Mars Hill Centre
www.marshillcentre.com

How Do I Live With Painful Emotions and Memories?

When I think about my life before I allowed God to restore my emotions, it was like an undefined painting in shades of grey. Slowly, as I started to reclaim all the emotions I had been given the colours in the painting of my life changed. Now, if I were to paint a picture of my life it would be full of vivid alive colours. They may not be "happy" colours but they would be vibrant picture of something!

Like me, most victims of any type of childhood abuse have, at some level, shut down their emotions. Emotions are interesting things. They are all interconnected. By choosing to shut down one emotion, say fear, all of our other emotions become hidden away too. Or, for some, all their emotions may be over-ridden by the dynamic emotion- rage!

When we were abused, the experience was so overwhelming that we did the only thing we knew to do, namely shut down. We did not have any other skills to deal with our emotions, and the experience was so painful we felt, quite literally, that it might kill us. So, self-preservation caused us to make the decision to detach emotionally. It felt better to feel nothing at all.

As we grew, we developed powerful ways to keep our emotions under control. Addictions and compulsions somehow deadened the pain we felt. For some, the bottled up emotions resulted in depression, while others managed to keep control of their life through food. Others found that the best way to deal with the pain was simply to check out permanently, forever, and they choose the fierce goodbye of suicide.

Emotions are a gift to us from God. He has given them to us so that our lives, like the painting I described earlier, can be full of colour and life! But as we all too often do, we choose to reject the gifts our loving heavenly Father has given to us. Consequently, the first step in reclaiming our emotional life is to ask God's forgiveness for rejecting the gift he has given us, and allowing him to be Lord of our emotions.

I have often seen a short prayer like this be all that is required to pry off the heavy lid on a wounded person's heart. But then what?

The next step is to learn how to identify your emotions. How does sad feel different than depressed? What's the difference between feeling frustrated or feeling angry? Does hopeful feel different than happy? Find a list of different emotions, carry it with you, and use the words to describe how you are feeling at different times during your day.

As you learn to identify your emotions you will need to find someone who can help you know how to live with your emotions in a godly and healthy way. Support and recovery groups are a good place for this process to take place.

Often as emotions begin to reappear, so do memories. For many victims of childhood sexual abuse these memories are terrifying and overpowering. As they remember the instances of abuse they often relive the overwhelming emotions they felt at the time. Fear, disgust, anger and a myriad of other strong emotions flood their soul as they remember. And they remember the experience, as a helpless child.

Some people become so overwrought by memories that they are unable to function, but this does not have to be the case if we bring to mind an important truth. As we remember, we remember as adults who have gained healthy emotional skills. For example, as an adult we know that the sexual abuse did not completely destroy us; we have survived. We can use that truth to break the lie that was planted in our hearts during that time, namely that the emotions we feel are so overwhelming they will kill us.

For example, many of us struggle with a fear of rejection. For some it is a minor daily irritation, others are locked into the role of people-pleaser, unable to take the risk to be who God has called them to be. This fear of rejection is linked to an earlier experience of rejection, a situation that caused so much pain they vowed they'd never let it happen again. Consequently, they do everything they can to avoid being rejected; the emotion of fear has them under control. The truth is that, while the rejection may have damaged their souls, it did not utterly destroy them.

We would all prefer to have positive, warm emotions and memories. However, the reality of living in a fallen world is that we will experience distressing emotions and painful memories. Whatever emotions and memories we face, we must choose life.

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The Mars Hill Centre is a outreach, recovery centre located in the trendy, urban Old Strathcona Area of Edmonton. Since 1995 we have connected with people who are interested in spirituality and healing but may be wary of a typical church. We offer a variety of recovery groups throughout the year aimed at healing hearts, restoring relationships and creating community. Also, we connect with our nation through the 'Native Healing Connection' a nation-wide referral line for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. (NHC is a project of World Vision Canadas' Aboriginal Programs.)

Cheryl Shea, M.Div.
Team Leader
Mars Hill Centre
address: Box 4400, Edmonton, AB T6E 4T5
phone: 780-435-0202
office location: 8318-104 Street (basement Strathcona Baptist Church)

email: cheryl@marshillcentre.com

web: www.marshillcentre.com