Fractured Personality Workshop

FRACTURED PERSONALITY WORKSHOP
INTRODUCTION
Latest research has found that the effects of trauma on the human psyche and even on the actual physical development of the brain itself are debilitating, pervasive and permanent, unless the traumatised person receives healing. This workshop is presented to assist you in understanding the effects of trauma thereby helping you to identify the symptoms of trauma and especially those of fracturing which is a relatively new discovery of the dysfunctional reactions arising largely out of the deprivation and abuse caused by the increasing dysfunction found in modern families. This workshop guide is focussed on helping people identify why they have the problems they do have. It may be distributed freely since everyone who could benefit from it has problems implementing change in their lives (otherwise they would already have changed and would not need this teaching) and without the benefit of personal ministry could do themselves more harm than good. Please note that this is NOT a self-help guide and if you see you identify with these descriptions you need to see someone who understands what you are experiencing and who hears from Holy Spirit and who can minister to you in the Power of Jesus Christ. I have yet to meet anyone who can minister to Fractured people who was not Fractured themselves and who have come to healing through the Redemptive Power of God and the Love of the Body of Jesus Christ.
2Co 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 2Co 1:4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
The Advanced SOZO and SHABAR of Bethel Church in Redding, California is about the closest I have seen to effective help for Fracturing. Bethel has Training Schools in many Countries. so more and more Christian Counsellors and Ministry Team members are being trained to minister in the Spirit to Fractured people!! Please give me feedback on your views of this workshop: Chris: Chris@LoveInspires.co.za
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I have discovered that understanding the causes and effects of a problem takes us almost halfway (lets say 35%) to the solution. Finding the right solution (10%) and implementing the solution is the last part (55%) - but this is the hardest part pure slog! But Oh boy! so rewarding! (Each person is unique and their own particular reactions will be unique to their circumstances and reactions to these circumstances. To assist you in understanding the causes and effects of your problems I recommend that as you read this information and the recommended books you highlight everything that you relate to in red or pink for the negative characteristics, green for the positive characteristics, blue for the positive characteristics that are not true currently but are what you aspire to and yellow for that which is both green and blue - then when you finish reading make a separate list of the comments you made and the text you marked. (If you have an electronic version of these notes it will be easier to copy and paste into a new document) You will then make a prayer list which petitions the problems identified, thanks Jesus for the positives and provides a target to aim for in faith. Remember not to attack this task in a Performance Oriented way which will make you want to give up if you do not succeed first time round or if you get stuck in tracing the causes, since you are learning new skills that you never got a chance to learn when you were growing up and the Counsellor or Ministry Leader is there to guide and assist you if you get stuck and struggle to understand what to do next. For a start just read and highlight what is applicable) Pro 10:13 Wisdom is found on the lips of a person who has understanding, but a rod is for the back of one without sense. Proverbs confirms that understanding is preferable to having no sense and you will also have discovered the truth in the last part of the verse where not understanding the problem has caused you great suffering throughout your life. This workshop aims to give you insight into the causes of the symptoms you have as well as pointing the way to healing of the causes. It is important to realise that we are looking at the effects only as far as that is helpful as identifying the causes of your problems, we want to bring healing to the cause and then teach you the skills you need to overcome the problems.
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Jahweh Rapha is the Healer and especially when it comes to the healing of emotions, dysfunctional responses, habit patterns and the psyche, He needs to write His law on your heart and mind thereby renewing your mind (reprogramming your mental responses) I will give a brief overview of the different types of trauma and their effects as background information before going into fracturing itself. Enjoy this journey of discovery, although it will be painful it is a relieving kind of pain like scratching a healing wound and this is exactly where we are going to healing of the wounds that have stolen your freedom and joy for long enough!!!
TRAUMA
A. Trauma definition A person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present: The person experienced, witnessed or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. The persons response involved intense fear, helplessness or horror.
B. Intrusive symptoms The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one or more of the following ways: Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event; including images, thoughts or perceptions. Recurring dreams of the event. Reacting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a feeling of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations and dissociative flashback experiences including those occurring when awake or intoxicated). Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolise or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
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C. Avoidance symptoms Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma) as indicated by two or more of the following: Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings or conversations about the trauma. Efforts to avoid activities, places or people that arouse recollections of the trauma. Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities. Feelings of detachment and estrangement from others. Restricted range of affect (e.g. unable to have loving feelings) Sense of a foreshortened future (e.g. does not expect to have a career, marriage, children or normal lifespan). D. Arousal symptoms Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not persistent before the trauma) as indicated by two of the following: Difficulty falling asleep. Irritability or outbursts of anger. Difficulty concentrating. Hyper vigilance. Exaggerated startle response.
E. Duration of the disturbance is more than one month. (Symptoms B,C, D). F. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning. Acute if the symptoms are of less than 3 months duration. Chronic if the symptoms are of more than 3 months duration. Page 4 of 59

(It is under these circumstances that Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome manifests) Dictionary: Shock, upset, disturbance, ordeal, suffering, pain, strain, distress, damage. Some observations about trauma: The effects of trauma stay with a person long after the event, if the incident is not dealt with the influence can last a lifetime. Many of a persons reactions to trauma are biological in nature. They have nothing to do with being strong or weak. A traumatic event causes serious emotional pain. A traumatic event always includes one or another form of loss. One of the serious consequences of a traumatic experience is that it shakes a persons whole life-view and God-view and your concept of self (identity) is often changed. If a person gets stuck in the withdrawal phase it can sometimes prevent their return to normal functioning. This usually occurs when they are told that the incident is past and they must forget the past and go on with life. After trauma there is often a loss of self-respect (identity) and a fear that you have lost the respect of others. During the first three months after a traumatic experience, there is often a 25%45% decrease in the productivity of the traumatised person. (National Productivity Institute) Sometimes it is more difficult for people to forgive themselves than it is to believe that God can forgive them. The effects of trauma on top of trauma are both cumulative and progressive, reinforcing and cementing the feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and the negative messages about the self in the victim. (By this stage the persons identity has been damaged to the point of being a victim.)
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When forgiveness denies that there is anger, acts as if it never happened, smiles as if it never hurt, fakes as if all is forgotten Dont offer it, dont trust it, dont depend on it. It is NOT forgiveness, it is a magical fantasy. David AugsburgerCaring enough not to forgive (pg 52) When an adult goes through trauma their mind instantaneously reverts to the child state and although they are conscious throughout the traumatic incident they experience it in slow motion, feel as helpless as a child and cannot react as an adult. Once the trauma passes they will revert to the adult state as they come out of the state of shock. Since the incident is locked in the child state of their mind it cannot be accessed easily. The emotional pain is still felt in the heart but is often not linked to the actual incident because that memory is suppressed in the sub-conscious child state. The symptoms of this emotional pain is called Post Traumatic Stress. When a child goes through trauma their mind cannot process what is happening and although they are conscious throughout the traumatic incident they experience it in slow motion, feel helpless and automatically go into a flight/fight reaction, most usually hiding or running away. Since their cognitive reasoning ability is not well-developed they cannot process the trauma and even their perception of the traumatic incident is skewed. The effect of trauma on children is far worse than it is on adults, which is bad enough enough to be life-changing. We will concentrate on two types of trauma Abuse and Deprivation. For the purposes of this workshop where Trauma is used it includes abuse and deprivation. Successful healing of trauma includes the following steps: You felt the comfort of human touch when you needed it. You began to regain control of your out-of-control world. A sense of meaning and purpose for your pain was found. You killed the dragon of GUILT. You finally started to reach out to others. Schultz, van Wijk and Jones
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POST TRAUMATIC STRESS.
After trauma or multiple traumas, where symptoms of trauma and the person displaying high stress levels are evident and persisting it is because the conscious memory is blocked and they fail to understand what is happening to them, so assistance and support (from a gentle, caring and knowledgeable trauma counsellor) is required to help them to access, understand and process the trauma.
NON-ACCEPTANCE
When a child does not CONSISTENTLY receive the meeting of their needs, they experience confusion and trauma and will display all the effects of rejection. If Mom is depressed for instance and every few days feels she cant cope with baby so ignores her cries for a few hours and the next day feels better and so cares for baby well again this inconsistency wounds the babys trust and feeling of acceptance, resulting in the effects of rejection as the child grows up. Love and acceptance are NOT the same thing a child may be loved but is told that they are not performing as expected or is compared to siblings and told they dont measure up - this message will wound them deeply. Remember that the issue here is not the level of wrong treatment it is the
consistency thereof, a low level of not meeting needs and non-acceptance causes a feeling of lack of belongingness due to the inconsistency which impacts deeply causing confusion, doubt and feelings of insecurity.
ABUSE
When a person is used by others to absorb their anger, frustration, lust or any other negative emotion. (Physically, emotionally, verbally or mentally) Dictionary: Mistreatment, cruelty, ill-treatment, violence, maltreatment, neglect, exploitation, misuse, insults, swearing, shout, name-calling, foul language, invective, ill-treat, mistreat, molest, be violent towards, advantage of. batter, hurt, harm, injure, take
DEPRIVATION
When a person, especially a child, is physically, emotionally or mentally neglected or deprived of the gentle, loving care they rightfully deserve. Dictionary: Lack, deficiency, scarcity, denial, withdrawal, removal, dispossession, deficit. Page 7 of 59

It is important to note here that you dont know what you dont know - You are limited to your own experience. When something is taken away from you, you feel loss. When you never received it you do not feel loss, you feel nothing. THIS FEELING OF NOTHING IS AN IMPORTANT INDICATOR. You do not feel filled since you are not receiving the love that fills you but you also do not feel loss (you never had it to lose.) The feeling of nothing being nothing, being unimportant, feeling nothing, ambivalent, an acceptance of fate ruling your life, the absence of dreams for the future and hope in the future are the only signposts of deprivation. Deprivation then is seen in what is not there more than in what is there. This makes it especially difficult to diagnose. It also makes people who do see it think it is not serious there is no aberrant behaviour that demands intervention, but rather a natural compliance and willingness to please which makes it easy to take advantage of this person, and to top it all they dont seem to mind being abused at all! Perhaps the most logical diagnosis of deprivation is determining the presence of various negatives: 1. The neglect of self in appearance, clothing, grooming 2. The acceptance of bad treatment 3. The presence of victimisation in their life usually multiple instances from different sources 4. The lack of boundaries 5. The lack of self identity 6. The presence of self-hate, self-rejection and a poor self-image 7. A pervasive sense of aloneness 8. A feeling of nothingness (If you understand what this means then mark it as a positive diagnosis people who were not deprived will not have a clue as to what we are speaking about)
THE EFFECT OF TRAUMA ON THE SELF
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Many people think that whilst physical, emotional or sexual abuse is terrible the effects do heal as the physical injuries heal. This premise is absolutely incorrect, time does not heal the hurt in the soul or spirit the hurt mostly festers there and becomes more and more virulent with the passage of time. Paul Coughlin poignantly describes abuse and its devastating effects culminating in fracturing in his book No More Christian Nice Guy as follows: Along with physical pain comes a message and a messenger. Upon that floor, the grim reaper of self-loathing lay upon me Self reproach smashed my nose into the pee of my worthless self. It wanted me to hate myself and distrust others, especially that God up there. This monstrous sweaty beast on my back held court on me, and I couldnt win. I eventually gave up and confessed Im guilty of all he says, Im useless. But wait a second. There was someplace I could go: into my head. I could choose an alternative universe and even change the definitions of things, the way I had seen adults doing. If I jettisoned the part of me that felt emotions, I might be able to get rid of the anguish, humiliation, self-loathing, despair, hopelessness. Corrie ten Boom had her hiding place. So did I. It may sound weird but you get used to physical beatings like meals, they become part of your normal day. Though its unpredictable knowing when they will begin, they take on a familiar pattern once they commence. You try to shut down your emotions the best you can and simply absorb the onslaught. (Sadly you become so proficient that you shut down the good feelings too.) Welts relax, skin rejuvenates and bones mend. It is the words that contained such longevity. That is where the damage settled, festered and consumed. I hid behind the door wondering What did I do? Who am I, really? I was called every vile, demeaning name such spoken assaults, such vicious prophecies reveal the same verdict You are a void stripped of reality. You are worthless, you will never amount to anything, so give up now. Evil tries to completely disintegrate your comprehension of yourself to rob you of your existence. Life lost more and more mystery. I learned to become no-one, nowhere. My God-given healthy spirit limped along in hiding. Isnt the goal of our souls enemy to get us to think either too much (pride and arrogance) or too little (selfhatred and self-loathing) about ourselves? That we arent made in Gods majestic image and so we dont matter. I have seen evil and I know its ploy: to steal your Page 9 of 59

personhood, your singular God-given identity. Evil tries to completely disintegrate your comprehension of yourself to rob you of your existence. People who have been tortured with sleep deprivation speak of how they lost a sense of who they were, and about the resultant hopelessness, that it is like someone else took over their mind. Imagine that no one, nowhere feeling for more than a night or two for weeks, months, years... Lives dont go wrong from too much love and affection. Crippling passivity can also come from various sources: 1. Physical, emotional or sexual abuse. 2. One controlling parent aided by an absent or weak partner. 3. Overprotecting parents. 4. Excessively demanding parents. 5. Mixed reactions of acceptance and hostility from parents. 6. Abandonment being left to raise yourself. Nobody caring what you did. 7. Spiritual abuse When you believe falsehoods about Gods nature that He hates you, wants to punish you, etc. you continually feel like an unlovable outsider looking in on all the loveable normal people.
Abandonment and deprivation deal a young childs heart one of the deepest wounds imaginable; you will most likely come to believe that you are unworthy to receive love and affection. Abuse rewires a childs mind; you think you are defective and inferior to other children. There is mounting evidence that abuse affects the physical development of the brain causing permanent changes in the brain itself and particularly in the way it works, or does not work.
Abused people believe that something is deeply wrong with them, not because they are sinners, but because they are defective. They become
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ashamed of themselves as humans, not because they fail but because they exist. Guilt is not destructive to you because its a response to what you do, and because something can be done about it. You can acknowledge your wrongdoing, change your behaviour and experience forgiveness. Shame, however, goes beyond the understanding that I did wrong things to I am worthless through and through. This is an anti-biblical view of creation, a lie that, when believed robs you of how you perceive your own value. A sense of who you are gets lost when you undergo such traumatic injustice as a child. You have no real compass to find your way back to who you really are and to fight the lies that attack you. Everyone else, it seems, has the right and power to mould you. Everyone but you, yourself. Abused children harbour a pervasive sense that they are an inferior sub-species, children of a lesser god. When you believe you are inferior, you invite fear into the deepest recesses of your heart and become a sitting duck for destructive manipulation throughout the rest of your life. Feelings of worthlessness condemn them to believe that their lives wont and shouldnt amount to much, that they arent wonderfully made by God (Ps 139:14), and they arent His beloved creation, having been crowned with glory and honour (Ps 8:5) In fact, living as if they are special to God seems wrong, they mistake their self-rejecting beliefs for Gods thoughts towards them. Its easy to see why they truly believe God is out to get them. God remains alien because they think God doesnt stop at hating their sin He hates them as well. As a result they attack themselves and are quick to judge themselves by harsh unbiblical standards. They bear false witness against themselves. When perceiving themselves to be at
conflict with their world they are prone to believe they are always at fault. This makes them even more vulnerable to more shame and prone to the hidden agendas of others. Ultimately, if they remain in this state, genuine love is set and kept at arms length. Love and fear cannot co-exist. Where one exists, the other is banished. The single most damaging aspect of trauma is its damaging effect on the intrinsic value and self-worth each human being deserves, was given by God and was born with. This breaking down of self-worth and value causes neglected and abused children Page 11 of 59

to turn on themselves and hate, neglect and abuse themselves, because they believe they somehow deserve it. This terrifying message of worthlessness destroys the sanctity and value of their life in the mind of the abused child and the self-hate and self-rejection that emanate from this misbelief further cements the life-killing beliefs the enemy of your soul loves to establish in your mind, which has been twisted by the lack of love to the point where it accepts these lies as truth. Once this lie becomes your truth the healing defence of your soul is so very difficult since now truth must be discredited.
THE EFFECT OF TRAUMA ON THE IDENTITY

The personality of a child develops in a warm, loving and nurturing family environment where the child mirrors the behaviour of parents. Where the family environment is not warm, loving and nurturing and healthy mirroring does not take place then the personality development is arrested. The personality does not develop normally and styles of behaviour develop in the place of the personality. In a dysfunctional family: The values are traditionally that you do not trust, do not feel and do not talk. You feel helpless to change your circumstances.
You have little joy, no hope of having joy and are content to have no joy.
The lack of personality and identity development causes some other serious problems: Styles of behaviour causes you to become a social chameleon you learn how to display acceptable behaviour in every situation, although you feel uncomfortable doing this you have no other option you dont know who you are never mind how to relate to others in a carefree, honest manner. You usually hate the fact that you behave how others want you to but dont have the skills to behave differently. Styles of behaviour cause you to become highly stressed so many rules and laws as to how to behave AND they change with each situation!
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Self-Identity defines who you are to yourself. If this Self-Identity never develops you are limited to seeing yourself through the eyes of others and thus judging yourself through the eyes of everyone you meet. Since it is impossible to please all people all the time self rejection and self-hate inevitably grow stronger. The lack of Self-Identity makes it impossible to separate your actions from your self. This results in any wrong action being linked to your person, making you a bad person. It becomes EXTREMELY difficult to apologise for wrong behaviour since this is an admission that you are a bad person. The lack of identity caused by a lack of mirroring on parents causes you to seek your identity and you mirror on anyone you admire or respect. You will take on the personal mannerisms and style of talking as well as imitating the values and beliefs of this person. This, of course, just confuses your identity even further. Healthy boundaries do not form so you have no idea on how to control your personal space and so you allow others too close resulting in victimisation or you keep everyone so far away that nobody can come close enough to even be a friend to you. Since those who should have taught you about intimacy ended up hurting you, you keep everyone at a distance and true intimacy (getting close to their personhood or self) is seldom allowed, even in marriage. This results in a pervading sense of aloneness, present even when you are in a crowd. Because you dont know where your identity ends and the identity of others begins, true forgiveness is impossible. Even a great desire to forgive will result in forgiveness being limited to mind exercises the release forgiveness brings in the heart does not materialise due to your deep woundedness and the inability to separate your personhood from the treatment you want so badly to forgive. All of the social maladjustments mentioned above cause you to withdraw further and you become more and more isolated. This need not result in becoming a recluse since you still interact socially when forced to but your self or personhood is not actively involved and present. We all have a Social self and a Private self. The deeper the hurt the bigger the gap between the Social self and the Private self. The bigger the gap the greater Page 13 of 59

the stress on you since you need to act in a certain way in social situations whilst this is not who you really are in your private self you have to act out of character which is very stressful. If this is kept up continually the stress is even higher. People with an under-developed identity suffer from high stress levels since due to past woundedness you try to protect yourself from further hurt and are constantly watching out for danger and analysing every situation for potential hurt. We are all social beings and seek the approval of those around us. This is normal but is easily overdone when we NEED the approval of others to confirm our identity. This need for approval causes people with an under developed identity to carefully watch out for the slightest signal in tone of voice or body language that will give clues as to how people see you or to what extent you are accepted or rejected. This tendency causes you to read between the lines and often mistakenly interpret perfectly innocent gestures as rejection. (An interesting clue to this behaviour is that you enjoy watching other people in social situations, such as sitting in a coffee shop watching other people interact with each other, since herby you practice your body language perception skills!)
THE PROCESS FROM EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION TO SELF-HATE

The process described below results from the worst forms of abuse and deprivation. Different people will experience the same situations differently and their responses will also differ in degree. It is natural therefore to experience the following symptoms and feelings in differing degrees and if you do experience a number of them then you can safely assume that you experienced very negative events in your childhood which need healing from your Loving Everlasting Father.
When a child (from conception up to the age where a child can function independently (18)) is denied acceptance of the validity of their emotions, feelings, and their need for love and acceptance by their parents, which is every childs God-given birthright - a chain of events is released, which will affect the child throughout their life and go on to affect their own children: Page 14 of 59

1. The child experiences this denial of their emotions, feelings and need for love as the ultimate rejection of their right to life. 2. The trauma to the self of the child is immense, and is equal to the worst forms of physical abuse, equal to murder. 3. The spirit of the child knows that this treatment is unwarranted and unfair, but feelings of helplessness and hopelessness override all reason. 4. The feelings of helplessness and hopelessness lead to ultimate frustration and self-pity with immense rage is released in the self of the child. 5. Since the child cannot express this rage, due to their young age, lack of understanding and communication skills, as well as the parents authority over the child, this rage is turned inwards against their self and the recurring cycle of self-hate is established. 6. Questions of Why? are directed to God and when answers are not forthcoming the blame is shifted to God as the loveless punisher or he did not save me from the situation and the rage and anger against God takes root. Religious guilt usually suppresses the expression of these
emotions and the child cannot speak about them, even to those close to them and they enter the whole cycle of described here with withdrawal from and drifting away from God, BUT this is NOT a conscious decision and the child will continue having a superficial belief in God but inside the self their soul cries continually it is not true.. that God loves me, etc. The stress of living a double life in the spiritual realm is very traumatic and causes extreme underlying stress but symptoms of stress will be suppressed since the inner vow to be OK, take care of myself, not depend on anyone take effect and so DENIAL of the problem keeps them from facing what they fear most and know they cannot cope with. 7. The soul, filled with rage and hate becomes fertile ground for spirits of hatred, murder, self-murder, unforgiveness and revenge, which pour in. 8. The self of the child is opened to a death-wish and hope in the future is lost. 9. Since the trauma of the rejection of their right to life is so unbearable, the child experiences a split with reality, and the trauma is blocked or repressed experiences from and their consciousness. remain a Throughout mystery, a life, black childhood hole of
deprivation
nothingness for this child. Page 15 of 59

10. To fulfil their need for love and acceptance, the child often creates an illusion of a caring parent and even abuse is justified as necessary discipline. Girls will usually create an ideal father figure, and boys usually create an ideal mother figure. Excuses are made for the abuses of the
idealised parent in order to maintain the illusion. 11. The self-hatred and self-pity in the child causes the child to accept responsibility for the parents behaviour against the child, and they would rather accept and justify abusive treatment than break the illusion of being loved and cared for. 12. Despite the illusion, being alone and the empty feeling of abject loneliness dominates the childs life. Fracturing from reality, daydreams, and living in a fantasy world becomes a daily reality and life passes these children by. In severe cases the child experiences their life as an observer and they feel like they are watching themselves interact with others from a distance. 13. The intense, burning desire for love and comfort, drives the child to excesses in anything that will fulfil their need for comfort and acceptance performance orientation, eating disorders, abusive sexual gratification (self and others), substance abuse and total submission to anyone will give them any attention. 14. This pattern is repeated right throughout the child's life until adulthood where the person practices all sorts of avoidance behaviours (alcoholic, workaholic, drug abuse) - anything that will help them to avoid facing the aching loneliness in their soul. 15. Post-traumatic stress and serious personality disorders are common results or symptoms of the intense trauma experienced over a long period by the child. 16. The rage manifests in hatred and wishes of revenge with thoughts and plans of murder and worse on anyone who crosses them, including parents.
FRACTURING
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All people fracture when severely traumatised it is a completely normal safety mechanism when it lasts only as long as the trauma and the trauma is an isolated incident. When a person experiences severe trauma or continuous trauma their reasoning cannot process what is happening to them and their conscious mind cuts out (like a fuse that has been overloaded). They withdraw from the traumatic situation in their mind by splitting-off from the reality which is too painful and traumatic to face. The memory of the incident bypasses the conscious mind where incidents are normally processed and it is stored in the subconscious in an unprocessed state. The memory of the incident will then be very vague or absent since it has bypassed the conscious mind and is completely suppressed. This process is called a state of fracturing. When the trauma is ongoing, people create a safe refuge in their mind into which they withdraw whilst the trauma is taking place. The person will fracture more easily and more frequently the more severe or recurring the trauma. When the memory does surface (usually 15 to 30 years later) the incident and feelings experienced during the incident are just as real and traumatic as when it originally occurred and are experienced as if it is occurring in the present. This is because the unprocessed memory is processed as it rises to the conscious level of the mind. Due to their limited reasoning and coping ability children are especially vulnerable to fracturing and they fracture more easily and fracturing becomes established as a pattern of behaviour more easily. The depth or severity of fracturing is increased when: 1. Trauma is experienced at a young age (before reasoning ability is well developed at 12 years) 2. The trauma is intense 3. The duration of the trauma is extended 4. The trauma is recurring Fracturing becomes a problem where you suffered trauma in one or more of the above ways since then:
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1. Whilst you were suffering from post traumatic stress more trauma was experienced and more post traumatic stress was added and so your stress levels skyrocketed due to stress added on top of stress, continually....... 2. Due to the higher than normal stress levels, fracturing which is automatic and not easily controllable is triggered by the slightest additional stress becomes a style of behaviour and even a part of the personality. 3. Since you start dissociating even when a situation becomes uncomfortable or is only slightly stressful life situations are experienced to a limited extent since when you fracture you clock out of consciousness and start missing out on chunks of time. (From a few seconds to hours) 4. This dissociative clocking out can increase to the extent that situations where normal concentration (such as is required in a normal schoolroom) can trigger it. 5. The safe dissociative place becomes such a comforting refuge that you start going there for the comfort, even when you are not currently facing trauma. When you are there your consciousness is switched off or severely limited and thus your functioning is similarly affected.
A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF FRACTURING.
This block represents your life, consisting of spirit, soul and body You wander freely and happily around in your sphere of reference
You experience your first trauma and not knowing the pain you feel, you hide it as deep as you can and around it to contain it. You lock the door with many locks and you then throw the keys away so that this pain that is so unbearable out. Fear of letting the Page 18 of 59
what to do with you build a wall chains and
nobody can let

pain out keeps you far from the door of your pains prison and You wander freely and happily around in your sphere of reference, but you studiously avoid going close to the place of pain.
P P P
P P P
P P P
P P P
P P P
Subsequent traumas get the same treatment and all seems well, except the space you have to move around in is becoming less and less and you are starting to feel caged-in and cramped for space. Fear of letting the pain out keeps you far from the doors of your pains prison.
P P P P P
P P P P P
P P P P P
P P P P P
P P P P
You are now really feeling the effects of burying your hurts and need to be more careful not to go near the doors of your pains prison. Your space is very cramped and your life tends to become a one dimensional pattern eat, work, sleep ~ eat, work, sleep ~ etc. There is not much space for meaningful relationships, but that is OK since they usually
cause hurt in any case. until the doors of your pain start popping open under the pressure of being contained so long. Rev 3:20 Look, I'm standing at the door and knocking. If anyone listens to my voice and opens the door, I'll come in and we'll eat together. Jesus knocks not only at the door of your heart seeking entry into your life but also at the door to each of your hurts, seeking to come in and heal you. You need to overcome your fear of being hurt and open the door so that He can enter into your pain and heal you of all your hurts. This is not an easy path but it is the only one to healing and wholeness.
FRACTURING DUE TO EARLY CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

When there is ongoing early childhood trauma in any form, (usually as a result of a lack of bonding between the mother and child, deprivation of a loving accepting environment, parental neglect and/or child abuse) the result is a person with an
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underdeveloped self-image and identity, poor boundary development, a heightened sense of shame and guilt, a fractured personality or an underdeveloped personality. There are two primary reasons for this fracturing: 1. As a self-protective coping mechanism the creative, intelligent child manages to separate their self from the trauma which gets blocked out of the conscious mind. The self that experiences the trauma and the separated self that never experiences the trauma co-exist and switching occurs between them according to the situation. 2. The integration of the feeling centers does not take place and the adult muddles through life disconnected from themselves and others. 3. The following article published recently describes the process and the wonderful news that there is healing for a Fractured Personality!!
CELEBRATING THE JOY OF SCIENCE BY MARK SANDFORD

Until about a year and a half, infants handle each emotion separately, and act as though they were different people while experiencing each emotion. Each emotion has its own brain center that works independently during those months . . . our brains are fragmented during the first three years because the God-given development of the brain is not ready to connect the feeling centers together until then. As development continues, youngsters under age three remain quite vulnerable . . . traumas [especially abuse or neglect] . . . will reinforce the separateness between the emotional centers. If the centers remain separate, a child will feel each emotion so strongly that every time he feels emotions like anger, fear, or sorrow, hell feel hopelessly overwhelmed. If he receives no healing, this will continue throughout his adult years.
Joy is the glue Mom uses to connect the centers! She does this by seemingly ordinary means: affection, comfort, and what neurologist Allen Schore calls attuned
interactions (Mom senses what her child needs, and responds appropriately). Little does she know, she is literally constructing her childs brain through a process so complex that brains like Schores are only now catching on (Mom, we always knew you were a genius!).
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To help him handle overwhelming feelings locked up in those isolated emotional centers, Mom spends babys first year teaching him to expect the joy her comfort brings. By three months, babys brain perceives that Mom delights in him. [Friesen, et al., p. 25] (I suspect his spirit knows long before then!) By the end of his first year, he can imagine her adoring face and recall it when she is out of his line of sight. [Schore, p. 175] This helps the toddler bravely venture away from her side. When he feels afraid and runs back to her, Mom lovingly greets him, and the image of her delighted face imprints itself more deeply upon his brain. That image inspires joy, which gives him the courage to venture out again and again. [Schore, p. 112] In a word, Moms job is to return the toddler to joy. He needs this after a brief absence, to be sure, but especially after a troublesome emotion. [Friesen, et al., p. 24] Therefore, when he is frightened when Mom is out of sight, she reassures him. He suffers a boo-boo, and she comforts him. Hes enraged that he cant open the door; she opens it, and calms him. He does a no-no and Mom disapproves, but quickly reassures him of her love.
If Mom consistently returns the toddler to joy, between twelve and eighteen months his brains joyful identity region will begin to grow a control network. His brains joy center, located just above his right eye, will send signals to the emotional centers scattered around a circular ring of joy at the base of his brain. Each time Mom returns the toddler to joy, she activates his joy center, which sends more joy to the ring. Thus, she teaches his brain to tolerate more and more joy. [Schore, p. 91]
PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION
0 18 months 18 30 months 30 Months to 7 years
Happy
Sad
Angry
Frustrated
Fearful The emotional centres are separate and emotions are strongly felt The ring of joy joins the emotional centres The ring of joy grows stronger integrating the emotional centres
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Emotionally healthy adult
Fractured adult
The ring of joy develops fully and complete emotional integration is completed
Only a weak bond is present between the emotional centres and the separateness of the emotional centres persists and it negatively affects the emotional, social and spiritual life of the sufferer.
On the other hand, if the toddler is neglected or abused, and there is no one to return him from pain to joy, his brains emotional regions will remain separate. Unless he finds healing, even as an adult he will continue to be overwhelmed by the intense undiffused blast of every emotion (conversation with James Friesen). According to Friesen, et al., all kinds of problems can result, including anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorder and eating disorder, and (perhaps) personality disorders. [Friesen, et al., p. 26]
More particularly, Schore relates that if Mom does not return the toddler to joy after shaming him, an enduring negative picture of what relationships are like will be imprinted on his brain (we call that a bitter root expectation!). This will lead to depression, which is at the core of various psychopathologies. [Schore, p.248] Schore specifically mentions persons with borderline and narcissistic disorders, describing them as having too many shame images of others imprinted on their brains (again, bitter root expectation), and too few images of persons who soothe. This creates a structural defect in the brain, which is permanent by age two-and-a-half. [Schore, pp. 239,240] By the same age, shame can also damage a childs brains
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ability to relate to his own gender. [Schore, p. 268] Misattuned parents can even fail to develop certain structures in the brains frontal lobe, leaving their child vulnerable to future psychosomatic illnesses. [Schore, p. 442]
Furthermore, Schore has found that abuse or neglect literally destroys synapses, or connections, between brain cells [Schore, p. 413] He says that if Mom doesnt bond, baby will withdraw, causing the wrong part of his brain to predominate for the rest of his life (dont panic! It can heal!). [Schore, p. 385]
Schore asserts that a counselor can do what Mom and Dad should have done. His loving interventions can imprint upon ones brain images of care and comfort that can help him deal with stressful feelings [Schore, p. 473]. If this is true of traditional therapies, how much truer of inner healing! For, as Schore tells us, a small childs brain compares current situations with past memories of how Mom (and, I would presume, Dad) have treated him (especially through images, particularly of his parents face) [Schore, p. 195] Hence, as I said before, the beginning of bitter root expectations! What better way do deal with this than inner healing?
As neurologists are finding, the brain doesnt just grow out of these patterns. Unless healing intervenes, it keeps on assessing life as it always has. A little boys father repeatedly looms over his crib and screams, Shut up! Dad stomps out and slams the door, leaving him to cry alone. Mom relaxes in a distant kitchen, sipping her coffee, absorbed in As the World Turns, oblivious to his cries. Forty-six years later, the emotion centers on that little ones underdeveloped ring of joy still cannot handle the slightest hint of rejection. His wife is normally good about walking on eggshells. But lately, her own stresses wear at her. She conflicts with her employer; their teenage daughter wont cooperate; she catches cold. She is tired. One morning, he nervously awaits her customary cheerful greeting. Instead, she sputters cross words about crumbs his toast left on the counter. His nobody loves me look descends upon his face like a dark gray curtain. He goes off to work pouting. On his way down the freeway, he is lying in that crib again, crying, alone.
He knows this is uncalled-for, but he cant stop. He cant talk himself out of it. Behavioural changes wont work. The little guy in the lonely room needs a touch from the Father of us all. He reaches for the hand of a prayer minister, and they go to meet Page 23 of 59

Him together. He feels the embrace of Abba through a fuzzy cotton blanket, and sees that the room was not as empty as he had thought. He senses a host of angels all around, singing softly to him. He feels assurance hell be picked up the next time he cries. He looks into the warm eyes of a comforter and says, I forgive Dad, Mom, my wife and all others who seem like Dad; Lord, forgive me for judging them in return. Healing images imprint on his brain, counterbalancing the image of the angry face over his crib. His joy center sends a wave through his ring of joy, and something connects that was not connected before. His counselor has just done the kind of brain surgery a surgeon could never do!
God has graciously provided a way to do this surgery, no matter how long ago the damage occurred. For while most parts of the central nervous system eventually reach the end of their growth potential, the ring of joy and the joy center remain able to grow and change throughout life! And theres an extra blessing here for our children. For our joy center is granted added propensity to grow and change at the exact time we become parents, and again when we become grandparents (conversation with James Wilder). God built into our very genetic code the propensity to delight in our children, just when we and they most need it. And when our joy center is strengthened, it is better able to stimulate our ring of joy. This enables us to deal with our roots of bitterness just in time to keep us from passing on our dysfunction to our kids and grandkids!
God has also wired us to be able to experience ever-increasing joy by the following means: as a child grows, nearly every nerve in the central nervous system becomes coated with a protective gelatinous substance called myelin. This protects the nerves from damage, but also somewhat limits their ability to continue growing and changing. There is only one spot in the entire central nervous system that never fully myelinizes: the joy center! It is the one part of the brain that remains as it was when you were in the womb.
This means that no matter what happens, your capacity to feel joy (and thus, to receive the healing that joy brings), is always able to grow, no matter how old you are! (Conversation with James Wilder) That might explain why the oldest person I ever counseled felt so helped by my efforts. Seeing this 83-year-old great-grandmother when she first showed up at my door, you might have thought her a bit ditzy. I must Page 24 of 59

admit, I had my doubts. But science might prove her quite sane She wanted to deal with her prenatal issues.
Bibliography: Friesen, James G., et al. (1999). Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You. Shepherds House, Inc., Van Nuys, CA Schore, Allan N. (1994). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Hillsdale, NJ Mark Sandford, son of John and Paula Sandford, is a staff prayer counsellor and teacher at Elijah House, Inc.
SYMPTOMS OF FRACTURING
Since each person is unique and each person processes things differently the symptoms vary in intensity from mild to severe as well as in which configuration they are present. The trauma questionnaire highlights many of the symptoms. Identifying fracturing is difficult since much of the functioning of fractured people appears normal to the casual observer. Dissociative behaviour feels normal for the fractured person since this protective behaviour usually develops before cognitive reasoning and is all they have ever known, and they have nothing to compare it with which can show it to be different to normal behaviour. The major block to identifying fracturing is that fractured people internalise their communication and so do not communicate enough for anyone to notice a problem. It is usually the frustrated and anguished cry of your marriage partner that you never talk to me!! that acts as the clearest clue to fracturing. Perhaps the easiest way to identify dissociative behaviours is to read the story of other fractured people. (Paul Coughlin tells his on Pg 4.) Here is another My parents married young, they had to. They emigrated to get away from the shame of the unwanted pregnancy and started building a new life for themselves. This young, lonely couple were just getting used to their firstborn 5 month old son when I was conceived. This was not an accident, it was a disaster. They had just started a restaurant and it took up all their time. My father had a day job and then worked at night in the restaurant. Mom worked day and night in the restaurant and was too scared to tell him she was pregnant so she stopped eating and wore wide, tight belts Page 25 of 59

(the wasp-waist was the fashion at that time) to hide her expanding waistline and to starve the problem to death. When this failed she tried self-abortion twice using knitting needles to dislodge this problem. When these attempts failed the young couple resigned themselves to the impending birth of the daughter that would complete their family. When I was born - a boy! - the disappointment and emotional shock was tremendous, so my Mom who had already told all her friends she was having a girl, dressed me like a girl, grew my hair and told everyone I was a girl for the first 4 years of my life. My parents had very little time for me as they were working day and night and I was raised by the cook and the gardener. There was absolutely no bonding and no breast feeding. The rejection I felt established a pattern of rejection and rebellion in my life and my mantra was to become I wont. At school when the teacher told me I have to do my homework I would reply The only thing I HAVE to do is DIE effectively saying that You can kill me but I still refuse to do it. My father screamed a lot, he screamed at all of us but mostly at me. My first memory is of me at about 2 hearing my parents through the closed door coming down the passage to my room, and how I felt afraid and wanted to get away from them and hide, so I crawled under the bed. They dragged me out and my Mom picked me up and I would become limp and when she loosened her grip I stiffened my body suddenly and caught her so unawares that I fell out of my mothers arms and I immediately scuttled under the bed again. I didnt walk, talk or interact much. I never crawled like normal babies do, exploring their world, I only crawled to get under the bed or cupboard or in any other dark place I could hide. My development was seriously stunted and I only started walking at 2 - 3, was potty trained at 4 and only spoke baby language until 4 which my older brother interpreted. My parents believed I was mentally retarded until the child psychiatrist suggested the removal of my interpreter at 4 and thus after 2 weeks of silence I was forced by to communicate in English. I started speaking full age-related sentences proving that I could speak but chose to have as little to do with my family as possible. I was happiest when alone and spent a lot of time hiding under beds, in cupboards, in the veld, any place where I could be alone with my thoughts. I often fell asleep in these dark hiding places and would wake up hearing my parents searching for me whereupon I would crawl out and miraculously appear of course I could never reveal the secret hiding place where I had been so my Father tried to beat the information out of me. As he screamed questions at me I would answer in my mind and since I had already answered the question there was no Page 26 of 59

reason to say it out loud. His frustration obviously mounted due to my silence and the more he beat me the more determined I was not to speak and then at some stage my spirit would separate from my body and I would float up and look down and see myself from the top corner of the room. I was completely detached and would watch my body screaming and kicking and not feel pity or any other emotion I was just an impartial observer. I screamed in pain and rebellion better than I talked, so he beat me with a piece of heavy electrical cable all over my body until he was so exhausted he could not lift his arm to hit me more. My Mom would then put me in a cool bath with salt in it and I would watch the water go pink. I felt an immense sense of achievement because I held out and did not reveal my secret. My father had serious emotional problems and constantly threatened I will kill you, I will skin you alive and I should have drowned you at birth this last one being reinforced by the picture of him forcing me to drown unwanted puppies in a bucket of water. I was never sure of when he would kill me and when he would beat me next, every second or third day seemed the norm. I was determined to fulfil his desire for my death, either by allowing him to kill me or by doing it myself. I was just afraid of the pain killing myself would cause, so never pushed through my decision to finality. At 9 I tried cutting the veins on the back of both hands with a razor blade but did not cut deep enough to bleed to death. Having about 40 cuts on both hands that had bled and so formed scabs was impossible to hide from my parents and when they asked what happened I told them I fell on a pile of glass. Obviously they never believed me, but they said nothing more and for once I was not beaten a brief respitebefore normality returned in all its brutality. I ached so badly to be held by my Mom, but somehow found it impossible to open myself to her even when she offered to hug me I would refuse whilst everything in me screamed out for that closeness and comfort while at the same time everything screamed runopening up will hurt far more and the pain in my heart would increase to the point it felt like my heart would burst open, I would then creep into one of my hiding places and cry myself to sleep. I felt so alone in the world, even when other people were around it was as if I never belonged or was part of what was happening. I always thought others were better, more deserving and different to me. I didnt speak much to anyone, except myself. I would converse with myself and even argue with myself when I had to make a decision it was as if the 5 different parts inside me each had a different opinion as to what was best I didnt mind because I always won the argument, never mind which part it Page 27 of 59

was that won. My mind became my world; I was safe there and of course could do anything there without having to face the reality out there and so my mind became my reality. If I thought it, it was as good as done and I had no need to physically execute the task. My teachers got frustrated because I would work on sums until I could see the answer up ahead and I would then abandon that sum and move to the next. When asked why I didnt finish I would be mute and answer in my head cant you see I know the answer and already got the sum right? Living in my head gave me total control, what a heady feeling! I could steer a conversation (more accurately confrontation since I had far more of these than I can remember and I cant remember ever having a decent conversation with anyone) in whatever direction I wanted. Obviously the other person would not keep up with the new direction I had taken since I had not said anything aloud and I would abandon the conversation. I learnt that the only person I could trust was myself and that I could only protect myself if I was in total control, so if I could not totally control a situation I would abandon it. This created confusion around me since people would see me struggling for control and believe that finally here was something I was interested in and suddenly I would totally lose interest and walk away! Whilst I can write about me and I quite easily now I still struggled to say it until quite recently. I always referred to myself as we I just felt wrong and was impossible to say. Maybe saying we allowed me to separate myself from me. Me was the one I wanted to get away from. Distance was safe the further the better. Was we the different parts? Was it me and the demons that infested me? Even now I dont know when you dont have identity or reject your identity you dont have boundaries you dont know where you start or end and dont want to know since then you have to face your worst nightmare your own self. Self-inflicted pain was so soothing, I bit my finger and toe nails to the quick, scratched sores and scabs open over and over again and cut myself with razor blades. Seeing my blood oozing out of me made me feel real, connected. I hated myself, I hated my name and I hated what I was, what I represented. I tried using my second name and other more cool names but no matter what I called myself I could not get away from the pain and self-hatred in me. Most of all I hated allowing the abuse that I didnt have the courage to kill myself, although I realised if I killed myself I would be stuck with me - forever. This thought was worse than death I was Page 28 of 59

stuck in limbo, existing in hell, disembodied and tortured with no hope of escape. Now I know that it was demons taunting me and that I killed myself with self-hatred on a daily basis, I am walking into freedom but yet the negative feelings about my name and person are a constant shadow. Although the negativity is fading and receding it is a constant battle and any failure resurrects my nemesis me. You must love yourself - easy words but a whole new challenge. When you have victory over self-hate it does not mean you love yourself it means you have succeeded in getting to feel neutral about yourself most of the time. Being loved or appreciated by others is still an illfitting cloak and feels very uncomfortable. It is clear that those around me suffered far more from the effects of my fracturing than I did, initially. My suffering came later when the effects of never learning to communicate, never practicing life-skills and interacting with others started to have a disastrous effect on the people and relationships I cared about. At 50 I did an inner healing course which irrevocably opened up many of my wounds and as I fell apart with the overwhelming enormity of the pain God took me through a period of facing and releasing all the buried pain, anger, hatred, bitterness and unforgiveness for myself and others as it erupted like a volcano out of my depths. I cried solidly for 3 weeks as the pain poured out of me and then as it started to subside, for the first time in my life I felt tiny smatterings of the Peace that passes all understanding. Over the next year I experienced God in a more real way and He started speaking to me personally more than ever before. Holy Spirit was leading and teaching me. I started a Counselling Course and there I discovered what fracturing was and that I was fractured. The textbooks said 15 to 20 years therapy was required. I was mad with God, I met Him very powerfully at 19 and yet He had not healed me. He told me He would heal me in 3 years and teach me how to minister healing to others. He has been so faithful, the pain is finally gone and I see meaning and purpose in my life and even in my journey I see His higher purpose. Father God told me The Compassion of Christ releases the Power of God and I know that there is nothing that opens your mind and heart to the suffering of others as much as experiencing it yourself. The result of a comfortable and complacent lifestyle is selfishness selfishness is idolatrySelf-worship.
RESTORATION AND HEALING FROM FRACTURING

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The hardest part of the restoration process from fracturing and where your identity failed to form properly is that you have never known healthy ways of relating. What feels normal for you can be highly dysfunctional and damaging for those around you. (When you hurt a part of your body you learn to operate around the hurt part and once it heals you still operate as if the healed part is still hurt. You have to learn to use the healed part again. At least in this instance you have a memory of how you operated when you were healthy.) The information presented here is NOT a self-help guide but an index of what areas need to be covered in ministry in order to facilitate restoration, since before continuing you will need to make a COMMITMENT to persevere, remember all of this will be a process baby steps will get you there: 1. ... to STOP RUNNING AWAY and FACE your issue 2. to be brutally HONEST with yourself and your counsellor 3. to not fracture by an ACT of your WILL you CHOOSE not to fracture since it is hurtful to you and those you love 4. to STOP PROCRASTINATING 5. to COMMUNICATE openly, honestly and continually 6. to COMMIT to pressing through with ongoing counselling until the process is complete (Knowing what the effects of your fracturing are on yourself and others and knowing what is needed without the preparedness to actually do it will leave you in a more difficult position (ignorance is bliss) than before ) Here are some comments from people who are in different stages of the journey to wholeness via the road to the restoration of their abundant life as promised by Jesus:
1. I had the most disturbing week and week-end. I felt the most severe sadness which
actually manifested itself in a physical pain in my heart. I didn't have a clue why. But I did spend as much time possible with God. And with the help of Holy Spirit and also allowing me to reflect back to each situation which left me helpless, frustrated and scared I realized with a bang that my main problem is "rejection". I know that you and everybody else knew this, but for the first time in my life I can actually describe the feeling of rejection and that it actually does rule my life. I am amazed. I have prayed
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about it - asking Jesus to help me get healed, but have no real idea how to get healed, what to pray or what to do. I do experience an immense feeling of relief and hope that I will be able to become free of this bondage. I feel so relieved. x Nadia 2. I kept my past under wraps; nobody knew anything of what I went through as a child, especially how it made me feel. It was too painful to think about (never mind speaking about it) since all the abuse proved I was worthless, imperfect, a failure, a reject. I learnt early do not trust, do not feel, and do not talk and I lived this duality for 50 years. Oh yes, I talked but never about what I felt like inside I could not even tell God how I felt inside rejected, lonely, inadequate, raw inside and so, so very alone. When I could contain it no longer (at 50 years old) I was counselled to write my story down and this unleashed my worst nightmare facing reality, admitting the abuse - a hurricane of hurt, rejection, confusion and painful memories which I had deliberately forgotten swept over me and engulfed my life - as I wrote the memories came flooding back submerging me in pain and raw emotions that I could not understand, control or cope with. I knew intellectually that it was not my fault but buried deep inside me was another reality a different misbelief. It was physically painful to write my heart felt like it was being torn out of my chest, many times I thought I was busy dying of a heart attack. I fell apart emotionally as wave after wave of pain overwhelmed me - I couldnt think, stop crying or talk to anyone. I couldnt pray and just cried out in anguish Lord, help me over and over again. At first I was afraid I would actually die physically and as the pain exploded in my heart I started to see death as a welcome escape from the pain. After 2 weeks I started to feel a strange feeling inside me, together with the pain almost like when you have a throbbing infection and the antibiotics start killing the infection and the throbbing stops but the memory of the throbbing is so strong it remains so present that it almost feels like it is still throbbing but there is also a welcome release of the pressure the infection caused. Afterwards I realised that I was physically feeling the Healer touching my heart. My Saviour was helping me! just like I asked, even although when I cried out I had no expectation or even hope that He would answer, I felt so hopeless and helpless - just like when I was little. By week 3 I was still writing and the pain started to diminish as I felt a strange feeling inside me, I cant say I had this feeling it is more like it had me, that it took up residence inside me. It was a calming, pleasant feeling and as it grew stronger the pain abated and I knew in my spirit that I was being healed from the inside out and the strange feeling was rest or peace inside my heart being implanted by the Comforter Himself. I was convinced by the Holy Spirit (I cannot say convicted since that is such a hard word and this was such a gentle, loving request from the Father of Forgiveness Himself) to forgive from the depths of my heart which took some time and a lot of dedicated effort but eventually forgiveness became a reality in my heart and I went into a time of rebuilding that which had been
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broken down or had never existed in my life. It was an extremely difficult time coming to terms with the lack of life-skills that had to be re-invented by Holy Spirit and also facing the hurt my dysfunction had caused to those I loved, but Holy Spirit fast-tracked the learning process to the extent that it felt so exciting and exhilarating like a journey of discovery and healing. Over the 2 years since then I have continued growing, discovering more of what God created me to be and receiving more healing from His hand. What has been so miraculous is that after 50 years of living outside of myself, I think I have found me. Who am I? - this is what I now I need to discover. Peter.
YOUR PAIN IS TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING

Several years ago I found myself suffering intolerable foot pain. I had been experiencing it for about 10 days. I assumed that it was a simple case of athletes foot. I used all of the over-the-counter medications, but they didnt seem to relieve the pain. I finally decided that I should go to the doctor and just have the physician give me a prescription-strength medication that would clear up this unusually painful condition. I felt rather silly for going to the doctor for a simple case of athletes foot, but the pain was intense. I went to the local 24-hour med-check office, because I was tired of hurting and just wanted the right cream to make this go away. The doctor looked at my feet and said, You have diabetes. I said, No, I have athletes foot, what do you mean I have diabetes? Many in my family have diabetes, but my doctor had recently checked me and things checked out fine. The med-check doctor had diabetes herself and she knew the signs. To say the least, I was shocked. I also began to see this pain I had been going through in a different light. An overabundance of sugars in the blood feed fungi and infections. Fortunately, I listened to my pain and got the help I needed to read the pain in a way that has helped me to avoid any further athletes foot and many other dangerous problems I could have developed from untreated diabetes. Marriages that hurt for long periods of time indicate that there is something that needs to be fixed or healed. Sometimes we just say, We just have communication problems. He just doesnt care anymore. She is just not interested in sex anymore. I thought it was a simple case of athletes foot. Often we do not read pain signs very well or we dismiss them or minimize them. There is help for reading those signs. I found a professional who helped me read the pain and put it into a
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healing helpful context that saved my life. I didnt know how to read my pain correctly. Things to remember when you feel pain in your marriage or relationships: Pain is a healthy, positive, hopeful healing response to any kind of fracture or brokenness in your life. Pain is lifes voice to us that we need to attend to something to make our life better or make it healthier. Pain gets us to take the actions we might otherwise ignore. Without pain we would remain stuck and in a rut. I am the first one to admit that Pain hurts and that pain causes great discomfort. I am also the first to admit that Pain has been a wonderful friend over the years to get me to address and make hopeful progress in healing my life and helping me experience happiness and joy. Here are some common messages that Pain wants us to hear when our marriage hurts: You are in need of healing inside. Your spouse and you have brought patterns and old issues from growing up to the marriage. Depression and mood swings are causing this marriage to hurt. You and your spouse are hurting each other needlessly because your models for marriage were dysfunctional. Workaholism, alcoholism, childhood abuse, fear of intimacy, depression, relationship addiction, unresolved anger, affairs, grief, have never been healed. What can we do? Listen to the Pain. It is a healthy response. Believe it or not, the Pain is not your enemy; the lack of action to heal the pain is your enemy. Talk to those you trust about the Pain (spouse, family, friends, and pastors). Page 33 of 59

Get support. Get help for the Pain. Seek professional help from someone who is an expert at reading the pain and putting it into a healing context. If you are in Pain, if you are wondering if your Pain is telling you things need to change in your marriage and that it is time for healing Pain is not dysfunctional; our waiting to get the help we need is what hurts us. Do something today. Listen to the Pain and get help. By Jerry Wise Ongoing counselling is an important factor in the restoration process since you will need: Prayerful guidance through the emotional turmoil that inevitably surfaces as you face your past and future. A soundboard to monitor progress, keep you on track and to bounce your new ideas and feelings off of. Intervention with biblical guidance and counselling as new areas of woundedness are discovered. In fracturing and identity formation there is no memory of healthy attitudes so all new responses, ways of relating and the state of being must be reprogrammed in the following ways: 1. Actively build the circle of joy. a. Accept the love you receive from those around you. b. Give love to those around you. c. Laugh a lot. (Watch comedies if you have to) d. Make a conscious decision of your will to lighten up and not be so seriooouuus. 2. Take your negative thoughts about yourself captive to obedience to Christ. (Short teaching on Misbelief Therapy at end of the notes)
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a. Your thoughts form your feelings form your beliefs form your actions form your habits b. Identify the thoughts that are lies by tracing backwards from your habits c. Do a bible study on the thought you identified and replace the lie with the truth of scripture 3. Receive the love that Father has for you. a. This is difficult since you usually relate your negative earthly father issues with God as Father b. Read The Father heart of God by Floyd Mc Clung (ISBN 0-89081-491-0) a classic on Fathering. Complete the exercises in the Study Guide at the back of the book. c. Actively seek Gods father heart and ask Him to father you 4. Identify areas and instances where you have a problem and ask Holy Spirit to heal you, lead you in this area and to reprogram you as you open it up to Him. Ask specifically for re-integration of your emotional centres and personality. a. Giving over and giving up your control of these areas is a vital key and is also difficult since you have controlled them for so long. b. The easiest and best way is to start behaving like a son, even if you do not feel comfortable with it and dont quite know how Holy Spirit will teach and lead you c. Read Boundaries by Dr John Townsend and Dr Henry Cloud (ISBN 0310-24745-4) d. Learn and practice your communication skills, especially communicating your feelings and emotions. e. If you are married then marital counselling will be necessary since your ways of relating will have affected your partner and your marriage. 5. Keep a journal. This is very important!! You have spent your life letting life pass you by. Stop it. Keep a journal in which you: Page 35 of 59

a. Record your emotions and feelings remember these passed you by, or you suppressed them because you didnt know what to do with them. Accept that they show you how you are feeling and that you can decide how to the situation that caused them. Remember not to react to your feelings or emotions they are not the problem they are only pointers to the problem. b. Identify problem areas in your life and write down in your journal a series of the steps you need to take to resolve each problem. Remember that you must now learn coping skills in one shot that you should have learned incrementally from the age of 3 years old! c. Record situations that cause you to fracture (at first it will be every stressful situation or any gathering of more that 2 people) Write down in faith how you would ideally like to handle the situation next time. (This is practice for next time and also please remember that faith is calling the things that are not as if they are!) d. Make a list of the things you procrastinate doing and decide to not procrastinate tackling this To-do list. Attack it incrementally and consistently one task at a time. Applaud each task completed as the great victory it is remember you have a history of procrastination that you have just had a victory over! 6. Do the questionnaires and exercises on identity development that will give you direction. 7. As you faithfully and consistently build the positive message which establishes the truth in your thoughts you will suddenly notice a change Holy Spirit has done a miraculous work incrementally over a period and you now notice it. Praise God for His faithfulness.
PURPOSE
Any resolution or decision you make is simply a promise to yourself, which isn't worth anything unless you have formed the habit of making it and keeping it. And you won't form the habit of making it and keeping it unless right at the start you link it with a definite purpose that can be accomplished by keeping it. In other words, any resolution or decision you make today has to be made again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, and so on. And it not only has to be made each day, but it has to be kept
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each day, for if you miss one day in the making or keeping of it, you've got to go back and begin all over again. But if you continue the process of making it each morning and keeping it each day, you will finally wake up some morning a different man in a different world, and you will wonder what has happened to you and the world you used to live in. Here's what has happened. Your resolution or decision has become a habit and you don't have to make on this particular morning. And the reason for your seeming like a different man living in a different world lies in the fact that for the first time in your life, you have become master of yourself and master of your likes and dislikes by surrendering to your purpose in life. That is why behind every success there must be a purpose and that is what makes purpose so important to your future. For in the last analysis, your future is not going to depend on economic conditions or outside influences of circumstances over which you have no control. Your future is going to depend on your purpose in life. E.N. Gray The common denominator of Success
By now you will have listened to a lot of Arthurs teachings which I use extensively for healing of negative emotions, re-affirming your worth and value as well as for displacing the lies in you with the truth. Baby blessings are the starting point and building-block of the real you that will be discovered in this process. Here is Arthurs explanation of the next step.
A NEW PARADIGM ARTHUR BURK

I grew up with a vague sense that my spirit dealt with the God stuff in my life while my soul handled generic daily experiences. I was told my spirit was good and my soul was the source of most of my inner conflicts. I read somewhere that my soul consists of my mind, will and emotions. I gave my spirit very little thought. For the last two decades I have been deeply vested in the inner healing movement, thus becoming quite familiar with the various tools for dealing with the soul and its wounds. The first time God tricked me into ministering to someones spirit instead of their soul, I was shocked and struggled for a frame of reference for what had just happened (quite powerfully, I might add). I am a Biblicist, so I scrolled through my memory to find my theology of the human spirit and was stunned to come up with a nearly empty file. I knew the spirit had to be re-born (1 Corinthians 2:6-16) and I knew that at death the spirit went to the presence of God (2 Corinthians 5:6-8). And that was all I knew! As I frantically searched the Scripture in my memory again and again, I could not construct a viable theology of the human spirit. I had a theology of the human soul from all the inner healing work I had done. I had a theology of unclean spirits from deliverance work. I had a theology of the Holy Spirit. I had only a two-verse file on the human spirit.
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I was shocked and horrified. How could I have been in church for half a century, drinking from many different streams in the Body of Christ and be so profoundly ignorant about such a key piece of theology? In the years since that experience, our team has sought truth from the Word in order to build a sound theological understanding of the human spirit. While that is still a work in process, we are beginning to have some clarity on the foundational truths concerning the human spirit.
HOW DO YOU DO IT?

Our first encounters with ministering to the human spirit were a clumsy bundle of ignorance, good intentions, and the grace of God. As we studied the Word more, our methodology became more simple and clear. Today, we present it as four steps: 1) Engage the spirit 2) Legitimize the spirit 3) Instruct the spirit 4) (Occasionally) direct the spirit
Engaging the spirit

In normal interactions between people, the soul carries on the dialogue. Our basic approach is simply to speak to the persons spirit, calling it to attention and inviting it to come to the front. We then speak to the soul, asking it to step aside and allow us to dialogue directly with the spirit. While this seems incredibly simplistic after some of the convoluted things we learned while doing inner healing and deliverance, it has been effective for thousands of people. Approximately 60 percent of the people who came to our seminars this year felt a very clear response within themselves when we called their spirit to attention. They are sure that their spirits response is quite distinct from their usual self. The human spirit does not have to be introduced or explained. When a persons spirit responds, they KNOW it is different from the soul. Some peoples spirit must be spoken to several times before it fully engages. One lady described it this way: The first time you called my spirit to attention, it was as though it was coming down a long corridor to get to you. After about four weeks (of once a week phone calls) my spirit was waiting for you before you called each time. Although it is not typical, it is normal for a person to be able to differentiate among four distinct voices: the voice of God, the voice of the devil, the voice of their spirit, and the voice of their soul. With a little bit of training, differentiating between the last two voices becomes rather straightforward. An individual who is experienced at ministering to peoples spirit will get a distinct response from other peoples spirits upon initial contact. Most peoples spirits do not respond
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immediately, but they react fairly quickly to such a basic approach. Only a few are so deeply wounded that they resist our communication.
Legitimizing the spirit

The first step of legitimization has already taken place by the time you speak directly to the spirit and differentiate it from the soul. The spirit is accustomed to benign neglect and to being lumped together with the soul. Acknowledgement is a huge thing. Imagine two scenes. The first is of your being in the shopping mall and a close friend walks right by you, looks at you, and keeps on going without stopping to acknowledge you. Being ignored is hugely hurtful, and sends a message of lack of legitimacy. In the other scene, you are in a large group and the guest of honor whom you only know slightly goes out of his way to seek you out, greet you publicly, and affirm his friendship. You feel highly legitimized by the attention. This is what we aim to do for the spirit. The second step is to speak to the spirit about essence. The human spirit is made of light -- the same kind of light that God is made of. When one candle lights another, the first candle is not diminished, and the second candle has the same kind of light as the first one. Each of our spirits was designed by God before the foundation of the world, and was made from the same light that He is. That essence cannot be removed from us. Generational defilement as well as the individuals sin -- can represent a rather immense pile of toxic waste, but that never changes the reality that at the core of the person is the light of God, and it is fantastic in its essence. For a highly troubled soul, knowing that the fingerprint of God is still visible on their spirit is hugely validating. At times we may also speak to the issue of authority, explaining to the spirit that it was designed by God to walk in dominion over the soul. Even if this has not happened in the persons life, it does not change Gods original design. The spirit was designed to lead, and it needs to know that.
Instructing the spirit

The primary purpose of instructing the spirit is for it to understand the breadth of its latent abilities. Think of a five-year-old child. Little Sammy knows how to get around the house and the neighbourhood. He knows how to play and to relate to his peers and his family. He has the mental capacity to learn how to read, but he does not know it. He has spent five years asking others to read to him and has no reason to believe it will ever be different. The genetic ability will be wasted until someone explains to him that he is capable of learning how to read, and then begins to instruct him in that skill. If you take an aboriginal child with a
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brain that is equal to Sammys, that child will not automatically learn how to read. Until someone tells him he can (and teaches him how), he will remain illiterate. The great brain potential is wasted. The central truth about the spirit is that it was designed by God to heal and nurture the soul. This happens when the spirit is legitimized and comes to a place of dominion. Our CD set Developing Your Spirit is a series of 49 instructive blessings designed to teach your spirit what it was made by God to do.
(Occasionally) directing the spirit

By directing the spirit, we mean telling it what to do. Other than telling a persons spirit to seek direction from the Holy Spirit, I recommend not being directive. It is too easy to fall into witchcraft (control), and we often cannot see the bigger picture that God has for timing and sequence of events in our lives. For example, when I am legitimizing a persons spirit I will tell the spirit that it was made to be in dominion over the soul. I will NOT tell the spirit, So go take charge. God knows when the person will be ready for such an upheaval in the inner world. It does have to take place at some time, but we are not the ones to determine when that time is. After explaining the proper positioning to the spirit, I will say, God will help you grow and develop, and in His time, He will tell you when and how to initiate the changes to make things right.
MISBELIEF BREAKERS
1. You are not a slave in bondage to other people. You are an agent of Gods redemptive power (as opposed to a selfish force) that serves other people as you choose. A healthy life is a selective life. You have the greatest gift God gave humanity FREE CHOICE. 2. Be honest about what you believe and desire, state them clearly without apology. It is important that you do not approach your needs and desires from a position of anger. (When you internalise unfettered anger, you often leave opportunities for other people to have partial ownership of your mind. 3. We are created in Gods image so Genesis 1:27 tells us, and we believe it. We are loved by God so John 3:16 tells us, and we believe it. There are no distinctions to be made among us so Galatians 3:28 tells us, and we believe it. We are priests,
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all of us, a royal priesthood so 1 Peter 2:9 tells us, and we believe it. These are the good earth from which our basic human rights spring. (Speaking the truth in love Ruth Koch and Kenneth Haugk). You have the right to: a. Be treated with respect. (Requiring respect doesnt mean that you will get it; disrespectful people just want to use you to make them feel powerful. They are after a rush and you are their drug of choice take yourself off the market! b. Say no without justification or explanation and without guilt c. Change your mind d. Ask for what you want e. Ask for information and help f. Make mistakes g. Make choices and accept the consequences of those choices h. Own and express feelings i. Maintain a separate self that is accountable to God and independent of the expectations, approval or influence of others j. Put an end to accusing questions by answering just because I said so or thats the way I am k. Be you, as this is the only way youre going to live out your purpose and find fulfilment during this one life you have. l. Realise and accept that you cant, wont and shouldnt even try to please all the people all the time. Jesus said to pray for your enemies; He never said you couldnt have any! Mark Twain. m. You will make mistakes (this is the way God made for us to learn). You are only responsible to own up to your actions and sincerely apologise, healthy people dont expect you to grovel; ill people do. You arent even responsible
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for whether or not someone accepts your apology. Walk away from anyone who says otherwise. n. Stay true to your mission. Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear but around in awareness James Thurber. o. Everyone has licked wounds; abused people lick wounds until they become worse wounds. Unfairness becomes an obsession, so they kick at the darkness instead of seeking to allow daylight into their lives; all their misspent energy keeps them stuck. p. Life is difficult, as Jesus promised; the sooner we embrace this truth, the better, and not teaching it to our children is a form of abuse. q. Instead of praying to be delivered from lifes inevitable difficulties, pray to be comforted and strengthened to overcome fear. (Ps 23) r. You wont eliminate being faced with fear during this lifetime, but you will learn to overcome its ability to rule you, to use fear as a motivator: you wont be fearless but you will fear less. 2Ti 1:7 for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Remember the acronym for FEAR = False Expectation Appearing Real
s. If knowing the answers to all lifes questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables and most of all, things unfair. Madame Jeanne Guyon.
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ANGER AND ABANDONMENT

Gary Smalley and John Trent claim that home life should bestow on children a blessing comprised of tender touching and words of affection, which will bestow a feeling of being highly valued, hope for the future and the assurance that your parents will always be there to love and support you. When your legitimate needs as a child are not provided for, the development that depends on your affirmation through the provision of a loving, safe environment is arrested. Although you grow up and become an adult your social and emotional development is in limbo half developed. It is no wonder that you feel unable to cope! your coping mechanisms and skills failed to develop with you and you are now an adult with various feelings and responses more suited to a 12 year-old! One
descriptive term for this is the adult child. You may have wondered where the crippling feelings of hurt, anger, fear, humiliation, sadness, shame, guilt, shyness, being different, confusion, unworthiness, isolation, distrust, anxiety, insecurity, low selfesteem and depression come from. If you are guilt-prone, anxious, approval seeking, over-responsible, unable to trust others and have trouble handling feelings then you never learn important skills which should have equipped you for the complex interpersonal relationships most people deal with easily.
CONTROL
The effects of loss of control in an adult childs early years was so devastatingly unpredictable and chaotic that they try to control everything around them in an effort to prevent things from going wrong and any small crisis where they start losing control sends them either into a panic, anger, fracturing or into abandonment of all control and loss of any interest in the situation. Anger is the expression of the helplessness and hopelessness felt when control is lost.
ANGER
Anger is a natural reaction to loss of control - when a normal level of control is lost anger allows us to realise there is a problem that needs to be addressed before the effects become negative. When control is the issue because there is an expectation of
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negative uncontrollable effects the reaction is exaggerated and out of control precipitating exactly what we wanted to avoid. The process of anger: A = Antecedent event Piet finds his tools missing
C = Consequent emotion Piet is furious, he says Ill teach them a lesson D = deeds E = End of the story Deeds done in anger can be inappropriate words or blows Piet apologises since he found he put his tools elsewhere. He feels bad and attempts unsuccessfully to control his deeds (D) Discuss - Where does Piets problem lie? A-E Piet has failed to recognise step B B = Beliefs Piet believes his kids dont care or are messing him around
Piets beliefs turn a molehill into a mountain with a mountain-sized reaction. So now the scenario looks very different: A = Antecedent event B = Beliefs his values C = Consequent emotion Piet is concerned, he says Ill talk to them and guide them D = deeds E = End of the story Deeds done in love can be appropriate words or discipline Piet quickly discovers he was mistaken no damage done. Piet finds his tools missing Piet chooses to believe his kids need to be taught to respect
What are some of Piets beliefs that are untrue they are misbeliefs? 1. Anger is the best response. 2. Unless I get angry nobody will listen to me. 3. I must get angry to protect myself. 4. Anger will put me in control again. Page 44 of 59

5. Anger will show that I am not giving in. Discuss - How can Piet solve his problem? 1. Keep a record for a month or two: a. When do I get angry? b. At whom? c. Why? d. What happened just before I felt angry? e. How did I feel? f. What did I do to show my anger? g. How did people respond? h. What effect did my anger have on me? i. What effect did my anger have on others? j. Is anger my response because I dont know what emotion Im feeling or Im afraid of the emotion 2. Verbalise my feelings not express them by slamming the door, sulking, etc. but speak them out. This legitimises your feeling and brings it to the light. Others can then respond appropriately explaining their actions or apologising. 3. Deal with the physical effects the Adrenalin rush choose to NOT react until you give yourself time to cool down slowly, examine your beliefs and the effects of your actions. HOW do I do this?? 4. Give over to the Holy Spirit to get his fruit temperance. Give up control to the One who will lead you into all Truth. 5. Temper comes from the concept of tempering metal. a. Fast heating and quenching in cold water softens metal. b. Slow cooling tempers it making it strong, flexible and resilient.
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Interesting that an angry person is often seen as inflexible and weak.
DEPRESSION
Depression is one of the most common results of uncontrolled anger.
Depression: What It Is and What to Do About It. By: Angela Blades

Depression is serious, not a harmless part of life. It is complex and can have a variety of causes. It is never caused by just one thing. It may be the result of a mix of factors, including genetic, chemical, physical, and sociological. It is also influenced by behaviour patterns learned in the family and by cognitive distortions. Depression affects millions of people in this country. It is always troubling, and for some people it can be disabling. Depression is more than just sadness or the blues. It can have an impact on nearly every aspect of a persons life. People who suffer from depression may experience despair and worthlessness, and this can have an enormous impact on both personal and professional relationships.
Depression Is Pervasive
When a person suffers from depression, it can affect every part of his or her life, including ones physical body, ones behaviour, thought processes, mood, ability to relate to others, and general lifestyle.
Symptoms of Depression
People who are depressed can have a combination of symptoms from the following list: Feelings of hopelessness, even when there is reason to be hopeful Fatigue or low energy Much less interest or pleasure in most regular activities Low self-esteem Feeling worthless Excessive or inappropriate guilt Lessened ability to think or concentrate Indecisiveness Thinking distorted thoughts; having an unrealistic view of life Page 46 of 59

Weight gain or loss without dieting Change in appetite Change in sleeping patterns Recurrent thoughts of death Suicidal thoughts A specific plan for committing suicide A suicide attempt Feelings of restlessness or being slowed down
When a person is suffering from depression, these symptoms cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. This means that the persons family and social relationships, as well as work life, are impaired.
Grief, Sadness, and Depression

Depression may include feelings of sadness, but it is not the same as sadness. Depression lasts much longer than sadness. While depression involves a loss of selfesteem, grief, disappointment and sadness do not. People who are depressed function less productively. People who are sad or disappointed continue to function.
Depression and Socio-economic Factors

Depression does not seem to be related to ethnicity, education, income, or marital status. It strikes slightly more women than men. Some researchers believe that depression strikes more often in women who have a history of emotional and sexual abuse, economic deprivation, or are dependent on others. There seems to be a genetic link; depression is more common among parents, children, and siblings of people who are diagnosed with depression. The average age at the onset of a depressive episode is the mid-20s. People born more recently are being diagnosed at a younger age.
Physical Causes
Many physicians believe that depression results from a chemical imbalance in the brain. They often prescribe antidepressant medication, and many people find relief as a result. However, there is no reliable test to identify such a chemical imbalance. It is unknown whether life experiences cause mood changes, which create changes in brain
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chemistry, or whether it works in reverse. Depression may be associated with physical events such as disease, physical trauma, and hormonal changes. A person who is depressed should have a physical examination as part of the assessment process to determine the role of physical causes.
Signs That Professional Treatment Is Needed

If you or someone you know is depressed and exhibits any of the following signs, it is extremely important to seek the assistance of a medical or mental health professional. 1. Thinking about death or suicide. This is always dangerous and you should see a professional therapist immediately. 2. When symptoms of depression continue for a long time, you may need professional help. Acute responses to events are normal, but they should not last beyond a reasonable amount of time. 3. Your ability to function is impaired by your depression. Seek help before your life situation deteriorates to a serious level. 4. You have become so isolated that you have no one with whom to check reality. Seek out someone to share your thoughts and feelings with. 5. Depressive symptoms have become severe.
There are three basic ways to treat depression:

Psychotherapy, self-help, and medication. Many people respond best to a combination of two or more methods. 1. Psychotherapy: Self exploration, and learning new ways of thinking and behaving, with the guidance of a professional. 2. Self-help: Exploring ones beliefs and ways of thinking on ones own. 3. Medication: Altering ones brain chemistry by taking antidepressant
medication.
A physician may recommend medication when four conditions exist: 1. The patients depression is severe. 2. The patient has suffered at least two previous depressive episodes. 3. There is a family history of depression. 4. The patient asks for medication only and refuses Psychotherapy.
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Treatment without Medicine
One of the leading methods for treating depression is cognitive behavioural therapy. Cognitive behavioural therapists help depressed clients feel better by helping them identify how faulty ways of thinking are making him or her feel bad as well as helping them to implement new behaviours. During treatment for depression the client analyses his or her thoughts and beliefs, and learns to substitute more healthy ways of thinking and believing, and modifies unhealthy behaviours.
Prevention of Depression
Depression can often be prevented. It is especially important to take preventive action if you are aware that you have predisposing factors. 1. Identify your risk factors and be aware of where you are vulnerable. Each of us has unique risk factors, such as things we were taught in our families of origin, values we have learned, and the presence of a family history of depression. Anything that has been learned can be unlearned and replaced with something healthier. 2. Learn to manage stress. You can learn to give over to God which will have the effect of calming and relaxing yourself. 3. Learn problem-solving skills. Many people who develop depression never learned problem-solving skills. They need to develop the ability to see problems from many viewpoints and to look for a variety of solutions. 4. Build your life around good things. Learn to recognize what you can control and what you cant. Avoid spending much effort on situations that wont pay off for you. 5. Learn self-acceptance. Instead of rejecting the parts of yourself you dont like, learn to manage them more productively. 6. Become aware of selective perception. Observe how you generate ideas and opinions about people and events. Remember that these are just your views, not necessarily objective facts. 7. Focus on the future, not the past. Depressed people tend to be focused on the past. People who set goals and focus on the future tend to be more positive about life. 8. Develop a sense of purpose. Many depressed people lack a sense of purpose or meaning. This means they have no goals and nothing in the future drawing
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them forward. To prevent depression, develop your sense of purpose and meaning. 9. Strengthen your emotional boundaries and set limits. Boundaries define your role in a social situation. They determine how you will or wont behave in a given situation. Having clear, strong boundaries is empowering, while boundary violations make you feel victimized and helpless. Setting limits means having and enforcing rules for the behaviors you expect in a relationship. 10. Build positive and healthy relationships. Think about what you need from others in relationships. Learn to read people and trust your instincts about which people are good for you. 11. Avoid isolation. Talk to others about whats going on with you. If you keep your thoughts to yourself, you may be unaware that your thoughts are distorted. If you share them with another person, you can become more objective.
THE Most Difficult Issue To Work On: Abandonment! By: Mark Smith
As a therapist seeking to educate clients concerning a wide variety of issues, it has actually come in quite handy to have firsthand experience with more than my fair share of dysfunctional personality traits. When God gives you lemons I guess its time to make lemonade. Here is another case in point.
Several years ago I came home from work one evening about 10:00 pm and I could not locate my lovely wife. I looked all over the house, I called her cell phone, I looked for a note, all to no avail; I was beginning to get extremely panicky. After about 45 minutes I began to imagine her dead on the side of the road somewhere, the victim of some deranged killer. When I heard the garage door I have to admit to you that I was not relieved as much as furiously angry. I would like to say that as a professional therapist I calmly confronted my wife by making non-reactive I statements concerning exactly how it felt to come home and not be able to find her. Well, it didnt exactly go down that way. In fact, Im sorry to report that Id have to say that I really lost it. It was like atomic bombs were going off in my heart. I knew that I was overreacting, but I couldnt stop myself. It felt to me as if she had deliberately set out to cruelly hurt me. I yelled, criticized, attacked, yelled some more, pouted and generally acted pretty much like a two-year-old having a tantrum. My wife is a runner Page 50 of 59

and that particular night (before she got her cool GPS watch) she was out in her van mapping out her long run for the next morning. She had taken her cell phone with her, but its battery had died, as it tended to do quite a bit. She meant me no emotional harm. Her cell phone was old and it needed to be replaced. My overreaction is a great example not so much of immaturity or of me just by nature being a jerk, but rather of an abandonment issue coming up and causing a problem in a relationship. Ill define an abandonment issue as having an oversensitivity and overreactions to loved ones when they back up or seem to back up for whatever reason. It is rooted in childhood abandonment by one or both parents. Fortunately my wife knew to not take the attack personally; she knew that I was basically temporarily insane and she didnt bother to get reactive back; my behaviour was so ludicrous that it really didnt warrant a serious response. To guard against a replay of this painful experience I went out the next day and purchased her a new and more reliable cell phone. Does that type of behavior sound the least bit familiar to any of you? I know that for many of you it does.
We deal with this issue A LOT in our counselling office. It is the King Kong gorilla of couple issues. Frankly, although we do have several other articles already written concerning abandonment issues, due to the fact that it is such a HUGE issue for so many couples, I felt like I needed to give the subject some additional exposure. It is not possible to gain too much awareness and insight regarding this subject if you happen to suffer from it. There are so many different faces to abandonment issues and believe me they are all both ugly and potentially quite harmful to relationships; these faces include the victimy and pouty husband who silently sulks around for days because his wife wasnt in the mood for sex when his neediness demanded it, the reactive wife who completely ruins a family get together because her husband was 10 minutes late, the boss who cannot fire an employee who should be fired due to his neurotic inability to let go, the depressed and raging husband who simply cannot forgive his wife for her affair after years of dialogue even though his lack of relationship with her was a major contributing factor in her behavior, the husband whose neediness makes his wife want to throw up, the therapist who clings on to her clients, the wife who weeps uncontrollably all throughout a therapy session due to her husbands distancing, the girlfriend who has a complete meltdown due to her boyfriend hanging out with his buddies for an evening, the parent who cant let go of their adult children, the husband who freaks out when his wife so much as jokes with another man, the wife who verbally abuses her stepchildren because she is profoundly jealous Page 51 of 59

of having to share her husband with them, or the spouse who shuts down and cant talk unless their mate gives them their 100% undivided attention. The main problem with abandonment is that when it comes up inside you, it is very much like becoming instantaneously drunk impaired, reactive, defensive, out of control, non-objective, stubborn and absolutely impossible to speak rationally to. Abandonment issues cloud and distort reality. What you see seems so real, but it is actually a projection from within your own deeply wounded and abandoned soul. Abandonment issues come from being abandoned by your parents when you were very young. You do not have to remember the parental abandonment, think it is important or give any credence to it at all for it still to dominate your life. Since I was never really connected to my father I never dreamed that his distancing and unavailability would affect me so strongly as an adult. Children are extremely needy little creatures but when those needs arent met during childhood then the core of the adult, years later, is basically an irrational infantile abandoned little kid. Obviously that will cause serious problems in an adult relationship. You cannot run from your wounded childhood, my friends. The more that you try to bury your wounds the more you attract significant others who treat you in very much the same way that your parents did. As Ann Fairbairn wrote in Five Smooth Stones, A man cannot cast aside his childhood, though he run from it as he would the devil. He may make of it a burden under which to stumble and fall, or a shield to hide behind, or he may make of it a tool. Recovery from abandonment issues includes intensive work in group therapy focusing on childhood abandonment memories, the ability to learn to hear your significant other even while under the influence of abandonment, and the developing of the ability to observe situations much more objectively rather than having a knee jerk reaction to the misperceptions and distorted realities caused by your abandonment wounds. You have to learn to see the world as it is without your tinted lenses of insecurity, jealousy and childhood abandonment. Abandonment issues can get better, but they dont get better quickly. It takes a lot of outside feedback and accountability.
Another absolutely brutal thing about abandonment issues is that as with all marriages, you will only be attracted to someone who basically has the very worst (disguised) qualities of your abandoning parents. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. At your core you are utterly and completely terrified that your spouse will abandon you, then they eventually do, in some way shape or form because it is their nature to do so; then you spend the rest of the relationship unintentionally but quite obnoxiously chasing them Page 52 of 59

away due to your insecurities. It is a vicious cycle that can easily continue to replay itself until it completely destroys the relationship.
TAKING CONTROL AWAY FROM MYSELF

If I cant do anything about a problem It is not a problem, it is a fact of life! ~ Fred Smith
Many people are problem conscious and their fear of not being able to solve problems causes them to react incorrectly to challenges and make a problem out of every challenge. What really counts is not what happens to me, but what happens in me. A study of 300 highly successful people Franklin Rooseveld, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi & Albert Schweitzer revealed that 25% had handicaps such as blindness, deafness, crippled limbs, etc. 75% came from broken homes, poverty stricken parents, or exceedingly tense or disturbed situations.
They realised that they could not control their circumstances but could choose their choice of attitude to every circumstance. Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it ~ Charles Swindoll The Carnegie institute analysed 10 000 people and concluded that 15% of success is due to technical training and 85% is due to attitude. Our attitude determines what we see and how we handle our feelings and these 2 factors determine 85% our success.
Your attitude shows on your face!!

Every person over 40 is responsible for their face Abe Lincoln. God chooses what we go through we choose how we go through it! People tend to become what the most important people in their lives think they will become. Hang out with positive people Encouragement is oxygen to the soul
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SUCCESS
Success is a process not an event. It is growth and development achieving one thing and using that as a stepping stone to achieve something else. It is a journey. Most people think success is learning how to never fail. That is not true. Success is learning from failures. Success is ruling your self, grace to change yourself. Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
MISBELIEF EXERCISES
Luk 19:10 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. What was lost? 1. UNITY a. In our relationship with God b. In our relationship with each other we move from unity to blaming 2. AUTHORITY a. Adam gave away his authority to rule over the earth and everything in it to satan b. Including his authority over himself - his own mind, will and emotions 3. Jesus came to restore BOTH a. Christ retrieved it and gave it back to his church that means you personally!! 4. What are you doing with the AUTHORITY YOU HAVE TO RULE? a. Walking and talking with God? b. Walking in unity or blaming? c. Giving it away? to satan? d. Walking in dominion in your own life? 5. How do we walk in dominion and authority? - By exercising our greatest gift FREE CHOICE a. Choose how you feel b. Do NOT allow the facts to interfere with the TRUTH 6. Let us look at Israel how the lack of meeting with God leads to sin:
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Exo 19:16 On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud appeared on the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast was heard. All the people in the camp trembled with fear. Exo 19:17 Moses led them out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Exo 19:18 All of Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD had come down on it in fire. The smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and all the people trembled violently. Exo 19:19 The sound of the trumpet became louder and louder. Moses spoke, and God answered him with thunder. Exo 20:18 When the people heard the thunder and the trumpet blast and saw the lightning and the smoking mountain, they trembled with fear and stood a long way off. Exo 20:19 They said to Moses, "If you speak to us, we will listen; but we are afraid that if God speaks to us, we will die." Exo 20:20 Moses replied, "Don't be afraid; God has only come to test you and make you keep on obeying him, so that you will not sin." Exo 20:21 But the people continued to stand a long way off, and only Moses went near the dark cloud where God was. Exo 20:22 The LORD commanded Moses to tell the Israelites: "You have seen how I, the LORD, have spoken to you from heaven. Exo 20:23 Do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gold to be worshiped in addition to me.
Exo 24:3 Moses went and told the people all the LORD's commands and all the ordinances, and all the people answered together, "We will do everything that the LORD has said."
Exo 24:18 Moses went on up the mountain into the cloud. There he stayed for forty days and nights.
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Exo 32:1 When the people saw that Moses had not come down from the mountain but was staying there a long time, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, "We do not know what has happened to this man Moses, who led us out of Egypt; so make us a god to lead us."
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WHO DO YOU WANT TO LEAD YOU? WHO DO YOU FOLLOW?
Our thoughts form our beliefs which form our feelings which form our actions which form our habits. Lies in our thoughts form misbeliefs For homework: Make a list of the areas in which you are NOT walking in dominion and authority. Write down the Habit Write down the Actions that form the Habit Write down the Feelings that form the Actions Write down the Beliefs that form the Feelings Write down the Thoughts that form the Beliefs Identify the lies that have been placed into your thoughts and write down the misbeliefs flowing from these lies. (They will often be bitter root judgements, bitter root expectations, word curses spoken to you by authorities or self-hate messages) Now look up scriptures that counteract the lies and write them down. Write down the scripturally correct thoughts and beliefs Make posters or notes of them and place them where you can read them often to establish the truth in your mind these laws will be written on your mind and heart by the Holy Spirit as you speak them Here is an example: Name: Date:. 1. Areas in which I am NOT walking in dominion and authority: a. Physical healing
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2. Habits which highlight these areas: a. I do not pray for healing daily b. I do not have an expectation to be healed c. I look outside of Gods healing for my help
3. Actions which make up the habits: a. I complain about my aches and pains to whoever will listen b. I often say I cannot do something because of my sickness c. I accept that medication is the only thing that will help me
4. Feelings which cause me to act in the way I do: a. I feel despondent because I have had pain so long b. God does not want to heal me miraculously c. I feel sorry for myself d. I enjoy getting pity from others
5.
Misbeliefs which form my feelings: a. Healing may be for some but not for me b. Negative attention is better than no attention
6. Lies in my thoughts that form my misbeliefs: a. God does not really care enough for me to heal me b. Miracles of healing were only for the early church we have doctors now c. Sickness is the cross I must bear
7. Scriptures which counteract the lies: a. ISA 53:5 BUT HE WAS WOUNDED FOR OUR TRANSGRESSIONS, HE WAS BRUISED FOR
OUR INIQUITIES: THE CHASTISEMENT OF OUR PEACE WAS UPON HIM; AND WITH HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED.
b. LUK 10:9 AND HEAL THE SICK THAT ARE THEREIN, AND SAY UNTO THEM, THE
KINGDOM OF
GOD IS COME NIGH UNTO YOU.
8. Scriptures which establish the truth:
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a. JAS 5:14 IS ANY SICK AMONG YOU? LET HIM CALL FOR THE ELDERS OF THE CHURCH;
AND LET THEM PRAY OVER HIM, ANOINTING HIM WITH OIL IN THE NAME OF THE
LORD:
b. JAS 5:15 AND THE PRAYER OF FAITH SHALL SAVE THE SICK, AND THE LORD SHALL
RAISE HIM UP; AND IF HE HAVE COMMITTED SINS, THEY SHALL BE FORGIVEN HIM.
c. JAS 5:16 CONFESS YOUR FAULTS ONE TO ANOTHER, AND PRAY ONE FOR ANOTHER,
THAT YE MAY BE HEALED. AVAILETH MUCH.
THE EFFECTUAL FERVENT PRAYER OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN
9. Correct thoughts flowing from the scriptures: a. God has already paid the price of my healing b. Call the elders to pray and anoint me whilst I confess my faults
10. Correct beliefs flowing from the scriptures: a. God has healing for me, I am waiting in faith to see it established
God bless you. Chris Albany
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Fractured Personality Workshop - 2012-12-12

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