You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. - Psalm 51:6
Upon listening to the short story version of my traumatization, one of my counselors said, “Your story sounds like the drama of the gifted child.” I thought he was referring to a child psychology principle. I asked him to explain the drama of the gifted child. He recognized that I was confused and said, “No, no, no. The Drama of the Gifted Child is a book.” I downloaded the book that night and started another wave of transformation.
The premise of the book is that what has been inflicted upon abused and neglected children is so devastating that the soul will deny what happened at nearly all cost to itself. In the matter of child sex abuse the reality of a mother or father abusing the very child they should be protecting is so horrific and counter to God’s design that every cell of our being wants to deny, pretend, and rationalize what really happened. The energy expended in the denial, pretense, and rationalization is immeasurable and is a key contributing factor to the exhaustion lived in by the abused.
The true conclusions you would have to reach about your parents (they were abusive, neglectful, drugged-out, criminal, incapacitated, chronically ill, etc.) and the false conclusions about self (un-worthy, un-deserving, un-repairable, etc.) are so devastating that the inner being rejects, denies and avoids. The denial and cost are a part of what propagates the damage done.
The author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller, shares many helpful principles and cases in how to overcome the denial and avoidance. She has written a very practical explanation of how the little-t-truth is liberating. As elusive and counter-intuitive as it is, affirming that what was inflicted upon us, by who inflicted it upon us, and where it was afflicted upon us, is one of the most liberating responses to flashbacks and trauma sensations.
The self-protection and warped self-perception are so entrenched that they form a conspiracy to resist the truth and the approach. If anything should not be trusted; it’s those two conspirators.
When I lapse into a PTSD fugue, I forget the power of truth and affirmation of my experiences. Eventually God reminds me to re-affirm my experience. At this point I have learned to connect my fugue to a trigger, and it's associated traumatic event. When I reaffirm out loud the event, for example, "My Father did X when I was Y years old at Z place", then relief comes. It is important to also forgive him/her for doing whatever it was and for its ramifications; and to ask God to bless that person and/or their memory; and to ask God to transform the trauma into a platform for healing, and glorifying God.
It seems counter-intuitive. How can re-affirming a traumatizing truth bring freedom and healing? The answer lies in Psalm 51:6.
Psalm 51:6 is one of my favorite Scriptures. The NASB puts it this way. “You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.” The CSB puts it this way, “Surely you desire integrity in the inner self, and you teach me wisdom deep within.”
The Hebrew word for “innermost” or “inner self” is tuwchah, meaning intestines. Guess where a large portion of our serotonin – the chemical that is to a large degree responsible for our consciousness and perception – hangs out? Yep, the intestines. When our inner self digests, receives and functions with truth and integrity pertaining to our experiences; our serotonin surges and our intestines function in peace.
PRAYER
Abba Father, please help me to rightfully affirm the truth of my life experiences; whatever they may be. Help me to say them aloud to You, and to forgive and bless those who have abused and harmed me and/or my loved ones. Help me to say like Joseph, they meant it for evil, but You allowed it for good. May the abuses become seedbeds for Your Glory to grow and my healing to prosper. Let it be in The Name of Jesus.
RESOURCES
The Drama of the Gifted Child. Alice Miller
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