Healing 2 - Lecture 1

• Formational Prayer is a ministry of the Holy Spirit, moving through the christian caregiver, brining the healing presence of Jesus Christ to the place of pain and brokenness.
• 1. A ministry of the Holy spirit
• 2. Moving through the christian caregiver
• 3. Bringing the healing presence of Jesus Christ
• 4. Into the place of pain and brokenness

Peter Levine – “Trauma is caused by a stressful occurrence that is outside of the range of usual human experience, and that would be markedly stressful to anyone.”

Robert Scaer – even what our culture defines as “normal” can significantly traumatize over time.

Alan Schore – trauma is anything that disrupts the normal development process.

Disorder functioning – the event leads to debilitation that significantly hampers a person’s ability to function.

Distort functioning – while the event has not disabled a person or hindered the ability to function, it has negatively influenced or distorted the way a person views and responds to aspects of life.

• 1. Withholding in childhood
• 2. Aggression in childhood
• 3. Stressful events
• 4. Betrayal
• 5. Long term duress

• 1. Withholding in childhood
• *Children desperately need love, security, safety, encouragement, nurturing, being welcomed.
• *Over 50% of people experience withholding in childhood

• 2. Aggression in a child
• *Such wounding affects how you view God, others and yourself. You react by believing, “I am not loveable, not worthy. There is something wrong with me.”
• *Over 50% of people experience aggression in childhood

• 3. Stressful events
• *E.g., a car accident, illness, prenatal events, a parent’s over-vigilance about possible danger.
• *Stressful events change the way we look at things.
• *When stressful events occur in childhood, they have greater impact

• 4. Betrayal
• *By the hands of people who abuse power, e.g., parents, pastors, teachers, police officers, counselors.
• *May cause one to make a destructive inner vow (e.g., “I will never trust anyone.”)

• 5. Long term duress
• The water torture of trauma over a long time in various ways.
• The drip, drip of the same statement repeated over and over (e.g., “You are stupid,” “Boys are more important than girls”) impacts at a traumatic level.

• 1. Developmental stage – at which the trauma occurred.
• 2. Temperament
• 3. Previous wounding or stressful experiences
• 4. Contextual factors
• 5. How it was handled by others
• 6. Meaning attached to the trauma

7. The security of the parent-to-child attachment bond – all experts agree this is the Number One Factor in how people respond to trauma!

• This is why caring for traumatically-wounded people must involve a caring community and the safe place where people can attach.

1a. Procedural Memory (Implicit)

2a. Semantic Memory (Declarative)

3a. Episodic Memory (Declarative)

1b. Images

2b. Feelings

3b. Senses

4b. Behaviors

5b. Meanings – that come from the experience; the conclusions we draw.

• a. Semantic/propositional truths do not heal episodic memories.
• *We may intellectually know that something from the Bible concerning the Christian life is true but we do not experience it as real.
• *You cannot trump an episodic memory with mere words (semantics).

• B. Episodic encounters with Jesus do heal
• *Example: to cast out anxiety, you need to experience Jesus’ perfect love and have an existential encounter with Jesus that includes the left brain (that is logical/sequential, rational, analytical, objective, and looks at the parts) AND the right brain (that is random, intuitive, holistic/synthesizing, subjective, and looks at the whole).
• *If you episodically experience something, you experience it as real.
• *A person needs an episodic experience/encounter with Jesus.
• *If you have new episodic memories with Jesus, then change and healing begins to happen.
• *We can go back with Jesus into all these five touch points of an experience. We can have a new episodic encounter with Jesus that can trump all our previous traumatic experiences.
• *The Body of Christ “becoming the Scripture text” for people and carrying the wounded on their shoulders is critically important. E.g., the church can become the father running to embrace the returning prodigal son or daughter.

• 1. Wound
• 2. Lies
• 3. Emotional Upheaval
• 4. Dysfunctional Behaviors
• 5. Life Situations

• Summary:
• Unaddressed wounds create a great deal of deep pain in a person’s life. They also often give shape to lies and distortions in the way people view themselves, others and God. These lies give birth to a significant amount of emotional upheaval that is debilitating and distracting. In an effort to control or kill that pain, hurting people adopt various dysfunctional behaviors as a way of coping with the pain they are experiencing. These behaviors are then employed in the appropriate life situation.