How do you change? 

If you’ve asked this question, you’re not alone. 

There are several things you need for change to occur, but here are three basic starting points: 

1. Securely attached relationship where you’re free to fail.
2. A regularly scheduled time for the activity, behavior, or feelings that you want to change to be engaged.
3. You need to describe and understand your current pattern and what you want it to become.

Things that get in the way of change.

When you have a lot of trauma, you see the world and choices through the lens of life or death. You’ll often be hyper-vigilant or become paralyzed with analysis because you don’t know what choice to make. What if you make the wrong choice? That wrong choice will feel like the end of the world. So you freeze because the end of life is very scary. 

All this means is that you need care, love, grief, and a safe place to process the pain you’ve experienced. But this doesn’t happen all at once.

This is another hallmark of people with trauma. They look for the quick fix, a solution right now, or an experience that will change them in one moment. The issue is that trauma has damaged the brain in such a way that the components responsible for executive functioning aren’t developed and strong enough. This leads to emotional immaturity, extreme highs and lows with no control or regulatory ability over them. 

To heal this, the process is both physical and spiritual in nature because they are inseparably linked to each other. You are a soul, an eternal being interwoven with the fabric of physical reality.

To grow the components of the brain for a highly fulfilled, stable, and functional person you need to be in a healing process with a counselor or psychologist who specializes in trauma. Change is possible because I’m one example. But the journey is slow, not quick. Yet it yields the peaceful fruit of faith, hope, love, fulfillment, and purpose by those who have been trained by it. 

Hope and help

Three really good books that changed my perspective and began my journey to heal and change are:

1. Anatomy of the Soul by Dr. Curt Thompson
2. Power of the Other by Dr. Henry Cloud
3. The Wounded Heart by Dr. Dan Allender

I’d recommend starting with Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson.

Change is possible. Finding the life, inner peace, and fulfillment you long for is possible. But it is found on the least likely road you want to travel because it involves pain and suffering. Once you’ve traveled the road, though, you’re no longer scared of pain and suffering because you’ve been with Christ in his darkest hour of crucifixion. Yet, this also paves the way for your heart to also experience the resurrection of Christ and the hope of redemption!

Don’t give up hope, no matter how evil has assaulted your heart.