July 10 - Dark, spiraling downward
Scripture focus: Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn't so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you've done. You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he's such a nice God, he'd let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he's not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change. You're not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it's going to blaze hot and high, God's fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what's coming to you--Real Life for those who work on God's side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire! If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you're from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up. Being a Jew won't give you an automatic stamp of approval. God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind. If you sin without knowing what you're doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you're doing, that's a different story entirely. Merely hearing God's law is a waste of your time if you don't do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God. Romans 2:1-13 (The Message)
Symptoms of dark, spiraling downward (as a result of toxic exposure to sin, shame, crisis and trauma):
- Exposure to betrayal and trauma teaches us unhealthy ways of relating to God and others.
- Experiences with betrayal and trauma causes us to relive the event (this is not remembering, physiologically it is as if the event is repeated and re-experienced). This causes further damage.
- Exposure to crisis and trauma causes us to live in a state of hyper-arousal -- increasing our stress and compulsion to live in survival mode (which means we can only think about ourselves).
- Trauma numbs us -- a form of emotional retreat.
- Crisis and trauma trigger our stress response and we either fight or flee -- occasionally at times and in response to events that are unwarranted.
- Dissociation -- the ability to take one's self to another place other than their own body -- an extreme form of escapism in the face of powerlessness.
- Survivor guilt -- not all survive their traumas, and those that do survive often ponder why they escaped.
- Addiction -- self-medication of unresolved trauma, a form of comfort.
2 comments:
I wish y'all would quit telling my life story. It's like little people running around my head with tiny tape recorders and reporting on what they've found.
But it sure is a blessing to know that I'm not the only person who has gone through these things. Thanks for bringing us together.
Great stuff. A treatment center I went to treats specific addiction and truama. Clearly untreated trauma and no coping skills were the reasons I sought escape for many decades. Knowing this only made it easier to engage in the process of facing trauma but had to walk through the pain of facing them. The key is I did not have to do it alone. IN community we no longer have to be alone with the stuff that ate our souls from the inside out. One more way to the pathway of peace.
Ciao
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