability to get rid of the bad and grow healthy new.

If you are a spiritual person, it is well worth following her program down the road. Right now, if you are in the awakening phase, your brain may feel muddled because abuse is a form of brainwashing. Our clarity has been high-jacked. Trauma makes our brains and our bodies function at the less-than-optimal setting, in the "reptilian" or fight-flight instinctual part of the brain. So, only time without constant trauma will gain you real ground

Most people have heard the saying, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." If you being abused, your biosystem is confused! Escaping abuse is not something that a five-step program can do a quick-fix on.

It can become a vicious cycle of abuse, making up for the abuse (the technical term for that is hoovering), followed by more abuse. It is unpredictable and scary to live this way. C-PTSD is a form of post-traumatic stress syndrome. But, the difference is with the "c", which stands for complex, referring to being exposed in an on-going way to abuse and trauma. That is why most programs that try to help abused people insist on no contact.

Women who are very smart, gorgeous and abuse often go back to their abuser. Dating is a nightmare today. Kids may be involved. If she started the recovery process, it can be too painful to forge alone or nearly so. And she may say something along the lines of not wanting to leave familiarity or at least knowing what she is getting with her abuser. This is rationalizing. This is a woman who is struggling to stand up for herself on a fundamental level. I was that girl along the way as well. It takes a woman an _average_ of seven times to leave an abuser. Other factors may include financial hardship, fear of retaliation, further isolation, stalking, and fear of harm for herself and/or her children.

But, it takes time to see what is really happening. I am not sure who said this, but it is a quote that has stuck with me: "People only change when the pain of staying where they are is greater than the discomfort of change." I call this process the awakening. Not only does it take time to grow that awareness and overcome what is called cognitive dissonance, but a woman puts herself in greater harm's way if she has no plan of exit in place, especially if children are involved. Abusers do not easily give up their targets.

Cognitive dissonance is a pretty common term in abuse or trauma literature. It means you may be able to see intellectually what is going on, but emotionally, you are still so attached to the ideal of who you want your abuser to be that the emotion overrides the truth and you stay with that person. You feel disjointed, disconnected from yourself. Your world doesn't make sense. You are discombobulated, overwhelmed, exhausted, depressed. It does become resolved eventually. But not naturally- with great effort.

You can have cognitive dissonance on other topics besides abuse. It is when you have two conflicting points of view on the same thing and these opposing perspectives keeps you from taking productive, positive action.

As you can tell, unraveling your truth in abuse is not a tidy ball of yarn. There is no way to replace the time it takes to come to terms with what is happening to you, to learn and put into practice new behaviors. When I say a lot of practice, I mean A LOT. It means you have to keep all your thoughts in check. Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." It means, as you unveil what is truly happening, while you are in pain from being abused regularly, you are starting to see the tip of the gigantic iceberg that has tried to move into you heart, your spirit, your mind and take over your life. It means learning to cultivate self-care practices that enable you to overcome cognitive dissonance. It means being patient with yourself because this is not a sprint.

The other thing that is absolutely necessary to healing is doing the work. An example of what that might look like, see my post "Doing the Work Could Look Like This." Everyone's journey looks different. One person may have a history of abusive relationships. This may or may not stem from childhood trauma(s). Another person may have been targeted by an abuser and was highly successful before. It may take losing everything for her to see that she must do something different for self-preservation.

Doing the work does look like getting help. In every instance. Whether that is exclusively online support, an in-person group, therapy, life coach, pastor or other trusted person you can counsel with. I will have a post talking about how to determine if someone can be helpful for you in this area.

I worked with four different therapists and two life coaches, plus a church support group and a few very tight friends to get where I am today. And that was a five year journey. With so many setbacks. I hope knowing my story and having a better support system than I did for far too long, will shorten your healing time. However, Jeff Brown, who is a spiritualist, wrote this:

"Some people need to create a nightmare far worse than the one they came from before they will go back and heal their early wounds. We see this in trauma survivors all the time. They pule hell upon hell, until they have only two choices- die, or heal the wounds they are fleeing. I used to find this confusing, but I no longer do. Sometimes the first hell was so bloody bad that it takes a far worse hell to uncover it. Bows to those who choose to heal their hells, after so many years on the run. Bows to those courageous beings who give reality a try before they have any evidence that it will serve them well. If this isn't courage, I don't know what is." ~jeffbrown.co

He does not talk directly about God often, so he is not a pastor or minister or priest. But, he has his finger on the pulse of living in and developing the spiritual realm without religiousity.

I will say this is what it took to enable me to heal as well. It is human nature to do what is comfortable and avoid what is not. But, that does not always serve us well and it certainly does not get much accomplished. A wasted life is one to be mourned.

I do so wish there was better news to give, but it takes time and work to heal. You have to examine yourself and your experiences and make conscious changes over the long haul. Not in a vacuum and as you begin to form an exit plan.

Anyone who tells you time is not a factor is misleading you. Some people do heal faster than others, but just as grief has no set trajectory, neither does any other sort of healing. And the more of it there is to do, then, expect the longer it will take. If you had a difficult childhood, you have probably experienced a good deal of trauma throughout your life. Check out my post that discusses grief in more detail, and the post that talks about the misnomer of "normalizing" abuse, and the post that talks about what the past has to do with our present. While it isn't a place you should dwell in, it is a place that will require some visiting in order to put it behind you.

The less you fight God, the sooner you can get down to the actual work that needs to be done. And think of this- if God himself is illuminating your path, how can your healing go wrong?

Healing is complex. Just remember, it will take time and work and you will get there. This is only a season of your life. James 1:17 says,"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."