Healing is Feeling

Yesterday, I heard someone talking on social media. They were wondering whether getting angry would put them in some kind of spiritual danger or make them vulnerable to the “devil” or evil.

Religion has tried to indoctrinate us with the idea that emotions are dangerous or harmful or a waste of time. We were taught to bypass our emotions by using platitudes such as “God is in Control,” etc. Because we felt that we could not trust our feelings or emotions, we developed a fair amount of trauma by stuffing them down.

Because we didn’t allow our bodies to communicate with us and inform us of repressed trauma and memories, we developed dysfunctional communities and injured each other religiously.

The last 100 years has brought much information about mental health and how are our bodies interact with our trauma response. Even though we now have a much more complete understanding of how all this works together and how to get better, religious institutions still tend to ignore this vital information.

Doing the hard work of healing our trauma takes honesty, vulnerability, and leaning into the pain. It is hard work, it takes time, and it requires that we acknowledge honestly what we are feeling. Then, when we are present with the part of us that is wounded, we have a good chance of living effectively integrated lives.

Denying what we feel only prolongs the misery.

Most worship services leave little to no time for personal interaction and listening to others. Only certain emotions are acceptable and it is expected that we respond in a certain way. Worship services are designed to manipulate our emotions instead of exploring and acknowledging the ones we are repressing.

Instead of listening to sermons and worship bands, we need to be listening to each other.

This is what I believe changes the world.

Be where you are

Be who you are

Karl Forehand