Healing is linked to accepting love. Love, often taking the form of mercy, is what enables us to bare all that we carry. So often we carry our wounds all alone and hide parts of ourselves from everyone, including God. It’s as if we believe we need to be completely put together to be worthy of love. Healing involves taking the opposite approach; one that soothes the origin of the wound by inviting love right into the places where we feel the least lovable.

We must reset ourselves with a loving embrace. Allowing ourselves to receive this embrace can be incredibly challenging. Our shame protects us by making us hide our most vulnerable parts. But it also keeps us locked in a prison of pain. Because we often aren’t equipped to make sense of our wounds when they happen, our brain creates a narrative, about ourselves and others, in order to cope. This narrative can block others from entering the story to transform it from within.

It can be like a template running in the background waiting to be triggered. This neurobiological reality can be transfigured when we move from being swallowed by our pain to observers of our pain. A loving witness is what allows us to make that shift. As we bring others (Christ, good confessor, good therapist, safe friends/family) in to comfort and love us through these moments, we are able to bare the pain and experience a new story. We can install our true identity as a child of God, one who is constantly receiving his love as medicine. Reconnection is the cure when we feel torn apart.

“I am wrestled from my dreary individuality and discover that I am “consubstantial” with the heart-rending experience of all humans…Our fallen state is not something closed in on itself. Despair turns to hope. Someone has descended into our hell to make the light shine” – Olivier Clément

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* The information provided is for self-enrichment and not intended to replace any necessary mental health treatment.⁣

Warmly,

Jonathan Dixon, LMFT

Alpha Omega Team