Learning to F.L.Y.
(First Love Myself)
Living by Proverbs 3:5-6
The following is my Angela Shelton workbook week 4, March
4, 2015
How Can the Sword Affect someone’s life?
The
sword represents trauma and everyone has experienced trauma. It can affect
someone’s life in many different ways, spiritual, emotional, physical and
mental. Trauma often causes us to
question the reality of God, if He is real why does He allow bad things to
happen. If we do believe He is real many respond to trauma by being angry at
God, how could He allow this to happen.
Trauma can and often does wreak havoc on our spiritual lives. Trauma affects us emotionally because so
often we do not know how to deal with or heal from the trauma so many people
shut down emotionally. Migraines,
digestive issues, cancer and many other diseases can be traced to trauma that
is stuffed down and ignored. And often times our mental capacity is diminished,
leaving us unable to focus, concentrate and follow through with many of our
daily jobs and activities. Being wounded
by the sword of trauma can make you quick to anger, depressed or isolated.
How can the sword affect relationships?
·
I was OK to give love that I felt I had, I was
not OK to accept love completely. I wasn’t worthy to love myself, how could I
allow anyone close enough to really love me?
·
As a teen (HS) and young adult I didn’t care if
love was real or fake – I just took whatever because I didn’t deserve anything
good. Fake love was better than no love
at all.
·
Even when I was with people, I felt lonely. I
was a bad person and no one could know the real me, especially at church.
·
I stayed angry at my parents.
·
I built walls to protect myself and would not
allow anyone to get too close.
I have been kept from intimacy because:
·
I felt unworthy and didn’t deserve it
·
I didn’t know what intimacy was – other than sex
·
I had deep self-loathing and hatred – very deep
and primal in my gut
·
This left me feeling ugly and unworthy of
accepting real intimate love
When I think about intimacy I feel:
·
Well – I used to think intimacy was dirty and it
made me dirty. I used to think that was all I was good for because intimacy equaled
sex and that was pretty much it. I feel quite differently now. Intimacy has
really little or nothing to do with sex. Intimacy is being honest, open, forth
coming with your feelings and emotions. Intimacy is about feeling safe, secure
and significant with someone and allowing them to know your deepest darkest
secrets. Intimacy is telling the person I love the most how much I have hated
myself.
·
Trust is the biggest thing – you cannot have intimacy
with anyone without trust.
·
Intimacy with myself is even harder. I have to
learn to love and accept myself before I can go any further. Today looking at
myself in the mirror was a great start and a really good and intimate
experience.
I am scared of:
·
What people will think of me if I tell anyone
what I have remembered.
·
I am afraid I may never be able to get over my
self-hatred, at least completely. I don’t know how.
·
I am afraid my kids and I will never have a real
relationship. That I will never be able to show them who I am, so they know the
real me. Or that I may never really know who they are. For real. The relationship
I have with my children is far better than the relationship I had with my own
parents and that is good. I know it could be better if we could get past the
walls I taught them to put up and the wall I had up as I raised them. I never
considered that wall would also keep the ones I love from getting too
close.
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