031: Even If: Healing After Tragedy

Worth It! Show: Equipping Christian women to thrive by breaking the cycle of anxiety, fear and shame for good!
Episode 031: Even If: Healing After Tragedy

When bad things happen it's easy to rely on coping mechanisms and go into survival mode just to make it through. However, most times the coping mechanisms and survival mode mentality can easily become part of how we deal with life in general. We stay in survival mode to a certain extent. So when do you heal from those adverse events in your life??

What if you could learn how to cope in a healthy way that could help you stop negative, harmful thoughts and behaviors before they start? What if you don't have to feel alone, afraid or abandoned?

If any of this resonates with your heart, then this episode is for you!
I'm sharing with you the methods I have used to heal from past and recent tragedy. We'll be conquering survival mode coping mechanisms like:

• Internalization (6:37)
• Negative Emotions and Thoughts (8:07)
• Unhealthy Habits/ Destructive Behavior (10:45)

You can pave your road to healing and peace with my Thrive Framework and Path to Peace:

Take every thought captive and combat negative emotions and thoughts: (12:02)

•    Is it true?
•    What does God say in His Word?
•    Rebuke and Reverse
•    Check Your Gates
•    Trust Check
•    Where has God brought you from?
•    Feast and immerse in God's word

Restore peace in the midst of chaos: (29:11)

•    Power in Prayer: Meet God in the throne room
•    Immerse yourself in Truth: Read or Listen to God's word
•    Change your atmosphere: Plug in some praise and worship music
•    De-scatter the inner chatter: Get the negative thoughts out of your brain through           journaling, vlogging or monologging.
•    Call the Calvary: Reach out to your trusted prayer partners.

Jesus doesn't want you to stay in the pain of your past. Through Him you can experience the healing and peace promised in His Word! It's your turn now!

Golden nuggets from this episode:

"And because of that, I need to trust God, and to trust that He's got plans for me that I may not know of right now. And there's ways that He needs to prepare me that I don't understand right now, because I don't see the place where He's taking me yet. Because He needs me right where I am, to prepare me for that."

"when you submit to God, then you're saying, God, Invest in me."


Be sure to leave a review and subscribe if this podcast has been a blessing to you. And to find more tools for your journey to deepen your faith, emotional mastery,

Be sure to leave a review and subscribe if this podcast has been a blessing to you. And to find more tools for your journey to deepen your faith, emotional mastery, and thriving on purpose, visit https://www.michelleremington.com

If you enjoy worth it, consider joining the worth it squad Facebook group, we're a squad of fellow prayer warriors and thought conquerors, we pray together, we celebrate each other. And through all that's going on in life, we grow together, we encourage and keep each other accountable. There's no judgment here, no shame, we understand that life can be overwhelming, but you don't have to battle it alone, we can make it worth it together. So take a moment, look up Worth It Squad on Facebook, grab your sword warrior, and join your squad today. https://www.facebook.com/groups/worthitsquad

Transcript

Worth It! Squad: 0:00

If you enjoy worth it, consider joining the worth it squad Facebook group, where a squad of fellow prayer warriors and fat conquerors, we pray together, we celebrate each other. And through all that's going on in life, we grow together, we encourage and keep each other accountable. There's no judgment here, no shame, we understand that life can be overwhelming, but you don't have to battle it alone, we can make it worth it together. So take a moment, look up worth it, squad on Facebook, grab your sword warrior, and join your squad today.

Michelle Remington: 0:40

When tragedy strikes, no matter how helpless you feel, you have a choice in how you react to what is going on. No matter how helpless you feel. It is that choice that determines how quickly and how well you heal. If you're in the middle of tragedy, you can heal through it. If the tragedy you experienced is in the past, it's not too late to heal from that tragedy. Now, as with any normal person, I have experienced tragedy in my life. And as of right now, my community is going through and sifting through life after a terrible tragedy. I'm in Kentucky. So we just recently had some pretty bad tornadoes come through and it's rocked our community. Honestly, I think it has rocked every single person in the community, I think it's shaken them. And I think a lot of people are still dealing with it. And even you know, as you try to go back to normal life and just try to help out or you can but try to get back to normal. It's hard to do that when you go through your town. And you look on one side of the street, and it looks great, normal, on the other side of the street, completely decimated, neighborhoods just torn to the ground. And I think that as we go through tragedy, and as I have been through other tragedies in my life, I want to share with you some phases that you may go through when dealing with tragedy, some coping mechanisms that you may use through that and how to how to help yourself heal through that process of dealing with the tragedy, whether you're going through it right now or whether it's something in your past. So today, I hope to bless you with this episode. So here we go.

Worth It! Intro: 2:57

Welcome to worth it. The podcast where we answer anxiety, deflate fear and shut down shame you were made to thrive. My mission is to help you get deeply rooted with God and reclaim your weapon that the enemy of God has been using against you. After going to battle for my own mind. Four years ago, I realized that there is a war going on for our minds. A battle that begins with how we think says you have much more control than you realize. With each episode, you'll learn how to fight back and become more confident in the truth that God already knows. You are worth it. I'm Michelle Remington, Christian mindset coach, thought captivater, daughter of the king and warrior mama. Grab your sword daughter of the king, it's time to unleash your inner warrior princess.

Michelle Remington: 3:56

Welcome back warrior, as like any normal person, any normal human being in this world, you have probably been through tragedy in your life. Some kind of tragedy maybe you're going through tragedy right now. And tragedy has so many different forms. You know, it doesn't have to be some big catastrophic event. Not just that, but it can be very personal things or it can be relationships that you've gone through or going through. It can be situations in your life that you're going through. It can be medical issues it can be it can be spiritual issues, it can be emotional issues, it can be anything, anything tragic that is happening in your life. And I think oftentimes because we live in such a technologically advanced world, things are busier than they have ever been. The problem with that is that when things are busier than they have ever been. It can make get harder to deal with the tragedy that works still trying to process in our life because you feel like life is going on without you. And you have to keep up when you really just need time to process it. But then again, you're not sure how to do that. And I will be sharing with you today some things that I have observed going through my own tragedies, but also going through tragedies with friends, and helping them through those moments. And I hope to bless you with that today. Anytime we experience tragedy, the most important thing that you can control in that situation is your reaction. And this is why it's very helpful to recognize the coping mechanisms that you may be using to deal with it. At that time, I mean, there may be some initial shock. And once the shock wears off, then your mind your body is so intelligently designed by God that you'd start to try to create these coping mechanisms or behave with these coping mechanisms to help you deal with the stress and the emotions of that trauma that you've just recently experienced or that you are experiencing. So I probably say the most dangerous one is internalization. And internalization is when you basically start to self analyze, you analyze your thoughts, your behaviors, your actions, and you start to wonder, why did this happen to me? Why me? What did I do to make this happen? Is God punishing me? Those kind of thoughts. And it's really like taking that trauma instead of every, like, the whole environment that all of this trauma is going on in. And it's, it's all pointing it back to you. Which, as you can probably already tell, biblically does not sound right. And pointing all the fingers back to you, in this situation in this trauma that you're dealing with, is not helpful. It's, it's harming you, it's really, really harming you. So I want you to guard against internalizing this situation, internalizing the experience, the emotions, all of that. And what can feed this internalization and make it even more dangerous, is if you already have negative thoughts, emotions, fears, anxieties, shame, any of that in your life, in your, in your heart, in your mind that you're dealing with, they always get dug back up, when you're dealing with some kind of tragedy in your life. And especially when you turn to internalization. I mean, it's just like, digging up that soil, okay, it's like, alright, I, I done buried the shame, I buried the fear, not dealing with it anymore. And then along comes a tragedy that you're dealing with. And then for whatever reason, the shock of the trauma, possibly, you start to dig up that stuff. And it's familiar to you. So a lot of times, even in tragedy, when we're dealing with something very uncomfortable. We tend to gravitate towards what is familiar, to help us try to deal with it because we feel so helpless and so alienated in that situation. Everything is just like a shock to your system. So dealing with those negative thoughts and emotions is a very, very important step in helping you through the healing process. And I'm going to be going over some steps with you in just a little bit here to help you in dealing with those negative thoughts in a biblical way. Now, of course, anytime you're experiencing those negative thoughts, the fear, the doubt, all of it It can make you feel stressed, and overwhelmed. And quite frankly, in a tragedy, you're already feeling stressed and overwhelmed, because you're in a situation that is out of your control. But then it just kind of adds to the stress and everything, especially if you don't know how to deal with the emotions and the thoughts that you're having. After the tragedy, you see how it's like one big snowball effect that's happening. And all of this is stuff that you can experience, if not, some of it, all of it, once you've experienced a tragedy in your life. And then of course, all of that can lead you to develop unhealthy habits that help you to cope with it or not cope with it at all, and just escape it for a little bit. And especially in today's day and age, there's so much that you could do to turn to to distract yourself from these things. Or maybe you take up like an another bad habit like smoking or something like that, again, or could be anything, it could be so many things, there's there's so many habits that can be harmful to you and your well being. And it's not just you know, things that you ingest or anything like that, it can be things that you that you pick up and you look at, it can be things that you distract yourself with. It can be destructive behavior, it can be anything. And I'm just going to ask the Lord right now to kind of ping your heart right now and show you what those behaviors are those unhealthy habits that destructive behavior is. So I mean, it's literally like a big old snow snowball effect So let's talk about healing now. Okay. Now there's one thing I with the coping mechanisms. And a lot of times they just roll into each other. But also, we have to realize that coping mechanisms aren't just cut and dry. It's there like a big old iceberg. There's a whole lot that led up to it. And, or even just like that snowball, right? The snowball starts out small, and then you just keep on adding stuff to it. And things get out of control. And then you have a big humongous snowball this going down the mountain that could take out a house. want to remind you of, and that's in the Bible, Jesus didn't focus on people's past. He focused on their choices, and on their hearts. Because God knows that he created us with freewill. And in that free will, we have the ability to make a free choice at any moment, to change our direction and biblical terms to repent. Not saying that you need to repent of anything. If you've been the victim of some kind of tragedy, just saying. You can turn around, you can change your mind, you can change the situation. Anytime you are in a tragedy, no matter how helpless you feel, you still have a choice. And that choice is going to determine how well you heal. So let's talk about the healing. So, when dealing with the internalization, those negative thoughts that are all part of that internalization, I want to give you my little list of steps that I take when I'm dealing with negative thoughts in my life in dealing with dealing with fear dealing with shame, dealing with doubt, all of those things. So the first thing is, take those thoughts, and maybe they're the same thoughts that are running through your head or maybe you notice that those thoughts are all in the same theme. I encourage you to get like a notebook, paper, pencil, pen, whatever, and write down those negative thoughts and then go through this list. This checklist, I guess you would say for each one of those negative thoughts each time you experience a new one. Because coping it, there might be a negative thought or emotion that it has been wrapped in with another, another negative thought or emotion or another experience or something like that where forgiveness needs to happen. So the first thing is the first question to ask about that thought. Is it true? Is it true? This is where it's very important to go to God in prayer with this, and maybe you want to find yourself a quiet place, maybe you have yourself a war room, maybe you want to make a war room, that will be cool. But find yourself a quiet place where you can sit down with God. See, going to God and talking to God is not just, you know, hands and praying, in praying stance, and you in praying stance, eyes closed, just praying. You can actually problem solve with God. And it's amazing, because you know, he's God, okay? It's like, yeah, I don't have to explain it. He's God, problem solve with God, the problems will get solved, quite simply. So is it true? Is that negative thought or emotion you're having true? What does God's Word say about that negative thought, or emotion. This is where you can use like your concordance on your phone. Or if you have a big old Strong's Concordance on your bookshelf, you can use that too. But use your concordance and look up keywords that relate to your thought that you have written down that you're battling with God's word. And then the next step, after you have found the scripture, that gives you the answer of what God's Word says about that, then you want to rebuke, and reverse that thought. And sometimes that rebuking is, for instance, I'll take a personal reference for you. So I've had moments where I'm like, I used to think like, God, you made a mistake with me. You, you really didn't want to make me you didn't? What is wrong with me, basically. And that thought, right there, there are some thoughts where it's a good thing to repent of those thoughts. Because, for me, I was basically saying, God, you did something wrong. You messed up. When God didn't mess up, I was just not understanding. I was so wrapped up in all of my emotions, and all of the tragedy and depression that I was dealing with, that I tried to blame God for what was going on, because I didn't know how to deal with it, or cope with it. So sometimes, it might be repent, and reverse. But for all intensive purposes, rebuke, or repent, and reverse. So reverse that thought, of whatever it is, like, I did something to make this happen, or I'm so useless, or anything like that. I mean, those negative thoughts and emotions, I mean, they can cut straight to your core and tear you down. And that is exactly what God does not want. And that is exactly why you need to read God's word, because God's word can build you back up. And it can put you right back where you need to be at the feet of Jesus. So rebuke, and reverse, and then check your gates. So this is a phrase that my pastor uses a lot. Check your gates. And basically, this means how did that thought, get into your head? Where did it come from? And why did I latch on to it? The next step after that I think we're on number five now is trust check. Because a lot of times, what I found is that those thoughts came from a place of distrusting God, not trusting God, with what was going on in my life, not trusting that God knew exactly what he was doing. I'm the one that's experiencing life, I'm an if, if I'm really doing, if I'm really loving God, the way that I should. And I'm really giving God all the love and respect that I need to be giving him that I need to realize that I'm in control of myself and myself only, God is taking care of the rest. And because of that, I need to trust God, and to trust that he's got plans for me that I may not know of right now. And there's ways that he needs to prepare me that I don't understand right now, because I don't see the place where He's taking me yet. Because he needs me right where I am, to prepare me for that. So trust check. Just check yourself, if it's a trust issue with God, repent, and keep on moving. Repenting doesn't mean the end of the world, repenting really means life. And hope. I know, though, the way that I grew up, I always thought of repenting as like this, this really grievious thing not like because I didn't want to repent, but it was like, you know, kind of doom and gloom, kind of thing. You need to repent, you are a sinner, and you're bad, and all of this stuff. When repenting is really like opening a new door or taking new steps with God, basically, to extend your life and to keep living life with God. It's hope, and it's light. In your life, repentance is a good thing. Number six, remember where God has brought you from. As we already know, the term Hindsight is 2020. Girl, you look back on your life of the things that you have been through and the things that God has done in your life. And you're going to start blessing God, for where he has brought you from. And I don't know anybody who would not feel humbled and thankful. And just kind of refreshing and resetting your soul, to look at where God has brought you from. And to then find yourself, you know, right before God in His throne room, just thanking God. And it just there's something about it that just cleanses your soul cleanses your soul. And it's a beautiful thing. And right now, if you're dealing with some kind of tragedy, or if you've dealt with some kind of tragedy, and you're just trying to heal right now, you need that. You need that cleansing love to just wash all over you. And then number seven, feast and immerse yourself in God's word, highly recommend reading God's word, every day, and immerse yourself in it. So there are so many ways, especially with technology and everything that we have today that we can immerse ourselves in God's word. You can read your Bible, obviously, you can listen to a Bible, you can listen to like your audio Bible and have it going as you're going about your day. You can surround yourself in your home, in your office, in your car, wherever it is, surround yourself with God's word. It's very easy to immerse yourself in that and when you immerse yourself in God's word when you're surrounded by God's word. I mean, it can be as simple as just writing down a scripture that God has put on your heart, or a scripture that encourages you and put it where you can see it. When you wake up every single day, or before you go to bed. And being immersed in God's word and seeing it every day is powerful, because God's word is powerful. It's living, its breathing. It works in us because it is the word of our Heavenly Creator. Now, another interesting fact that I will share with you about immersing yourself in God's Word. In this is something that my pastor has said many times, and that's it when you speak the word of God. And that is when you You read God's word out loud, here's a few things happen. You're seeing it with your eyes, you're speaking it with your mouth, and you're hearing it with your ears. That right there. I mean, I call it the triple whammy. But it is powerful. It is powerful. The reason why it is so powerful is that your brain is listening to everything that you're saying. And I know you're like, "Well, yeah, of course, Michelle duh! that's like the way we are." But no, listen to me, your subconscious mind is listening to every word that you say. And because we are created in the likeness, and in the image of God, He created our minds, to take that word. And when we hear things, and there's there is neuroscience that backs all of this. So depending on what we say, and what we listen to, we, our mind basically builds neuro pathways to certain behaviors, and beliefs about ourselves, in our mind. And just think of the effect of what you're currently saying what you're currently listening to or watching. Think of the effect of how of how that affects your mind. Is that where you want to be in your relationship with God? Is that where you want your mental, emotional and spiritual health to be? Is that something that's contributing to your mental, emotional and spiritual health? And I know, I know, there's so much going on in the world. And you're like, "well, aren't you just a goody two shoes Michelle, you to us, Miss be so perfect?" No, I am absolutely not. I mess up every single day. And I need to hear this stuff too. What we say, and how we talk about ourselves, is important. You want to help yourself, you want to help yourself to be as healthy as you can possibly be. It's not only the physical exercise, it's the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual exercise that you're doing as well. You have to invest in yourself. And when you invest in yourself, in every part of yourself. And honestly, it's really not investing in yourself, when you submit to God is it when you submit to God, then you're saying, God, Invest in me. Oh, Jesus, thank You, Lord. Okay, well, I needed to hear that. Good. Wow! When you submit yourself to God, and as Paul says, die to yourself, daily, you are saying, I give myself away to you, God, I am yours. And in turn, when we submit ourselves to God, he adopts us. When we I mean, there's a process in the scriptures of how to get adopted by God, you know, that we submit to God, we repent, you baptized in Jesus name. And then he fills us with His Holy Spirit, when he fills us with His Holy Spirit, that is the earnest of our inheritance. And that means you adopted, you are a child of God. And as a child of God, God is now invested in you. Somebody needed to hear that today. And it wasn't just me. Now, under understanding that life is fast paced, it's always going. And even when you're in the midst of trauma, you may not have the time to deal with it. Or you may have that time to deal with it and have your quiet time with God, but it's a process. So it's not just one and done one session with God and it's done. There are still emotions that he is dealing with. And when you go to God in prayer, you're saying, God, I opened myself up to you, I give you full rein God, full reign over every thought, every emotion, every part of me. I need your healing Jesus. And when you do that it sets some things in motion. And God begins to work deeper and deeper in you. But as life is busy, you may find yourself in the midst of your day, you're running errands, you're at work, you're doing things. And all this sudden, like, overwhelm stress, anxiety comes on. This is where I want to share with you, what I call my path to peace, because I'm like, Okay, this is stuff that I can do. Usually, in the midst of what I'm doing. And I could just, you know, as I'm going, I can focus on these things. So the first thing is prayer. You can pray, wherever you are, whatever situation you're in, you can pray anytime, anywhere. So prayer is your first step in that restoration of peace for you are dealing with the anxiety, the fear, the stress that you have, in that moment, as you're just trying to go about your day. Prayers, that number one, because what you're doing with prayer, you're saying, God, I need you. SOS, SOS, I need you, God, I need you God. Okay. Second thing that you can do is, get into your scripture, either read it, or listen to it, you know, get one of the Bible apps on your on your smartphone. And you can listen to Scripture, there are so many apps where you can just listen. Number three, praise and worship, pray, get your praise song girl, get to worship, maybe you need to take some time, and just engulf yourself in that praise and worship music. And there's something amazing about music that God created that it can just change your whole atmosphere. So praise and worship music, even if you don't have any music to put on in, you just start singing honey, I don't care if you could carry tune, neither does Jesus. My southerns coming out sorry. Jesus does not care if you can sing. Because your praise and worship is more powerful. And more meaningful than whether you could carry your tune or not. Number four journaling, or vlogging. Maybe if you have like a pen and paper kind of journal, or if you want to just like write it on, you know, do it on your your notepad on your phone, or to start recording, you can do like an audio recording and just start talking on your phone. Or you can turn on your video camera and start vlogging on your phone. And you don't have to post these to social media, you can keep these private. And then number five, you can phone a prayer partner. And if you don't have that community of people, I highly suggest that you start building that community of people. And if you don't know what that looks like, or who those people are, start praying about it, God's gonna bring them to you. You want this to be somebody that you can pray with somebody that's praying with you, somebody that you can trust, that isn't just going to go gossiping, somebody that you can trust that's going to meet you in the throne room. There's so much so much that goes on in our hearts and our minds when we experience tragedy. And I'm not trying to minimize anyone's tragedy or anything like that. But it's really easy. And as such as something that I've seen recently, it's really easy when we go through tragedy to distance ourselves from God. And this is the absolute worst thing that we can do. Because when we distance ourselves from God, His enemy is going to try come stompin' on ya, and when we're going through tragedy, it's that's when we need God the most. I mean, we need God every single day of our life. But especially with their internalization, a lot of times we're like, God, why is this happening? Why me? And then when you get into that mindset, then you start distancing yourself from God. But God never promised that bad things weren't gonna happen. He never promised that he wouldn't give you more than you could handle. What he did and does promise is that he will be with you when you're going through these things, that you do not have to go through these things alone. You don't have to deal with these things alone. That's why the internalization is so dangerous. Because that's when you just start blaming God. You may not realize that it may not look like it on the surface. But you're blaming God, you're like, why did you do this to me? When you really should be saying, God, walk with me, walk with me, God, I don't know what this looks like, and I don't trust my emotions. I don't trust my thoughts. But I know that you know, every single last attention of my heart, you know, the condition of my heart, and I need You, Jesus. I need you. I can't do this without you. I hope that this has been a blessing for someone today. Let's go ahead and in prayer, Lord Jesus, I praise you, we praise You, God, we glorify your name, you alone are worthy of the praise. There's none. Like you, Jesus, and I thank you, Jesus, for revealing these things to us for showing us God that through everything that we're going through, this is how this is how we can experience your strength. This is how we can draw closer to you. This is how we can experience more of You, Jesus. I think a lot of times when we want to experience more of you, Jesus, we always think it's like this up in the clouds, beautiful rainbows, puppies, and all that stuff. But a lot of times, it's in those really difficult emotions and moments in our lives that we can truly experience you more. We experience your love, and your compassion. We experience your wisdom, your strength, you are so good Jesus, beyond good. And I thank you. Thank you, Lord, for each person. Hearing this today. I pray, Lord, that You would bless each person that hears this today. Whatever they're dealing with whatever they're going through whatever their story is, I pray, Lord, that You would help them to see open their eyes and their hearts that they can see that you are still part of their story. And I pray Lord, that as you know each person's heart each person's story I pray, Lord, that You would take this podcast and work mightily in each person however it is. I pray Lord for healing. I pray Lord for peace. I pray Lord for strength for restoration. I pray Lord for renewal. And I thank you God for the work that you're going to do in each situation. It's in your precious and your holy name Jesus we pray, Amen. And amen.

Worth It! Outro: 38:08

Thank you for joining me on another episode of worth it. Be sure to leave a review and subscribe if this podcast has been a blessing to you. And to find more tools for your journey to deepening your faith, emotional mastery and thriving on purpose, visit michelleremington.com