The time has come! Are you ready?! This has been long awaited, and I finally felt the “all clear” to dive into it!
It is time to start diving deeper into the hard stuff. However, we will still be taking our time with this because, as mentioned several times before, doing this virtual comes with risk of relapse. So, before we start I am going to be put a disclaimer up:
Do NOT continue if you have not listened to/read the previous messages! They are full of necessary tools to help you navigate hard emotions you might feel as we start processing harder things! I also STRONGLY recommend you do not continue until you find accountability that has walked through healing. A counselor or pastor/ trustworthy leadership would be great! There are going to be things you need to process and WILL NOT be able to do on your own. And if you do feel yourself shutting down, isolating, having unhealthy thoughts, getting stuck in negative patterns, or feel led to go back to past coping mechanisms and do not have a safe place, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reach out to me and I will help you find someone! The point of these messages is to help you overcome these things, not resort back to them.
It is normal to feel past feelings while going deeper or think past thoughts but you HAVE to be able to apply the past tools and resources and CHOOSE to not believe them or give into them. You have to be able to identify the red flags that you are spiraling back and know when to reach out or remind yourself of truth. And this will also be extremely hard to navigate without hope, which is something we’ve been talking about a lot lately. Jesus is right there with you and does NOT want you doing this alone! If nothing else, you have a support system right here so be sure to use it!
All of that being said, we are going to start this “going deeper” series off with a topic that can help us heal from past situations but it may help some with current or even future situations as well. And that is understanding the parental roles. So much of who we are and our perceived identity is dictated by our needs being met by each parent. There are needs that only fathers can meet and needs that only mothers can meet. This is true psychologically as well as biblically. We are familiar with the Biblical sense in terms men being providers and protectors and mothers being nurturing, emotional and spiritual teachers, but what are the psychological roles that parents contribute to their children?
Right now we hear about all the different parenting styles and there is a giant debate when it comes to the right way to discipline children, but what we don’t hear a lot about is how to love them. How to meet their needs. How to help them be confident in who God designed them to be and helping them navigate the craziness of the world. Yes, each parent has specific positions when it comes to their children, but BOTH parents should be modeling who they want their children to be. BOTH parents should know how to effectively communicate with their children. We can relate to this when we think about what we did or didn’t get as children growing up and how that made us feel. But I think it is also important to see the value of applying this to our own healing journey with our current or future children. And honestly, it is also helpful to know this so we can show any child what love looks like, even if you aren’t the parent! When we grow up as children and do not feel safe physically or even emotionally, this can cause us to go from being a creative and outgoing child to living in survival mode. Sometimes this is just certain areas of our life, and sometimes it is completely takes over our identity.
The first 18 months of a child’s life is such a crucial time to show a child if they are safe or not. And during this time the mother’s role is the strongest in determining that! It is the mother’s role to teach bonding, trust, attachment, and the ability to give and receive affection. She is a huge influence in your ability to be vulnerable and to ask for help. When a mother is not able to meet these needs and offer this kind of influence, sometimes due to decisions she made or even situations that were out of her control, this can really affect how the child views the world around them. If a child crying is met with abuse or neglect, this can cause the child to start to believe they have to learn to self gratify in order to get their needs met, which can really affect their ability to give and receive affection. You have heard this as an attachment disorder, or also known as having “trust issues”. A counseling program I am certified in and believe to be an amazing resources is called “The Genesis Process” and helps to dive into those deep wounds and process them. A lot of what we talk about I learned from this resources, and I want to quote a direct passage about this that was very eye opening for me:
“A sad statistic that recently came to my attention states that approximately 60% of the children in the United States under the age of one are in day care, and seventy-five percent of children over the age of one are in some form of daycare. These children have to compete with others, to some degree, in order to get their needs met. As a result, their ability to give and receive affection, bond, and trust others is going to be affected. No matter how good this substitute care is, it cannot replace the mother's love and attention during these critical years!”
This also goes into the method of “crying it out”. Listen, I am not here to tell someone how to raise their children, I am merely sharing information about our brains as children and how they are affection physiologically. So if the devil is causing you to feel guilt at any point, rebuke that lie and lean into truth! You only know what you know until you learn more, right?! So when it comes to babies, it is impossible to spoil them. Yes habits can form that you may need to work through later, but you can never love a baby too much. So if a baby is crying, it is because there is a need. Sometimes those needs are small like they have an itch, sometimes it’s bigger and they are hungry, and sometimes it’s emotional and they just want to be with you. I am VERY familiar with needing a moment because you are feeling overwhelmed, so if you need to give yourself a minute while they are crying, give yourself grace! You aren’t going to cause your child to have trust issues because every now and then they had to cry for a second. It would be more damaging to that child to pick them up and only be able to offer them frustration and anxiety. What they need is love so if you need a minute to be able to give them that, that’s ok! But letting babies cry for long periods of time to the point where they have to self gratify and meet their own needs is not going to help them psychologically. They may appear to be a “good” baby and not cry a lot, but that doesn’t mean that this is always a healthy thing. Every child is different and will have different needs. This is why I have always disliked the term “good baby”.
In this chapter of the genesis book there Is a story about a boy who’s father left at an early age which meant the mother had to work more, meaning he wasn’t able to receive that love as much. He was also by nature very sensitive and found himself getting hurt emotionally more than the average person and after dealing with some situations that hurt him and left him feeling lonely, he adapted this idea that he needed to not be so sensitive and that he needed to take care of his own needs by himself. If he didn’t allow himself to feel pain, then maybe he wouldn’t get hurt. Sounds familiar? He continued to grow numb to emotions and even made a joke saying “I had feelings once, but didn’t like it and decided not to have any anymore.” After a lot of trials in his life he found Jesus and healing and became a counselor who works mostly with women who say he is safe because he can feel what they are feeling better than they can.
Something we talked about last week is how the enemy will attack us where we are most vulnerable. And for most of us, that is in our gifting. The things we are most passionate about are usually the areas where most wounds take place. So if you find yourself having strong feelings or have completely gone numb to an area, these are both good indicators that you have been wounded in your gifts! Just something to think about.
If you are a mother, this may make you think about your relationships with your children and maybe you are feeling conviction on how to change things. Lean into that and do not allow the enemy to make you feel guilt! God is so full of grace, which means we need to be too. But that doesn’t mean we should necessarily stay the same. We can need to change things in our life without beating ourselves up for it. But what I really want you to do here is think about yourself as a child. How well do you trust? What was your relationship like with your mom? Do you struggle to ask for help?
Maybe this is helping you make sense of why you do certain things in your life. Maybe it is helping you explain why you have certain struggles. We are going to go into processing this and these emotions you are feeling. But because we are limited on time with these, what I want you to do with this information is just bring it to your awareness. And just like we talked about you offering grace to yourself as a parent, I also want you to offer grace to your childhood and your struggles. And dare I say your mother? Everyone’s past with their parents is going to be different in levels of pain, but something we have said SEVERAL times now is that most wounded people are living in survival mode and don’t always make the best decisions. And in less severe situations, sometimes they are doing the best they know to do. I am not asking you excuse their actions, but when you can allow yourself to come from a place of healing, it can take the pressure off. Maybe what they did or allowed is inexcusable. I am not talking about forgiveness right now. I am just saying, understand that it wasn’t because of you or who you are. It was their own past they were trying to navigate, just like you with yours. Maybe their actions were far worse than anything you’ve done, but the point is that it was a mistake based out of fear.
This is where I want to end today. Next week I want to go over how to process this deeper and then the following week we will dive into the fathers role and processing that as well. What I hope you are leaving this message with is more of an understanding about yourself because what does awareness do? Gives us the power to take control over those actions and coping mechanisms. I hope you can look back and see why you handle situations the way you have. But what I don’t want you to do is let the enemy use this information as a way to set you back. Send him packing! Lean into God. Lean into peace. Lean into grace! Next week we will hopefully find more healing in these areas and give you some tools to help you move forward from them! PLEASE REACH OUT if you feel yourself going backwards! I can’t stress how important that is. You’ve got this friend! Keep going! Keep healing! And we will see you next week!