My Emotional Healing

During the last year or so I noticed that my friends have been asking a lot more questions about emotional (inner) healing. A few months ago my wife began having dreams about doing deliverance and inner healing. Some of my friends have seen significant breakthroughs in the area of emotional healing, particularly with people who suffer from PTSD, Satanic ritual abuse, and Dissociative Identity Disorder. I feel like one of the things God wants to teach us more about in the present season is emotional healing. I’ve been learning a lot from talking with Steve Harmon. When I listen to the things he’s experienced, it made me realize that I might need emotional healing too.

I have a lot of friends who have done inner healing in the past and from the stories they’ve shared I thought it always took a long time to get someone healed. I’ve also heard enough horror stories from friends that I have some apprehension about going through it myself.

After weighing all of this, I felt like I only knew of a couple of people that I trusted enough to take me through the process of emotional healing if I was going to go through it at all. I wasn’t sure I needed it, and if I did, I wasn’t sure what the issues were.

A few weeks ago I had a very difficult day at work. A bunch of small things happened throughout the course of the day that would normally not cause much of a problem.  Because I could see some of them coming before they happened, and I felt a little anger beginning to grow inside of me I told myself I was not going to let these things make me angry. Despite this, I spent most of the day in a very angry mood. Fortunately, I was able to sit quietly in the ambulance most of the day and my anger didn’t have an opportunity to hurt other people.

About a year ago I was assigned a new partner.  He has a way of doing his job that seems to push every button I have. I often find myself being angry over some little thing that he did. I began to wonder if perhaps God put us together to help me deal with some problem I was struggling with.

I’ve spent a lot of nights after work venting my frustration to my wife who is always sympathetic. One problem of having a supportive circle of friends is that sometimes they’ll try to justify your sin. I had accepted people’s justification for my occasional moments of rage, but I felt like there was something causing it that needed to be dealt with once and for all.  As I reflected on past events that caused outbursts of anger, I realized that they were all triggered by a similar set of circumstances.

I remembered someone writing about emotional wounds and describing one of the symptoms: One sign that you have an emotional (or soul) wound is when you over-react to a certain type of situation repeatedly. An example is if you are usually an easy-going person that seldom gets angry. When certain situations repeatedly trigger the same type of response; in this case an over-reaction of anger, there’s a wounded or fragmented soul that’s creating this situation. Some people describe it as feeling like they’ve temporarily become another person.

I’d like to share some observations on wounded and fragmented souls. What follows is my understanding of the issue today. Much of what I believe on the subject has come from friends I trust who have shared their experiences and observations and from books I’ve read. I am not dogmatic on these views and I have no doubt they will change as I gain a better understanding of this issue:

I remember a woman saying that she had a terrible fear of going in basements. When someone asked why she had this fear, she told them it was because she had been molested by her uncles in a basement when she was a child. At the time this was happening to her as a child, a part of her soul was wounded by the emotional trauma of the event. The traumatic event created a part of her soul that was dominated by the emotion of fear and it was specific to going into a basement. The wounded part of her soul was separated (fragmented) from the main (core) part of her soul.

I believe it is God who separates wounded parts of the soul to protect the core of the personality from suffering greater damage. The fragmented parts of the soul deal with the emotions and the memories of traumatic events. Separation from the core prevents the wounded parts of the soul from becoming the dominant influence over the core of the soul. In effect, the fragmenting of the soul compartmentalizes the wounds and minimizes the damage that can be done to the rest of the soul. The part of the soul that is fragmented remains hidden until the person experiences a similar event that triggers the emotion. For the woman with the fear of basements, the thought of going into a basement became a trigger that caused the soul fragment to temporarily take over control of her core.

All soul fragments have as their main goal the protection of the core personality. A soul fragment will assume control when they perceive there is a threat to the individual. When we have an experience that the fragmented soul perceives to be a threat, the fragmented part of the soul takes over control our mind, will and emotions, and we react to the situation from that place of woundedness. This is why the actions of a soul fragment are usually an over-reaction. Soul fragments have less understanding of what is considered normal and acceptable behavior. When the perceived threat goes away, the core of our soul regains control and we go back to functioning normally.

Lately, I’ve been having these moments where a fragment of my soul was taking over control of my mind, will, and emotions, and it was causing me to over-react in anger. In thinking about this and praying for understanding, I became aware that it was related to a couple of events that happened when I was a teenager. I finally accepted the fact that I needed to be healed of this emotional wound.

One of my friends who has done a lot of inner healing saw my recent post on Facebook about my need for emotional healing. He sent me a message asking if I had time to talk. We talked the following day for about 2 hours. During our phone conversation, he took me through the process of inner healing. The actual process he used had several parts to it. I only have space to discuss one part of it here. I may write about the other parts in future messages.

I’ll outline the process he used because it’s one that you might want to use yourself. I’m aware that formulas for healing have limited use, but if you’ve never done this before, you need a place to start and it can be helpful to use a process that worked for someone else. Just realize that the best way to approach inner healing is to involve the Holy Spirit and Jesus and allow the encounter to be directed by them as much as possible. When it comes to inner healing, the Holy Spirit is best and bringing up the problems that need to be addressed while Jesus is the one who heals the wounded parts of the soul.

One general point to consider: In order to heal the wounded soul, the part of the soul that is wounded and/or fragmented must be allowed to take temporary control of the mind, will, and emotions. This means you will usually have to go back to an event in the past that causes the emotion to be felt strongly. In order to receive healing, the wounded soul fragment must usually meet Jesus and receive healing and instruction from Him.

1. The first step was to have me go back to a place in my life where I could feel the anger again. This was not hard to do. There were many places in my mind where I could go back and relive an event that would bring up the emotion of anger. My friend had me go back to one of the earliest events and when I was feeling the emotion from that event, he had me say some short prayers, which I’ll list below. One thing he requested of me was to resist the temptation to over-think the situation. Inner healing is a purely emotional issue and when you attempt to rationalize or think about what’s happening it ruins the flow of emotions.  He urged me not to think too much about what were doing.
2. I confessed to God that my anger was a sin.
3. I said that I believed the blood of Jesus had taken away the penalty and consequences of my sin.
4. I asked Jesus to take away my anger.
5. We felt like Jesus wanted to give me something in return for giving Him my anger. I felt like he wanted to give me His peace. So I asked him to give me His peace in exchange for my anger and I received His peace.
6. I asked Jesus to heal the wound in my soul.
7. When we were done with this process my friend asked me to go back again and try to feel the emotions from one of the events. I was very surprised when I tried to go back to the events. I found that I could not go back to any of them and feel the anger. It was like there had been an open door to the events that I could go through any time I wanted. But after I went through this process, the door was no longer open. In fact, I couldn’t even see a door to the events. It was almost like they had never happened.

The fact that I could no longer access the events or feel the emotions of anger from them led me to believe I really was healed. This is not to say that I’ll never again get angry. That’s not what emotional healing does. It doesn’t take away your ability to feel certain emotions. It just heals the wounded parts of your soul that are dominated by them.

I received a strange confirmation the following day. When I arrived at work the next day, my partner told me he was being transferred to another unit. I couldn’t help but think that God had finally accomplished what he wanted with this partner and it was time for me to have a new one.

Since my healing, I’ve developed a process for emotional healing that is easy to do and effective. If you’d like to learn more, check out my book Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps.