Healing the Unresolved

Today’s podcast addresses an issue that many people struggle with. As a result of traumatic or painful experiences, we often have unrealistic expectations for the rest of our lives. This can make it difficult for us to navigate and handle normal life disappointments, heartaches, changes, and losses. However, we have to reframe what these are to us; they are not the past happening again, and they are actually opportunities for us in our healing work.

Many of us may think that we have accepted that certain aspects of our relationships with our parents went unfulfilled. However, without realizing it, we may have a lifelong pattern of putting potential parent figures on a pedestal and seeking from others what we did not get in our parental relationships. This inevitably leads to profound moments of disillusionment and disappointment. We will need to stop chasing in the present, what our parents were not in the past. Once that window closes, and we have grown up, we can only meet those unmet needs throug our relationship with God and through ourselves.

When reading the church fathers, many often get confused about the concept of utilizing blaming ourselves, rather than seeing the wrong in the other person. It is important to be reminded that the church fathers often gave different spiritual prescriptions to different people, depending on where they were at in their spiritual life, their motives, and their life history. What is spiritual help to some could be spiritually destructive to others. How, if, and when the concept of self-blame should be employed, is explored in this podcast.

It is common to reach a place where we begin to ponder what we may have lost, with regards to life opportunities and experiences, as a result of our painful experiences. These ponderings can be difficult and burden us with feeling and believing we started the healing work too late. However, all that matters is that we start it while still in this world. It is also never clear what our life would look like had certain experiences not happened.

Today’s episode seeks to answer a question from a mother who suffered a stillbirth. It is difficult to have “why” questions when we cannot sit and dialogue back and forth directly with God. Knowing when to call off the search for the answer to a “why” question is difficult. Also, knowing what’s behind the why question (fears and assurances needed) is very critical. Inevitably, some of us are called to wait until we stand in the presence of God to understand why.

Today’s podcast focuses on a question submitted by someone living the monastic life. It is common and normal when past pain from traumatic or profoundly painful experiences has an effect on our prayer life. We might feel that we have lost something, or that somehow spiritually we are going in the wrong direction, regressing, or even failing. It is very important to reframe these experiences, and to realize this is all part of the path forward, and that we are not experiencing an abandonment of grace. It is important to be merciful with ourselves and to allow there to be changes to our prayer life or with it being harder to pray silently, as we are navigating the healing work. The reality is, that when we come out on the other side of the healing work, there will be more room for God’s grace and more potential for our prayer life. Indeed, the healing work is part of the ladder of divine ascent.

Finding out that our spouse has been unfaithful is devastating. However, many couples come through on the other side even stronger than they were before. Today’s episode focuses on a question that was submitted by an individual who has done all the work, and come through on the other side, but yet still has frustrating moments where they are hurled back into the past. Using the trauma treatment model, victims of infidelity can often find the peace and healing that has been elusive.

Today’s podcast discusses something that most of humanity is ignoring. It is the subtle effects of the pandemic. It is precisely during the quiet aftermath of an intense experience that we tend to feel the effects. Telling ourselves a story and believing we can just sweep it under the proverbial rug, is not going to help us navigate the quiet aftermath; nor to regain much of what we had before those very trying years.

The healing work is part of our spiritual life and very much an ascetical activity. Today’s podcast offers a prayer that any individual can use in their own healing work as well as a practical activity. Both the prayer and the activity will help increase the synergy between us and God in healing the unresolved. "Lord, please heal my soul and help me to do my part in the healing work. Give me your Grace and the Holy Spirit, and fill that which I am lacking in. Please give me insights and self-awareness that lead to healing. Lord, cast out of me any spirit of fear and give me a spirit of faith, hope, and love. Heal also my disposition of heart. Please heal my perceptions of the past, present, and the future. And please heal my perceptions of myself and others. Help me not to be afraid and to do the thing I fear. Lord, help me to love and be loved, without fear. Amen."

We all struggle with interactions, the behavior of ourselves and others, events, and life changes. However, all of these things are often worsened when we believe they mean some thing about us that they do not. Some examples of these beliefs are "I wasn't good enough," "I failed," and/or "I am weak or powerless." This particular phenomenon often occurs on an unconscious level and causes much disruption in our emotional, spiritual, and family lives. One could even argue that it is the most disruptive of all beliefs.