Tell Your Story: Learning to Safely Navigate and Heal Your Trauma

Trauma talk has filtered its way into the center of spiritual and secular conversations. In both online and in-person spaces, discussions about trauma surface as we seek to better understand ourselves, and our personal history, and enhance our connections. It is not a new phenomenon, however. As we grow in grace, we also increase our understanding and awareness of how our trauma story impacts our world and those in it.

A definition adapted from the American Psychological Association suggests that trauma is an emotional response to a distressing or disturbing event or experience, felt by many or by an individual.

Its frequency and impact may be more pervasive in our society than we realize. Many have encountered some form of trauma. It can be experienced as a widespread event, shared simultaneously with multiple people, or it may have been an individual or private incident encountered in childhood or later life experiences.

Avoiding or addressing trauma

Whether we avoid or process it, we can agree about the emotional nature of trauma and the impact it has. Initially, those who endure a traumatic incident may experience shock or denial. While everyone uniquely unpacks and understands trauma, they may experience symptoms that later hamper their ability to navigate life afterwards. Those can be debilitating physically, mentally, or emotionally.

When we do not resolve unhealed pain, it can twist the trajectory that God intended for us to enjoy a fulfilling life with Him.

Trauma and triggers

Trauma can present symptoms that affect us in several ways. It can trigger an undesirable response in us physically, mentally, or emotionally. When a stimulus provokes a reaction, it can feel like we have rewound our body, mind, and emotions to a past traumatic event. In this way, trauma holds its grip, controlling us from our past, ensuring its tether onto our future.

Physical symptoms such as pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, perspiration, and trembling, signal that our bodies are remembering an aspect of the difficult experience. Other responses may include shutting down and withdrawal from others as we relive the traumatic moment and the feelings associated with it.

Flashbacks and triggers can exert anxiety in our waking moments, causing us to freeze temporarily disabling us from moving or speaking. Furthermore, we may encounter insomnia or nightmare-disturbed sleep as our subconscious minds seek a path for pain to be released and resolved through dreams.

We may not always want to acknowledge the trauma that we have experienced. However, God did not create our bodies and minds to harbor hurt indefinitely. When we ignore lingering pain, we deny ourselves the healing and freedom that Jesus lived and died to give.

Alternatively, therapy invites and allows us to address trauma and triggers, facilitating a place and a person with whom we can process in safety. A mental health professional can effectively support us with mourning and moving through the losses incurred as a result of trauma.

A pathway for the pain

Acknowledging trauma honors our experience, offering an outlet for the pain so we no longer have to carry it. It invites the Holy Spirit to comfort and counsel as only He can. Sitting with the Lord, in the presence of a counselor, ushers healing.

When we willingly face our pain long enough to bring it to our healer, we demonstrate faith in a God who is greater than the terror of our traumatic experience. He does not want us to bear its burden but rather cast and leave it in His capable hands.

Cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. – 1 Peter 5:7, ESV

Seeing through the lens of Scripture

The Bible has insight for us to gather about trauma. God’s word is filled with timeless stories that model how to engage with our internal and external worlds. As we embrace our faith as a real relationship with Christ, we come to know Him better and experience Him personally for the deepest trauma wounds. This kind of intimacy draws us into God’s heart of compassion, not only for our spiritual health, but also for our mental, emotional, and physical wellness.

Jesus is not only a savior, but He is also a deliverer. He didn’t come to just redeem our spirits while leaving the rest of our being to flounder. Trauma has devastating effects on our bodies, wearing down our health. It can plague our minds, causing us to wrestle with anxiety and plummet into depression. It can twist our emotions and cause us to experience instability and distress in our relationships.

Left unresolved, we can become addicted to the story that our trauma tells. We identify with our pain so much that we minimize the savior who sacrificed His life not only to save but also to transform our wounds and scars. Although trauma presents a sense of finality in our circumstances, the truth of God’s word assures that all things are working together for our good and God’s glory, despite appearances (Romans 8:28).

We must be aware of how the enemy would want us to idolize past pain by wallowing in it. The devil wants us to remain rooted in hardship and brokenness, oblivious to the healing balm that Jesus administers as the soothing salve for our suffering.

Strategy for sabotage

We may not realize it, but early events and environments influence what we deem to be true about ourselves and our world. As much as we would like to move on from certain mindsets and behaviors, trauma’s roots often stretch into our pasts. They need to be addressed and resolved for us to mobilize in a new direction.

Our enemy is aware of how traumatic experiences, especially those that occur within families, have catastrophic potential. They can distort our perception of God as Father and our identity as those made in His image. The enemy strategizes a campaign to wound and sabotage us from our earliest life experiences. This demands that we consider how experiences in our birth or adoptive family histories have shaped our reality.

We need the Holy Spirit’s clear voice, speaking and breathing life into us. The enemy has whispered lies, often full of shame and accusation. While we cannot control the trauma that happened in early life, he goads us into believing and partnering with him to replicate its divisive effects, often to our peril and destruction as we mature.

Whether our traumatic experiences surfaced early in our lives and development or presented later in life, we can see the fingerprints of the enemy. His aim is to steal, kill, and destroy, whether that is literal or a metaphor for an attack on our ability to thrive. We know that not only the trauma itself, but also continual flashbacks, leverage the following impacts: robbing our joy and peace, slaughtering our relationships, and obliterating our sense of destiny and purpose.

Although God is aware of the fragments of life in a fallen world, it is not His desire for us to remain broken. In fact, Jesus exposed the enemy’s tactics and more importantly, He asserted that He came to bring the kind of life that enables us to conquer and overcome (John 10:10).

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. – John 10:10, NIV

Counsel and comfort

We need to acknowledge the trauma that we have endured. Part of our healing journey involves addressing the matters in our lives that are difficult to navigate. However, we do not have to do it alone.

Not only does God name Himself as the Wonderful Counselor, but He has also provided counselors to walk with us through dark places (Isaiah 9:6). We only need to avail ourselves of what He has made accessible in the places where we find resources and remedies for mental health matters.

When Jesus talked about bringing our heavy burdens to Him, the traumatic circumstances of our lives were included. While we may still bear painful memories, we can process them with the Lord. We can welcome Him to relieve us of the baggage and purge the residue of what we have been shouldering. He invites us to exchange what He calls “easy” and “light,” as He graces us for what is possible only with God (Matthew 11:28-30).

Next steps

For as long as we haul mental and emotional weight into various seasons and relationships, the burdens will drag us down. Although the Holy Spirit is our Helper, the help does not end with Him. He has furnished fellow human beings, and counselors, with the gifts, skills, and the empathy to meet us in our places of need.

Consider your heart’s healing path. If you are ready to release the burdens caused by trauma, reach out to us today. We will help you find a counselor on our site to walk the journey of healing with you. Maybe this is the moment to tell of your trauma and permit your heart to build a new story.