Have you ever felt like you were on a roller coaster ride? One minute you are feeling like you are floating on a cloud and the next you are so low you don’t know how you are going to make it through the day.
The reason for the ups and downs in our emotions is due to not acknowledging or dealing with past hurts and issues that have occurred in our lives. There are things that happened that absolutely were not your fault. This is very true. However, your response to this event could be the reason for the ups and downs now.
Many people have had experiences and just kept going. The idea is if I don’t think about it, I don’t have to deal with it, and it will eventually just go away. This is very far from the truth.
The truth is that it will come up again in a different circumstance with very much the same emotions. The same reaction with different players in the scene.
Think about what emotions come up for you over and over again just in different scenarios. Could it be?….
Insecurity
Anger
Rejection
Bitterness and unforgiveness
Depression
Suicidal thoughts
Jealousy
Desire to self-medicate through drugs or alcohol
Pornography / lust
Food addiction
Anorexia or bulimia
All of these indicate that there is some unresolved emotional event. It has been my experience that the first unresolved emotional event leads to the same pattern for any emotional pain after the first one. This begins to pile up until you find yourself on the roller coaster and not enjoying the ride.
Here is the good news! You do not have to keep going around on the ride. You can get off the ride right now! It’s not easy but it is simple. Here are a few suggestions:
Make a choice to let it go and forgive the person. (Again, not easy but necessary). This is turning your heart toward God and releasing the person and what they did to you. He knows how to take care of their consequences. This may be a 30-year old event. Holding it only keeps you in bondage not the person that did the act.
Forgive yourself. What? Forgive myself. YES!!! Why? Because there are times that people have done things and we kept allowing it by not saying anything to anyone. With many victims of abuse this could be due to fear of the loss of life or a threat to hurt your family member. Either way, you may feel guilty that you did not say something that could have stopped it.
Replace the messages. Many people have voices in their head playing negative messages over and over again from things they were told during the hurt or abuse. The way to replace these messages that is most effective is to write out Scriptures on index cards and read them out loud to yourself. The most powerful voice to you is your own voice. If you think about it that’s the one you listen to the most. I encourage you to go to Bible.com and put in fearfully and wonderfully made to go to Psalm 139. You can do this same process for health, joy, strength, victory and many other topics. The main point here is to REPLACE those old defeating messages.
Encourage yourself with Music. Almost everyone enjoys music. The music that tells you how valuable you are to God and others will begin to bring amazing changes in your life. If you go on YouTube you can go to the Search and type in Contemporary Christian or Gospel music.
Applying these few principles, you can begin to get off of the roller coaster ride and begin to have more peaceful and stable emotions.
I have other articles on my Blog at: thehealingminister.com/thehealinghub
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