How I Survived Emotional Trauma

My world came crashing down when my fiance suddenly left me about 4 months before our wedding.  Since our wedding was supposed to be this week, I am both celebrating NOT getting married to a dubious and unhealthy person, and I'm also thinking about how I can help others survive emotional trauma.  It really sucks when someone breaks promises and messes up your plans.  It sucks even more when someone succeeds in fooling you into permanent choices.  I am SO GLAD I got out of that unhealthy situation.

Here are a few things I did to survive.

Phase One: Triage.

St. Patrick's Day has always been a day of sadness in our family.  My mom's brother died at home when she was 10, and it's been a day that depression has cast a shadow over things, for as long as I can remember.  My sweet mom does well in her fight against depression, but some days are hard for families, and this is one of them.  My ex-fiance knew this was a tough day for our family, and he picked this day to drop an emotional atomic bomb on us all.  He came over, while my mom was there, and broke up with me with a cold and calculated affect, and then just left.  A bad day got immeasurably worse.  Since she heard the whole thing, she was there with me (thank God!).  I somehow acted quickly, instead of collapsing in tears I picked up my phone and called my therapist (also a priest), and he said to come over right away.

Get Professional Help

I climbed in the car with my mom and we both went to see him at his office.  He gave some very practical advice: one foot in front of the other.  Day to day- keep going, keep eating, keep getting out of the house, be around people.  Clear away the unnecessary things and focus on the basics.  These first few days were hell on earth, but I got through them.

After a few weeks of not being able to sleep and losing my appetite, I also went and got some help from a doctor.  Do not be tricked into shame if you need help in this way!  You will deal with your issues so much more effectively if you aren't crippled by anxiety and depression!  These mental illnesses steal your ability to heal.  Do not think it's pathetic or weak to need help.  Doctors are for the sick.  They want to help you get better.

Tell People you Trust

Before this, I had been very private and guarded with my personal issues.  But when this happened, I felt like I had nothing to hide.  I took what could have been a lot of false shame, and turned it back on the person who really was in the wrong.  I needed to talk about it.  I talked, and talked, and talked, cried, and talked some more.  I reached out and my friends took me into their homes, gave me tea and Kleenex, and just sat and listened.  One dear friend came and slept in my bed with me like we were 15.  Another took me to a movie.  A male friend offered to "take care of this person".  Each friend offered his or her strengths, in their own ways.  I never knew so many people cared until I reached out.

Make Yourself a Priority

Growing up as a Christian, putting others first was always a message I heard.  This is a good and true thing, no doubt.  But when someone is sick, that person needs care.  When that person is you, it is okay to be a little selfish.  Make healing and self-care your priority.  No one else can feel what you are feeling, so it's okay to "befriend" yourself.  Listen to your body.  Listen to your emotional needs.  I went to work every single day after this happened, except for one afternoon.  I couldn't stop tearing up at work, so I gave myself permission to go home and go to bed and cry.  I resisted the urge to feel guilty for "skipping out".  For the most part, everyone totally understood and told me it was okay to take the time I needed!  And you know what?  The world didn't end.  I benefitted from it, and so did people around me.

Stay Close to Jesus

For a while there, I was at daily mass often, weeping as quietly as possible.  One time I asked the secretary to let me into the church...and I just laid on the ground at the altar rail and wept.  If I ever needed Jesus, it was then.  I went to mass, went to confession, talked to my priest in his office, and made use of every good thing the Church has to offer.  Do not neglect prayer and the sacraments.  They are your lifeline.


Phase 2:  Finding a Steady State

Forced Social Interaction

I am a person who enjoys being at home.  I am an introvert.  I'd rather lie in bed and type on the computer (like I'm doing now!) than go out and meet friends at a bar.  But during this time, I noticed my patterns of despair.  Being alone made it easier to fall into darkness and hopelessness, so I forced myself out in the world.  I would get off from work and head to Starbucks.  I sat there, sometimes for hours, and talked to people online on my phone, on Twitter, and silly social websites.  I was involved in a Christian Chat room on Paltalk.  Although these seem silly, I found support from real people (online and offline) that helped me through day to day life through light conversation.

When I was ready, I reactivated my dating profile.  I got lots of people messaging me, and a few I messaged back.  Those early messages were along the lines of "I've just been through some hard stuff and I need sometime...thank you so much for writing me and I hope we can correspond in the future".  I didn't feel I was as ready as I thought, and I was careful to be honest about that with well-meaning young men who messaged me.  There was one man who messaged me that I didn't write back for quite some time, and when I did, we cautiously corresponded for a few weeks before meeting up.  After a few dates where he was "sure I didn't like him", I had to admit to him that I had been engaged and had it abruptly end in a traumatic way.  He was so patient and kind, I'm so glad I was honest with him, because he's now my boyfriend.  It takes time, but I was determined to get back out there and not let my ex control me through fear all men would be like him.  I couldn't let him win.

Writing

An examined life is a life well lived.  I am a huge fan of journaling.  It doesn't have to be perfect, or consistent, or even good.  I fall into the trap of wanting everything to be nice and neat when I write, but this time I did not have the energy to care.  I wrote, I cursed, I screamed my words onto the paper.  And then I threw it away.  Journaling was a life-saver for me because I could try to make sense of what I was feeling and get it out in a totally safe, non-judgemental way.  As a therapist once told me:  "You can't hurt the paper's feelings."

Good Habits

I found solace in my schedule.  I made some habits which wouldn't work long term, but at the time they comforted me.  I stopped making coffee at home and stopped at Starbucks every morning on the way to work.  I saw the same people everyday.  They learned my name.  I told some of the baristas what happened to me.  We made a connection, and it felt good.  Every Saturday morning I deposited my check in the bank.  Every Sunday after church I'd go to Tom's Diner with my friends.  Make a solid routine and it acts like a healthy anchor.

I also kept teaching my fitness classes at the gym.  Working out is an amazing way to be healthy and combat depression.  Even though I wasn't always 100 % up to par in my classes, just having them happen every week was magic to me.

Phase Three: Acceptance and Forgiveness

I am working on this phase right now.  When I am further along, I will be able to comment more.  But for now, believe that you can keep going!


I am a survivor.  I am still going.  I am not completely healed yet, but I wanted to tell my story of hope.  Do not let fear stop you.  When something awful happens, you have to keep moving.  To stop moving is to die.  Everyone has a different set of things that help, but you must remember that you are more resilient than you think you are.  Keep going, no matter what!  Health is a choice you must make, or you will end up like the people who hurt you.  Now that you know how terrible it feels, you don't want to do that to anyone.  No one deserves to be abused or mistreated.

I want you to have hope that things can be survived, and you can come out on the other side full of life and even BETTER than you were before this awful thing happened to you.  You can't see it now, but keep going.  You will get there.  We will get there, together.

Extreme Unction

There are 7 sacraments offered by the Roman Catholic Church.  Baptism, Confirmation (Chrismation), the Eucharist, Confession, Holy Orders, Matrimony, and Anointing of the Sick.

This last one has a shroud of mystery around it to many people, and conjures up images of a priest visiting a dying person in the hospital, giving Last Rites and all that.  The idea is that a person must be at death's door to receive this rite.  While this may have been the practice for some time, the teaching of the church is that this sacrament is offered to anyone who is suffering from a serious illness, in hopes that the person may be healed physically and spiritually.  Through the ministry of the priest we remember that Jesus touched many sick people and healed them.  A person need not be dying to get this sacrament.

I received this sacrament a while back, and I wanted to tell my story.  I was skyrocketing toward marriage, making wedding plans with a date and priest meetings and designing a ring and making a list of wedding invites.  Everything was moving along.  It was finally happening for me.  Then the young man I was to marry threw a wrench in it all.

"I'm not sure if we should be together".

These words shattered my peace and life trajectory.  I was so devastated that I couldn't focus on anything else.  For three weeks I agonized, cried myself to sleep at night, and was so worried about the back and forth things he was saying that I became severely depressed.

I asked my confirmation sponsor (then a deacon) what I should do, and he suggested anointing of the sick.  I was worried I'd be judged for wanting this when I wasn't dying or even physically ill.  I had a million excuses in my head about why I shouldn't ask for this, and that I was silly or just wanted attention.  But my deacon friend assured me this is why the sacraments exist: for the people who need them.  He made me an appointment with his Jesuit superior.

I showed up to his office like a kid sent to the principal.  (I'm always like this when I'm nervous).  I went inside, and gingerly told him what was going on, that I had no peace, and desperately wanted Jesus to help me.  He listened like the kind and wise man that he is, and gave me the rite.  He said some prayers out of the book, and anointed my hands and my head with oil.  After it was over I thanked him and left.

Did I feel different?  Honestly, no.  I figured it was a passing thing; another sacrament I could mark off the list.  I still felt depressed.  I was still filled with dread that my engagement was going to end.  I went home from my trip not knowing what to expect.  It was only then that I really came to know the power of this sacrament.

My fiance blindsided me with a two-by-four style hit.  He broke up with me out of the blue after assuring me of his love and that everything was fine.  I was so shocked that I didn't cry.  I was living on the edge of a surge of anxiety and adrenaline for months.  I couldn't sleep, eat, or relax.  My life was constant tears and a drive for survival that rivaled The Fugitive or Rocky.

I didn't see the miracle in all of this until so much later.  Over the course of my journey into the Catholic Church, I ditched a lot of unhealthy habits and thought patterns that weren't serving me and were making me miserable.  I started on a journey to healthy thinking and dealing with stress and anger in much better ways than I'd done for years.  The great part is this: instead of collapsing into despondency like I'd done before when awful things happened, I held onto Jesus.  I clung to the Church as my lifeboat.  I wanted nothing more than to get away from this awful person who did this and be with healthier people who loved me and didn't want to harm me.  Coming from a cycle of abuse in my relationships with men, this was huge.  Something major had changed in me.  I think it had a lot to do with this Anointing of the Sick.

Who knows what might have happened if I didn't come to Jesus in this way?
We will never know.  But it is clear to me that nothing harmful came out of receiving this sacrament.  I needed Jesus in an ever-increasing way, and I was so happy to be near Him however I could.  Like my patron saint, Amelia of Temse, I was determined to cling to Jesus with broken arms, even when a man tried to drag me away from Him.

So I encourage you to pray about this Sacrament.  If you need healing and it's serious, ask your priest!  I know some priests are more willing to do this than others, but it can't hurt to ask.  Jesus wants to comfort you and unite with you in your suffering.  The Church is there for you.  Take advantage of the incredible grace we have offered to us in her sacraments.  I fully believe that my trauma would have been much worse if I hadn't done this.  God indeed works in mysterious ways.

It is as if all the tears and knots and wounds unmended are twisting into a rope around my head and heart, today.  I am dizzy from allergies, swimmy headed from funny sleep patterns and coughing fits.  I am flooded with memories, fears, taunts, and worries from years past.

I do not know why I was under such attack yesterday.  From every angle. Insecurity, issues regarding trust and pastors, the Evangelical church and friendship, jealousy, sexual temptation both in kind and jealous despair, sadness over the terrible state of our sinking culture, and a mind that can't focus or remember. Plus, I was supposed to getting married in a few weeks.  It's all a blur.  A blur of blues and the sun hurting my eyes.

I am here, but I am terrified.
I am terrified, but I am Yours.
You are contractually obligated to take care of me.

These are old hurts.  The temptation is rage against myself instead of stepping into healing is an old one.  I am old.  I am weary.  But I notice how less inclined I am to run from God.  It is all I can do sometimes to cry and realize that things haven't gone my way and He's all I have left. I think that's a good place to be.

Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!

Healed in Jesus' Name

Today I saw this type of thing on Facebook (don't all things happen on Facebook?) -

Post in a Christian Group: 

"Hi I'm struggling with anxiety and PTSD and depression.  I haven't been to therapy and I'm not taking meds, but I really am so down and can't work and don't know what to do."

Comments:

"Prayers."

"I'm so sorry to hear that.  Praying for you."

"Oh I'm so sorry."

"In Jesus' name you are healed."

...wait.  What?

Yes, this is a typical response from a lot of Evangelical types, in my expirience.  I heard this all the time, growing up.  It went somewhere between the "psychology is the work of Satan" discussion and the "Too blessed to be depressed!" sign.  

Mental health and suffering are controversial and suspicious topics in the modern church world.  Some people fear what might be lurking below a murky surface of depression and gloom.  Could it be demons?  Could it be a lack of trust in God?  Whatever the cause, the response inevitably comes to this - 

"By His stripes you are healed!"

I realize that I had a weird mix of Southern Baptist down-home religion, Calvinist catechism, and charismatic teenage schooling.  These give me a very unique perspective and outlook, much of with is actually healthy nowadays.  I also would like to comment that I know many, many Evangelicals who address mental health in a realistic way and promote the dignity and worth of each person suffering.  But on the other hand, I knew many and have read many rants and "warnings" from people who don't know the difference between depression and demonic possession.  In their eagerness to help people be free, they treat real illness as a state of mind at best, and a surrender to the works of the devil at worst.  They say a lot of unhealthy things.

"In Jesus name, you are healed".  

YES.  We are healed in Jesus' name.  But until recently, I thought that pronouncement was the end of it.  "Healing" was a vague and daunting term.  It was a term of shame for what I couldn't have.  It was a term that meant I needed to find something, some esoteric spiritual thing that I had no clue about.  I shoved me deeper into depression when I felt that Jesus was out of reach because I couldn't feel Him, and that I somehow didn't do whatever hidden thing I needed to do to get His healing.

What is real healing?

Real healing is a restoration of what we are truly meant to be. 

When a bone breaks, it is set into the shape of a non-broken bone to be healed.

When a person has the flu, healing is being rid of the disease and restoration to a non-influenza state. 

When our minds are depressed, healing looks like correction of the mental and physical things which make us depressed.  We cannot approach a disease which is both mental and physical and say that we only can approach it spiritually.  To do so is a disservice to Jesus.  Especially we use His name as some sort of magic word to heal the person.  

Healing comes from many different sources, people, and methods.  We can be healed by correcting our unhealthy thinking.  Or by getting out of a bad and unhealthy situation.  When I recently experienced an emotional trauma, my anxiety got so bad that it was hard for me to sleep, eat, or go to work.  I found healing by getting away from the unhealthy person.  I went to church often. I journaled, prayed, and read the Bible.  I met with good, healthy people, including my priest and a therapist.  I also went to the doctor and got some medicine for the physical side of my anxiety.  All of these were healing.  And all of these good things were from Jesus.  We ARE healed in His name.  But it isn't a magic phrase that makes it happen...it's faith, action, and a desire for health.  

Don't be tricked by the enemy into further despair because a phrase or mere belief doesn't heal you.  Go find your healing using that beautiful mind and heart and body that God gave you.  He gave you friends, a Church, books, doctors, and medicine to help you.  There IS help available.  Don't' give up. 

Saint Amelia's Day 2017

You have crowned the year with your kindness. Your footsteps will drip with fruitfulness

I am living in the days of true redemption. I am seeing God's goodness in the land of the living.

Not too long ago, many of you will remember, I was in great heartache.

A broken engagement, a bit of gaslighting and a lot of tears and suffering. I had just become Catholic, was on my way to marriage, and two months into it all, it came crashing down. What I thought was going to be the best year of my life quickly became what seemed the darkest time, in a matter of about an hour. I was devastated.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; (2 Cor.4:8-9)

Yet God was hard at work.  We can't see it through our tears, but He is always at work.  We must believe it.  We must keep going.

Through weeks of crying myself to sleep every night, I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower.  I went to work.  I went to mass instead of eating lunch.  At one point I was lying in the empty church against the communion rail, pouring my heart out to Jesus in the tabernacle.  I couldn't go home.  I wanted to be near Him.  

I forced myself to be with people, to reach out to people.  I never knew so many people loved me...people at my church, at my job, at the gym...they all took me in and loved me, letting me come over, sleep in their guest rooms. Giving me tea and hankies.  They just loved me.  It was exactly what I needed.  In my weakest moment, I discovered the love of God through other people.  In my brokenness I beheld the goodness of the Lord.

St. Amelia (Amalberga) of Temse

My patron/confirmation saint is St. Amelia of Temse.  She's so hipster, that you probably haven't heard of her.  She lived in the 700s in Flanders, and was on her way to becoming a nun.  She was totally sold out to God.  But there was a man hell-bent on destroying her plans.  Enter: Charlemagne.  He was quite taken with her beauty, and made every effort to tempt her away from Christ.  It even came to the point where she was lying on the floor, prostrate in front of the tabernacle, and Charlemagne tried to drag her off.  He pulled her arm so hard that he broke it.  

I can't imagine the devastation of that moment for Amelia.  A powerful, rich, handsome man trying with all his might to literally take her from Jesus.  Shattering pain that probably had her feeling helpless, not knowing what he'd do next.  But Jesus stepped in.  What happened next is lost to history, but we do know that Charlemagne changed his mind.  He repented, and left her alone.  She was healed, and God restored what her heart desired.  No one could take her from Jesus. 

Why now?  Why do I speak of this now?
Well, I had no idea what was in store for me when I chose Amelia as my very own saint.  Her name (my name!) and her story captured my attention.  I was molested at church, much like Amelia.  I feel that man and others have tried to take me from Jesus.  But I had no idea the drama that was going to unfold just after I became Catholic.  Like Amelia, my dreams were shattered.  My body racked with pain.  My heart broken. It was hard to see through tears.  But I, like Amelia, clung to Jesus.  And ever shall.  

Yesterday was the feast of Amelia.  My first saint day as a Catholic.  And yesterday, God revealed in my heart the incredible work He's doing.  There is so much grace and healing He's poured out on me!  Not only healing for this year, this hurt...but past ones as well!  I am absolutely astounded at all He's doing.  And all through hurt.  No tears are ever wasted!

About 6 weeks after my ex-fiance left me, I met Hunter.  It is a grace I do not deserve, and could not have imagined.  But this young man kneels next to me, says our Catholic prayers with me, receives Jesus with me, and stands as witness to the grace and goodness of God.  Do not ever doubt the power of restoration!  As we celebrated St. Amelia's Day yesterday, sweating in matching colors on our picnic in the Texas July sun, I marveled at all God has done.  Thanks be to God for his goodness.  

halfway round

You said there was a fire

and standing at the casement, I plunged headlong into the Night

Calling down help from every avenging angel

Bent on saving every kind soul to the light

But Lo, upon the Hill, a quieter flame has dawned

Beyond the confused night, silent as the stars

Gracious and polite, a pin-hole of glory

To infernos unseen, resting upon my forehead

In a sweep of oil, a whispered blessing

You said there was a fire

But no one is running; no one is afraid

Instead beckoned out of my panic into the snow

Through a silent piney woods

To a glowing window, a sturdy door

Into your arms on a settee, wrapped in warm quilts

And gazing into a crackling fireplace,

Complete with a pot of tea.

It seems a distant memory, my smokey lad,

To think that something else could have ever existed

Beyond this room,

This comfort, this Church, our books,

A sleeping dachshund, and you

and me.

*6 Months as a Catholic, July 8th, 2017.
Thanks be to God.