Have you ever been in a season of life where you felt like shutting down? Maybe things got so bad or overwhelming that you had no other choice to survive but to turn yourself off. I realized that my TILT series came to a dramatic halt, I stopped writing TILT, and now I realized why. Not only was it too painful, the trauma I had stored in my body had no words. I was shamed and shunned into silence. And I was emotionally and relationally cut off whenever I attempted to assert myself, use my words, say “NO,” or be different from what people wanted to use me for their pleasure.
When people are manipulated you for years to do what you were not designed for, a God-given emotion you experience is anger. When you are repeatedly forced to do the opposite of what God created you to do, the contempt, hatred, and rage you feel inside is beyond words. But when you’re only a young child, and your mouth is only used to violate what God made it for, you have to do something to survive. When your words are ignored, and you get threatened or shamed or shunned for attempting to stand up for yourself and only be used for what God made you for, you have to do something to survive trauma. I learned to pretend I didn’t feel mad. I learned to only show “good” feelings. I learned to perform and people please. I learned to not be different and not be me. I lost my voice. I shut down.
The hardest part for people to understand about trauma is that your learned coping mechanisms tell you a great deal about what’s important to you. God designed us to live in close relationship with Him and with our loved ones. Nothing feels worse than the loneliness of feeling rejected, shamed, shunned, or treated like you don’t even exist. The pain of loneliness can kill you, and you’ll do anything to avoid feeling this awful feeling. When your loved ones are angry and disappointed if you don’t please or perform for them, and you don’t want to be or feel cut off from them, you have to do something to prevent living in loneliness or feeling awful just for wanting to be you.
People who do emotional cut offs use and abuse emotions to manipulate those around them to please and to perform for them. The only way to survive cut offs is to stop being different and stop being the way you are. We are so wired to be relational beings and have emotional connections, that we do the opposite of what we’re made for just so we can have social emotional connectedness.
If you’re oppositional in nature, you’re saying, “Hell no!” You put up a fight and argue your way through life using your anger and strong will to create space and distance from those who are trying to control or manipulate you. You establish a “separate self” that no one can touch or mess with, but then you also feel alone because you’re not accepted for being different and being you. And you feel incredibly alone. Sometimes it feels like a clash of clans in your own home, school, or workplace. Whether you’re more compliant or oppositional in nature, cut offs kill. Your cut offs or the cut offs of those you live with. And then we wonder why we have intimacy problems.
Blogs are supposed to be short, and by now you have may have enough fuel to go light yourself or someone else on fire. But I want you to remember that we’re all in the process of recovery from something. Be patient with yourself and with those around you. Allow yourself and others all the time that is needed for God to do his inner and relational healing. He’s called us to be ministers of reconciliation. And in order for us to be used by God to help others, we must first deal with our own woundedness and position ourselves for God to heal us. He’s listening to your internal dialog right now, and His arms are wide open inviting you to come to Him with all those difficult feelings and memories. He desires to give you what you need the most. And best of all, the LORD won’t cut or shut you off from Him! Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ.