Nearly 7 years ago I found myself standing in front of more
than five hundred people at a large conference where nearly everyone in the
audience had their hands raised. Observing the large numbers of people with
their hands in the air, I stared, stunned at the numbers of people who
acknowledged my question: “Who knows someone who struggles with cutting,
depression, anorexia or suicide?”
Since this time I have had the opportunity to speak at hundreds of
different events and each time I ask this question, 80-90% of the crowd reacts
the same way. More disturbingly to me, over the past three years, most of the
emails I have received come from students who have dealt with some form of
self-injury (SI).
Many of us know people struggle
with cutting, suicide, anorexia and bulimia. However, SI does not end here. SI
also incorporates people who eat too much, those who work out too little (or
too much), people who struggle with substance abuse, people who are sexually
promiscuous, people who work too hard (or too little) and the many other ways
we abuse ourselves. All of these things hurt us in different ways – all are
considered SI.
Believe me - no one gets up in
the morning and says: “Today I am going to kill myself”, “Today I am going to
cut my body” or “Today I am going to get so wasted …”. Instead, the events that
transpire over the course of the day are what cause these tragic events to
unfold – Life interrupts. You get up, ready for the day, and life hits you
square in the face. You have a fight with you mom, you break up with your
boyfriend, you fail a test, you lose a job or one of a thousand other things
that happen. You say, “I can’t take this,” and you do something. You have a few
drinks, you have promiscuous sex, or you cut yourself all in the name of
escaping what is going on in your life.
The goal is to make us forget
what we are going through – to leave the pain behind. However, after the SI,
whatever it was that prompted us to bleed, either from the heart or from the body
or both, is still there. On a podcast this past year, Erwin MacManus said, “I
believe that many of us, instead of facing the issues and dealing with them,
are leading medicated lives because we don’t have the strength to deal with the
lives we already have.” Similarly,
Dr. Phil often says, “You can’t change what you will not acknowledge.”
Your story, like mine, likely
unfolds using similar themes.
Examine the small flow chart below.
Your Story -> Feelings -> Actions
(1) Your Story
is your history, it’s what you struggle with most internally. For some of us, our Story encompasses
baggage that we’ve accumulated over the years. It’s an accumulation of emotion we haven’t yet dealt with
and, instead, continues to wound us.
Breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, divorce, deaths of
family/friends, job loss, and personal failure are all components of Your
Story.
(2) Your Feelings are sentiments you either express publicly
or keep bundled up inside. Think back to the last time you struggled with
something and try to remember how you were feeling. You were likely feeling
angry, alone, scared, hopeless or helpless. When asking people how they felt in those times before they
SI, the most common sentiment I hear is, “Just pissed off at the world”.
(3) Your
Actions are an outward expression of what you experience inside. You cut, your drink, you work 80 hours
per week.
Notice how in the chart above, Your Story impacts how you
feel on a day-to-day basis, and, it’s your Feelings, your mood that determines
your Actions? Clearly, our
feelings and our actions are a systemic result, like a chain reaction in
chemistry, of what we experience in our lives. This makes sense.
Stuff happens to me, I feel a certain way, I do stuff based on my
mood. This truth, though,
introduces something piercingly important: we need to make sure our Story is a good one – otherwise, we
run into trouble.
So, how do I make sure my Story is a good one?
First, we need to deal with our History. I have often heard
people tell me that they are ‘paralyzed’ by the things that have happened to
them in their lives. We need to deal with these things before we graduate High
School and continue on to College, marriage and our futures. Far too often, people fail to
realize that the ‘paralysis’ they experience in their younger years can easily
grow to destroy the futures they dream of. Paralysis is not something that remedies itself without
intensive physiotherapy.
Similarly, unless we begin rehabilitating our personal histories by
dealing with our issues, we will remain
paralyzed until we begin the healing process.
Some of the outstanding issues in your past can be fixed:
- if you had a fight with your parents, you may need to
speak with them
- if you failed a test, you may need to study more the next
time
Some elements of your story are not so easy to resolve
because you had no say in how they unfolded:
- you don’t choose to have a best friend die
- you don’t choose to have your parents divorce
For many of our stories, there is no easy remedy and it
might mean we need to meet with a counselor in order to resolve the emotional
damage that these events have caused.
Secondly, we need to be able to
deal with our feelings. Whether you just broke up with someone, had your
parents divorce or were physically/mentally abused, the challenge is in
learning how you are going to deal with the intense feelings these events have
generated. What do you do when you
are angry over your parents’ divorce?
Is your reaction hurting you further or assisting in the healing
process? I once had a heavily
pierced and tattooed Grade 12 student approach me and explain to me that when
he is really angry - he cooks. Now cooking may not be your thing. Maybe you
work out, play XBOX, surf the net, watch the Office or Lost or do something
else. For me, working out helps me relax; for others it can intensify these
negative feelings. Understand that whatever may work for someone else may not
work for you - just make sure what you do is having a positive impact on your Story. I once heard someone say, “You don’t break bad habits, you
replace them with good ones.”
I encourage you to do these two
things: deal with your past and learn how to deal with your emotions. To
continue on this journey of life you need to begin somewhere and I think this
is a good place. Remember that the choices you make undoubtedly have an impact
on the rest of your life.
Know where you have
been
Know where you want
to go
Know how to get there
Brett Ullman lives in Ajax, Ontario, Canada with his wife,
Dawn, and two kids, Zoe & Bennett. He the Director of Worlds Apart and author of three books and multiple DVD resources. Brett
travels throughout North America and is passionate in his talks with students
about media, faith and culture. Follow Brett on Twitter @brettullman or visit his websites
www.yourstory.info or www.brettullman.com to learn more about
Brett’s work.
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