Are you trying to navigate your life through emotional pain and mental distress?
Your life doesn’t have to be hindered by pain and distress.
Instead, let God take your pain and exchange it for His purpose for your life.
“‘11For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity.’”
Jeremiah 29:11-13
To heal emotional pain and mental distress requires you to know that you’re like a tree. Your thoughts, emotions and behaviors are a result of your “root system.” What shapes your root system is your upbringing, your experience as a child; the behaviors, moods, attitudes, priorities and lifestyles that were modeled in front of you. These things are the navigation system you use leads you down whatever path you take in life.
As a tree’s health or unhealth is observed by how green it’s leaves are or its ability to bear fruit, your health or unhealth can be observed by the way you respond to times of distress. To understand why you respond mentally and emotionally the way you do when life dishes you challenges, requires you to know what’s at the root of your heart.
Are you finding that your responses are leading you into deeper and darker places when really you’re just try to find the sunshine and breathe?
If you’re finding that you drink or smoke, you fight or argue, withdrawal and isolate, struggle with feelings of worthlessness, guilt or shame, or put down others, walk in arrogance, judge, shame people or gossip as a distraction from your low self-worth as a response to feeling overwhelmed or stressed, then you are living your life in a state of emotional and mental pain and distress. But you don’t have to.
You are not all bad, there’s good in you. However, emotional pain and mental distress caused by things you’ve done or things done to you manifests in the form of unhealed trauma such as abuse, neglect, parents who abused substances, witnessing domestic violence in the home, parents separating or divorcing, being bullied, low self-esteem, rejection and abandonment issues and many others.
These traumas live in your mind, body and spirit. When life becomes overwhelmingly stressful and you no longer feel safe, they trigger responses from your root system that can be seen through maladaptive thoughts, beliefs and behaviors.
This is what our root system looks like when we’re in the bondage of sin and trauma.
This is what our root system looks like when we’re rooted in Christ.
Christ wants you to be rooted in His love for you so he can heal your emotional pain and mental distress.
“16 I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Begin Your Healing Journey…
By putting your faith and trust in God.
He will do a miracle in you by giving you a new heart.
He wants to heal you.
“6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
1 Peter 5:6-7, NIV
“26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
Ezekial 36:26, NIV
“7 But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
Jeremiah 17:7-8 , NIV
Discover Who God is: Jesus is Everything You Need and More
Father to the Fatherless
“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families.”
Psalm 68:5-6 (NIV)
Your Friend
"I no longer call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because everything I do I have made known to you."
John 15:15 (NIV)
The Lover of your Soul
“The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”
Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV)
Discover Who You Are
If there was nothing stopping you…
Who would you be?
What would you have?
Where would you go?
What would you be doing?
How would you be doing it?
Who’s life would be blessed by your story and encouraged to start their healing journey?
What’s in Your Root System that’s Hindering You?
If you are not living out the answers above,
Do you have unresolved trauma from your childhood and/or your current life?
Are you struggling with unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, depression or anxiety?
On a scale from 0-10, “0” being no self-esteem at all and “10” being the highest level of self-esteem you could possess, where would you rate your self-esteem today? Are you satisfied with the number you chose? Why or why not? If you’re dissatisfied, what’s keeping you from approving of yourself?
Its time to go to therapy. Contact a clinical therapist in your local area today.
Healing Your Tree: Living a Life of Freedom and Contentment
Healing from Depression and Anxiety