Trauma? Ignore it!

The David Alliance

Garth Heckman

The David Alliance

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My best Ty… he can tell me anything.. .meaning he can call me fat, slow, a jerk… and its all good. I get it. But If I tell my wife or any of the women in my life something as simple as “you look a little frumpy…” it’s hell to pay.

So what gives…

A Yugoslavian proverb states: tell the truth and run.

Men internally have a better coping mechanism to deal with their guy friends when they get heckled or picked on. They simply joke back, or subtly admit to it…
hey Garth quit being such a cry baby, you wuss.

And I would shrug and go yea… I am kinda being a little girl about this.

My best friend last month face timed me so I could do some online personal training for him. I took my shirt off to show him how to move the cable across his body and how to activate the proper pictorial muscles… long story short he called me the next day (he lives a day away) and said I look big as ever, but I’ve got a bigger belly than he has ever seen on me… now believe it or not, I do have reasons why that is - and its not fat. But long story short I was not mad, chippy or did I give it any thought… I just laughed and said yea its my life now. I think I even joked back and said “but at least im still ugly”.

Rabbit trail…

If mom is on high alert, you will grow up on high alert, anxiety, depression, self doubt, condemnation etc… it will be what you eat daily and you will later on in life continue to feed on it.

Trauma can be ignored… or better said “can be normal” if you see it as an outside stimulus that you get to choose how to respond to.

Ever hear someone screaming at someone and their phone rings and they turn into a totally different person? They are choosing (on their own) how to respond to that stress or trauma. They are choosing to make that issue they are yelling at something they feel like they control. Or better yet, they feel like they can control it by a negative response. People will say well I couldn’t help it he made me angry… no not really - you chose to get angry over it.

How did Jesus handle pain, regret, stress, anger… etc… well he ignored it… by that I mean he turned to what was in control / or should I say who was in control. - the Father, his father, our father. God the Father. We say oh yea of course… but we don’t do that until it is our last option. We do not ignore it (burying it and not talking about it is not ignoring it… it will show up in our life somehow, eating, drinking, shopping, outbursts etc…) we chew and brew on it, we combust over it, we overreact to it, we anger over it. But if we went to who was in charge knowing full well that he wants the absolute best for us… we can bring it to him and ignore it from there on. In the garden of Gethsemane he is under a ton of stress, but no one knows… he does not tell anyone or act out. He goes to the father and when his prayer time is over, he heads out to face the executioner.

Again, its not that we don’t feel it, we just choose not to react to it, we go to the father.

You may say, yeah but what about when Jesus got angry and tipped over the tables and chased out the tax collectors and people in the temple. Well, he did not react, he responded. He knew his fathers heart and he chose to show his Fathers displeasure. He angered and sinned not as scripture says. Whats the difference for us? We do not go to the father first. God might indeed tell us to get angry in a Godly way - but only if we go to him first and not just react angrily. There is a lot of nuance here but I know you get it.

There is another world out there, and its in this one. Paul Elard

I would ask which one does your mind live in.