Out of vital self-preservation, I hardened my heart to my birth parents many years ago. I had to stop their ability to hurt me by stopping all need & desire for their love & approval. I had to learn to be my own loving father & mother to ensure that I'd get my needs met. I also learned at an early age to internalize every scrap of healthy love I got from others. I managed to largely stop the bleed at the time & learn to love & parent myself somewhat, but I carried that for too long. This led me to my second husband, & you've read what a disaster that was. I sold myself out to 10 years of abuse to obtain a little father type love that was on the healthy side. In that, he was very good to me & helped me. As a man & husband, he was an abusive disaster. That's one of the problems with not healing, releasing, & clearing your emotions & past pains. It also leads to the creation of new wounds. Now I'm so hurt that I never want another man in my life, & my sexuality & sense of self as a female is damaged more than ever before, so there's another important phase of healing still to do. I've forgiven my father & mother now. My heart is no longer hardened. But I've carried the emotional scars from my childhood with my mother for so long now & it's so pervasive that I'm still not sure it's all healed. Every time I think it is from all the progress, something else comes up. The lifelong abuse & betrayal has controlled most of my life & choices, so it permeates all aspects.
I'm doing all the emotional work presented to me as soon as it's presented, & it's not so bad. Most of it is another aspect of that old theme & I faced the worst demons of it long ago. All the work is so worth it, even facing the worst starting in 1991 when I first uncovered my hidden memories. The abuse had been so bad that I'd buried the memories until then (& I was born at the end of 1955). It controlled me until I confronted the memories & did the initial work. My daughter, born in 1981, suffered because I was being controlled at times rather than in control. That's the thing - until we heal, our reactions are controlled by our past. We can learn to override our reactions, but that's more work than facing the hurts & healing. It's also work that never stops & although it seems like the need to heal is never going to stop, there's always progress.
When you heal you don't repeat past mistakes or patterns that didn't work. You learn to take control of your life & that you are indeed the one in control. Things quit "just happening" to you & you start controlling the outcome to the point of amazingly beautiful results. It transforms your whole life, from the inside out. You learn to really love & forgive yourself & to expect & accept great things in your life, & you get them. So healing our emotions is totally worth all the the work & pain or discomfort involved. Truly, & I would know as I've healed greatly from some of the worst. Not only does your life change, but you begin to affect others around you in better ways - loved ones, friends, those we help & encounter.
I once had a doctor who lost a dear friend to complications of uncontrolled diabetes. She used to threaten me to watch my diet! I always felt like a failure, so after a visit I'd console myself with a sugar binge. Her threat was to send me to an Endocrinologist & put me on insulin shots. When it finally came to that I was petrified. Turns out going on insulin was not nearly as bad as I'd thought & the Endocrinology office was the best thing to happen to me. They know we're human so they educated us on our choices to empower us! And insulin finally put me in control of my numbers & I got my diabetes under control just in the nick of time before I'd done permanent damage to any organs. If she'd handled things differently, I would have gone to the specialist & on insulin long before I did. Counselors who have unhealed emotions color their therapy & can really do damage to someone in their care. That's another one I know from experiencing it, unfortunately. Any kind of healer, leader, teacher, guide, or person of influence or prominence who isn't healed adversely affects others. Just look at how kids look up to sports figures who then rape, do drugs, or have DUIs - then parents have to do damage control. You can't have a continuing positive effect on yourself or others if you haven't done your emotional healing work, or truly move forward with your life. It certainly gets in the way of doing the work God has for you, too. Next, how to do it.
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