Tedder's Blog, page 12
October 28, 2023
Getting Pushed Around By Emotions …
As survivors of abuse, experiencing powerful and destructive emotions can be alarming. Most of us have been derailed by our emotions at some point. Getting pushed around by very strong emotions is common among survivors…And while it can seem counterintuitive- Getting to know and making friends with our dark sides and destructive emotions can help us transform our pain. We can’t eradicate strong emotions but what we can do is learn to allow space for them, learn to understand them (what are they trying to tell us?) and ultimately respond to them in a different way. When we do this we reduce shame associated with acknowledging & processing powerful or uncomfortable emotions. We are like jigsaw puzzles in this way, we need both light and dark pieces to be whole.
B 
October 27, 2023
Fear Not Friday ~ Do you fear mystery?
As a child I lived more damaged days then good days. I did not like not knowing what was going to happen next. The next thing that was going to happen woulnd’t be good. I determined that as my rule of thumb.
I’m not sure I ever really broke that rule of thumb, but I’m learning to now.
What if the next thing to happen is amazing? What if there is not more junk in my future but happiness, a full life, and joy?
What a thought?
God is mysterious, isn’t he?
“The spiritual life cannot be made suburban,” said Howard Macey.
wild at heart, john eldredg
“It is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed.”
The greatest obstacle to realizing our dreams is the false self’s hatred of mystery. That’s a problem, you see, because mystery is essential to adventure. More than that, mystery is the heart of the universe and the God who made it. The most important aspects of any man’s world— his relationship with his God and with the people in his life, his calling, the spiritual battles he’ll face — every one of them is fraught with mystery. But that is not a bad thing; it is a joyful, rich part of reality and essential to our soul’s thirst for adventure.
Let the adventures begin!
October 26, 2023
A Ghost in Your Own Home
An abused child often feels like a ghost in their own home. They pass through its corridors, spectate on the sidelines, interacts (as best as they can) with the other people in the house… but they always feel like no one quite sees them.
For the abuser and neglected child, home is where you aren’t seen or heard. Home is the place you haunt.
And your parents only notice you when they want something from you. Not any other time.
When children get little or no affection and physical comfort, they are vulnerable to anyone who will give them attention. Sadly, they often they become sitting ducks for people who exploit them.
If you were an invisible child at home, know that you are not doomed to be forever invisible. Just because your parents lacked the intelligence, compassion, or just very basic human instinct of nurturing their young, that doesn’t mean you aren’t real, that you don’t matter, that you are unworthy.
Because you are worthy. As a human being, you have dignity. You matter.
We can heal! In time, we can learn to reparent ourselves and have the lives we were never afforded.
B
October 25, 2023
Words of Widsom | When My Best Isn’t Good Enough
I love knowing the God of the bible. He teaches me that I don’t have to “be enough.” That I don’t have to “be good.” That I am encouraged to cry, scream, break stuff if I need to. Why? So I don’t keep bottled up in me my confusion from the past, the hurt of yesterday, and the agony of today.
In Him, I am always enough. He fills my holes, bleeds into my broken places and speaks that joy will be with me in the morning.
When my best isn’t good enough, I rely on him!
October 24, 2023
God Made Everything
In the quiet of my new life, I have begun to understand a few things.
At a certain point in my healing journey, I realized – I am never alone.
This silence is alive with the unfolding of other lives and with the turning and movement of the Earth and the presence of God who oversees all things. His has made everything we touch, love and experience.
As I got better, I began to sense my connection to the world’s pain and my part in healing it.
I realized that my transformation of pain into love was an act of service for humankind.
By embracing my existence, I could bring courage to others to face their own pain and to acknowledge what it had to teach them.
We are connected, to each other and to the world. An unhealed life is a statement of our need to work together to heal the whole. It is an opportunity to refrain from turning away, separating our reality from the reality of others.
B
October 23, 2023
Miror Mirror | I Didn’t Know Better
Introspection — what better way to start a week.
A thought to ponder: When you’re taught evil, why would you know good?
I grew up in a house filled with destruction. The only good thing in that house was the thought that one day I could leave it. When that day came, I left with — OF COURSE, another abuser.
Why?
Because truly I didn’t know any better. It’s a sad thing to look back on. It has taken me years to unravel the intricate web of distaster left in my soul from my parents. This is by no measure a means to blame them for my mistakes, but it is a way to unweave that mess out of me.
Healing is the process of gathering good, eliminating the bad, and looking towards the future with hope. It’s not always easy. I struggle to remain in the positive all the time. Pain can still topple me for a minute but these days I rise to the occasion of leaving it behind much faster.
When we grapple with measures to kill the pain through overeating, alcohol, drugs and the many other distractions that leave us in the wave of more damage to outselves, remember that we can learn to do better.
Life is that process. So, if at first I don’t succeed, I will try again until I do.
I think an old dog can learn new tricks!
October 21, 2023
Trust the Process
One of the hardest parts of healing (and recovery) is trusting the process. Sometimes I get used to feeling so good that when negative emotions or anxiety creep in, I feel immediately frightened. After all, these very same emotions would’ve put me into a tailspin in the past or caused me to use drugs or any other number of destructive activities.
Allowing the experience to be there, just as it is, is not an easy task for anyone. But it’s especially hard for people who have been severely wounded in the past, who have come to distrust not only others but themselves as well.
Direction is more important than both speed and the placement of your feet. You have all the light you need for today, and tomorrow’s light will be given to you then. What you need comes through you when you need it most, not a moment sooner or later than it’s meant to.
You don’t need to understand the bigger plan or control everything, just make space for it all to unfold.
God has your back.
First and foremost, you are a child of God. You’re trying to make sense of the stars in you, and it’s a hard thing to do. You don’t need to understand why things happen or how you’ll ever feel better again. You can be confused, and be okay with being confused.
That acceptance happens one breath at a time. That’s your power.
B
October 20, 2023
Fear Not Friday
Make these declarations over your life today!
Forgiveness separates me from my abuser. I am not a liar. I know my story is true.My abuser is not stronger than I am.The best is still ahead of me!When I am weak, Jesus is my strength.October 19, 2023
Diabolical Love
Were you raised in an abusive family? Did selfish, abusive or sadistic parents sit at the head of your family table? Did evil permeate your daily childhood existence?
The price we pay to stay connected to our abusers is almost impossible to quantify. The immense burden of carrying around a family’s secrets is a weight so strong it will pull you straight to the bottom of a poisoned well. Once you are there…it is very hard to climb out of. For many, they stay, entombed in fear, living their life submerged, without breath, trapped.
When we are raised in these diabolical family systems, secrets become a fundamental part of the way we live.
We have to keep secrets from the monsters above us, and we have to hold on to their secrets too.
It was wrong then. It’s wrong now.
For you to move forward, to lift that weight off of your chest, you’re going to have to learn how to be honest about yourself, your life, and what you have experienced in the past.
The time for secret keeping is over. It’s time to tell your truth and to acknowledge what happened then, what’s happening now, and what’s going to happen to your tomorrow.
B
October 18, 2023
Words of Widsom | Get Intimate with Your Pain
Oh the time I spent courting and tending to my pain. It was with me as a lover, as an intimate friend. It was all I ever knew – once.
I served my pain with decadent (or not so decadent) food! Sometimes I would gorge myself with it for hours.
I would bring it wine and margaritas, the expensive kind!
I brought many suitors for my pain, too. Men of wealth, men of slumber – beautiful men and men of greed.
Oh, the agony of surrendering to my pain. Whatever it wanted, I used to allow.
Not so anymore.
Oh, I may be far away from anything that looks like a person that came from a loving, secure home. But, what I am not, is given to attract what suits my pain.
I sometimes believed that if evil, dark people had caused my pain, if I became more like them, my pain would ease up. They had all the power, right?
Wrong! I couldn’t have been more wrong.
All of these courting measures did ease the pain – in that moment. But, in the end, I was left with more pain. Pain that was now irritated, sometimes even exaggerated because of the measures I used to still it.
The other night I ran a bath and didn’t turn the water off for a long time. I needed to cry. I needed to spill out a bit more pain, some new pain.
I try to no longer serve my pain with dissociation, running wild or stuffing myself with food or alcohol.
Today, I am still with it or not so still – but with it. I feel it. I dislodge it before it can take residence. I’m not always happy these days, but I am peaceful.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
