on trauma: When we are traumatized by someone or many someones, especially using spiritual abuse, our first desire is to be believed, for the actual events and our trauma attached to it to be affirmed as something that did indeed happen.

/1

Discounting or skepticism about our abuse story, especially in the face of actual evidence to support it, just adds further trauma, a betrayal of the existence of our experience. Ignoring our story, especially by friends, sides with the abuser and destroys trust as well.

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Especially if your abuse involved gaslighting, invalidation of your reality, the instinct is to scream BELIEVE ME! But to try to convince people that your story is true is triggering because you’ve previously been convinced that your perceptions and senses aren’t correct.

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So once you realize that what you’ve been experiencing is all sorts of wrong, you test the waters in safe spaces. You tell a little bit and gauge the reaction. Are you believed? Are you validated? Are you understood? If not, you cut off that person/space. They are not safe.

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But it is rare for the entire story to come out at the beginning. You don’t have the language. You don’t know who is safe. Your brain is jumbled with manipulation from being told you are the problem, especially if that is woven in with faith language and guilt.

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Which makes the role of those you first tell so important. They hold in their hands your trust, your plea not only for help, but for validation and support that your experience was wrong and not anything like Jesus.

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So when you go to them, and instead of validation and support, you receive aggression and intimidation, blame and skepticism, orders and directives, manipulation and spiritual mish-mash all in an attempt to use you to achieve their own objectives, it is a deep, deep trauma.

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I don’t know my specific point in this thread other than to say that I was convicted in my study this morning in Matthew 6 that it’s not my job to convince anyone that I’m telling the truth. God knows the truth. And he has me today. He always has.

/8

I am not worried about tomorrow, whether people will open their eyes or not, whether they will soften their hearts or repent. That’s not my job. But what is my job is to speak the truth. And that I’ve done. And will keep doing, as my healing progresses.

/9

I have no ill will toward @daveramsey despite the damage he and his team have wrought in my life and the lives of my children. And no, Dave, I don’t owe you loyalty. My integrity isn’t worth all the money you have. I’ve been consistent about that.

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I pray for the people there. For their hearts to be seared with the truth. For the scales to fall from their eyes. For the compassion of Jesus to live within them such that they will hear the stories of the wounded sheep and look to the shepherd instead of to the wolf.

/end

Addendum how my brain perceives levels of support for someone in trauma.