Welcome Back!
You’ve made the decision to walk into vulnerability, you understand you need to work on lowering your guard and walking out of protection mode, but what happens if you get hurt again? What happens if you feel rejected, unloved, unseen, or unheard? If you aren’t in control of those things, does that mean you won’t ever receive the love or attention you are seeking?
Did that last question just make you go “ew gross no, I don’t want those things?” Because if so, I recommend going back and reading the last couple of blogs! We understand by now, if you’ve been following along, that we all have a desire to feel loved, seen, and noticed. We all have love languages and emotional needs, but if yours never got met, you’ve grown resistant to the idea of receiving love now. This is fight.
Or maybe you’re listening to these questions and thinking “nah I’m ok, I don’t need my needs met. I get fulfillment out of helping others. I don’t even know what my needs are!” Yes you do. You have just suppressed them out of fear of them not getting met. So to control the outcome of not feeling rejected, you’ve poured yourself into helping others and not asking anyone else for help. This is flight.
Or maybe you feel like, “what’s the point of even asking for help? I know I have needs but they never get met anyway so I’m just going to do what I need to do and find happiness in things, rather than people.” This is freeze or going numb.
No matter how you felt when you read those first questions, the point is we all have needs. But when those needs don’t get met, we resort to fight, flight, or freeze (going numb). But as we have learned from the past couple blogs, we don’t want to live there anymore. We are taking the steps to heal and walk into lasting peace instead of throwing ourselves into coping behaviors to control what we can to find moments of happiness. So, now that we are here, what do we do if we do feel rejected or similar pain to what put those unhealthy thoughts and behaviors there? Let’s talk about it!
If I tell you the first step has to do with mindset and awareness, would you be shocked? Lol There is a definitely a recurring trend here on purpose.
The first step is to understand and be aware of the fact that we are ALL wounded people living in survival mode. We are all searching for peace, and confusing it with moments of happiness. And because of this, it is IMPOSSIBLE to find lasting peace in humans. We understand that if someone else is feeling triggered, they are going to react in their coping behaviors or feel like they have to protect themselves. It rarely ever has to do with you or your character. And we understand that we are all carrying a lot of baggage, so it’s hard to carry others as well. Which then leads me to my next step, checking our expectations.
If we are expecting others to meet our needs all the time, no matter their role in our life, we will always be hurt. And I believe the reason for this is to keep us looking for something that isn’t of this world. Because there isn’t a single thing in this world that will give us lasting peace. Eventually we get bored or hurt. We all have a desire to find hope and peace. To find something that will allow us to feel joy all the time. We run from pain because that’s what our flesh is designed to do, protect us. But now we run the second something even resembles pain or the moment something no longer brings us happiness. SO, we have to switch up our expectations. If we want to find lasting peace, we can’t look for it here on this earth. I know that not everyone listening to this is going be christian, but I haven’t found a SINGLE THING other than the hope that comes with Jesus and Heaven that allows me to have lasting peace. And I believe this is why we are never truly fulfilled here on earth. Because we weren’t created to want to stay here. We all have a desire to find that hope and peace that only experiencing God can bring. So, when we place our expectations on understanding who He TRULY is, we can finally feel love and peace. We can finally feel heard. We just have to get our hurts that are keeping us from believing we can be loved and seen out of the way. And we have to stop trying to seek it out from others.
And then the third thing we have to do is stop expecting people to ALWAYS let us down. Wait, what? Didn’t I just say that we need to stop expecting people to bring us peace? Yes I did! Lol When we are looking to people to give us lasting peace, we will be disappointed at some point. However, not everyone’s intentions are bad and not everyone is going to be malicious or put us down like others have in the past. When we stop expecting others to heal us by always meeting our needs and start allowing them to love us the best they can, while also understanding they are human, healing from our wounds can take place. Others may not be able to give you everything you need, but God can still use them to show you His love for you. IF YOU LET THEM! He does hear you and He does see you and often times He will use others to give you that love you are needing. But when we have a constant mindset and belief that we will always be disappointed, or our guard is constantly up just in case they do leave like everyone else has, we don’t allow Gods love or peace in. We want to be heard and seen but that belief that we won’t be keeps us from experiencing what that actually feels like.
I’d also like to add to that idea of our beliefs keeping us from experiencing our needs actually being met. And I believe I’ll dive more into this in the near future. But I want to speak to those who have experienced church hurt. As christians we put a lot of that same unhealthy expectation on the church and we forget that those that make up the church are also wounded humans with situations that need to be worked on. We think because the Bible talks about the importance of the church, that we need to put it higher up on a pedestal. And while yes, the church is a VERY important piece of experiencing God, it is not God. The foundation of your walk with God is YOU. Think about a marriage. What makes a marriage isn’t the officiant, the location you got married, the house you live in, the rings you wear, the kids you have, etc. It is the decision you make to devote yourself to that person. It is the actions you walk in daily or the things you no longer do because of that commitment. The same is true for the foundation of your relationship with God. The church is important, but it is not the foundation. And because the church is made up of wounded people, you cannot put them on a pedestal that only God should be on. And if you have been a part of a church that is not being led by the spirit like it should, you’re going to know. Not because of the congregation but because of the leadership. If you have been walking in your healing journey, you’ve had those honest conversations with yourself, those vulnerable conversations with the leadership, and you are still feeling like something isn’t right, then that may not be the church for you. A leadership that is leading in the spirit will challenge you at times but they should’t be putting you down or degrading you. But again, you have to be honest with yourself because sometimes we are just being sensitive with our wounds or have set our expectations too high. Even the most amazing pastor in the world is not God, so you can’t put them in that position. Rest assured though, that the healthier you get and the less control those wounds have over you, the more you will know if you are in the right place or not! And if you are someone who did experience church hurt and walked away from God because of it, I want to encourage you to understand that, again, church is not God. And sometimes it feels easier to walk away from something that challenges your ___________.
But now, let’s dive back into those questions I asked in the beginning. The only way you will still feel the same pain you’ve always felt after lowering your guard is if you still continue to search for lasting peace from the world. Pain will always come with being human. We will always experience some sort of hurt and have hard seasons. No-one is exempt. The difference that making these changes in our minds will bring is that we won’t stay stuck there. You won’t feel weighted down. That pain won’t define who you are any longer. And you will finally be able to feel peace through it. You will be able to feel love more from those who want to give it to you instead of only focusing on the ones who aren’t. (Read that again.) You will finally be able to know what it feels like to feel heard and seen. Your needs will start to feel important again. And because not only have our mindsets changed, but also our expectations, we will find that we aren’t always feeling disappointed.
Your guard is hurting you more than it helping you. I feel like it’s also important to remember that the intensity of the pain we feel when we are hurt depends completely on what we do with it. Did you know that physical pain is more intense when our eyes are closed? Same is true with emotional pain. You have to stare it in the face. Heal from it. Walk through it. But closing your eyes or trying to avoid it will only make it more intense and last way longer. I have the best birth analogy with this but then I would be here talking for another year! Lol
So, to answer that question, what happens if you get hurt again after lowering your guard? You overcome it. Because you can! Because as you walk in healing, you start having the awareness and understanding that you are who God says you are, not what your pain tells you that you are. You don’t allow yourself to avoid it or sulk in it. You take the time to understand that what happened may not even have anything to do with you. The awareness that healing brings will help you to not feel pain the same you did in the past. We will dive more into this as we work on diving deeper into healing, so make sure to stay tuned!
As always, reach out if you have questions! And I will see you next week!
