When trauma of any kind occurs, it is imperative that you take care of yourself. Just as your body needs healing from a physical injury, your spirit needs healing following emotional pain. Often stigma, shame and fear overpower the drive to seek help. This isn’t your fault. It’s a problem within our culture, a problem we are working hard to correct. Everyone experiences pain in their life. To believe that faith shields us from hurt is a harmful and misguided belief that must be challenged. 

Self-care

Your mental health matters as much as your physical health. Taking care of you and your recovery following pain is crucial. Your physical, spiritual and emotional health are all connected and affect one another. If one of these is out of balance, it seeps into other areas, throwing them off-kilter as well. 

Here are a few resources to help you on your self-care journey:

• Mental Health America provides resources on how to take good care of your mental health following trauma.
• The National Wellness Institute has a wellness screener where you can keep track of your recovery process.
• Online therapy provider 7 Cups offers lessons on how to identify and challenge stuck points (untruths that you are believing) that interfere with your recovery.
• Check out the book of Psalms in the Bible. Poetry has a way of speaking to our souls, and these poems are full of the ups and downs of life. They were written at both the highest and the lowest points. Find the one that speaks to your soul, write it down and carry it with you. 

Get connected

It is vital to surround yourself with supportive, loving people. Finding groups of like-minded people who have undergone similar trauma will help in your recovery. Together you will find strength and carry one another’s burdens.

Getting connected does not mean give, give, give. There are times in all of our lives when we must learn to be still and let others minister to us. Filling your day with too much activity and not acknowledging the rest that you need can actually be detrimental to your long-term recovery. It is an avoidance technique that pushes off the feelings to be dealt with later. The reality is that the only way past great pain is to go through it. Better today than tomorrow. 

Learn to rest

Find the people who are willing to walk with you during this time. Learn to be selective and make your health a priority. This is not a time for others to make great demands of you. In Mark 14:32 Jesus asked His disciples, His friends, to simply sit with Him while He prayed. 

Even Jesus took time to get away. When He heard that John the Baptist had been beheaded, He retreated to a quiet place (Matthew 14:13). Often we find Him throughout the Gospels walking beside a lake or the Sea of Galilee. Mark 1:35 describes Jesus leaving before light to find a solitary quiet place to pray. He went to a mountain alone to pray all night, calling His disciples to Him the next morning (Luke 6:12-13). And who can forget the day a storm raged while He napped it out, to the dismay of the disciples? 

If you are wondering what it means to authentically follow Jesus and discover what it means to live by His example, join us on Unfiltered Radio as we ask hard questions and refuse to accept trite answers.