Baggage Check - For Your Soul

What's in the Basement of Your Heart?

(Sharing an Internet Article)

During the past year or so, most airlines have changed their policies regarding “baggage.” It used to be that when you bought an airline ticket (seat), that price would include your baggage. Of course there were always limits on how much baggage you could take and what you could "carry on." But, what used to be “FREE” (?) now has an additional charge. Your BAGGAGE has a SEPARATE FEE – and it ain’t cheap.

I think the same “policy” is in effect in most of our lives and relationships.
There’s Me & You, and then there’s My & Your “Baggage.” And, our baggage carries a separate price also – individually AND relationally.
I’m talking about “the stuff that’s buried in our Hearts” – the “Carry-on Baggage” that’s with us, throughout our lives. Sometimes, the price we pay for our heartfelt baggage is minimal. Other times, the price is really MAXED OUT. And yet, it seems that we really don’t have a choice. Our baggage follows us wherever we go, and unfortunately, there’s always a price to pay.

Honestly, I’ve come to learn and experience that we DO have a choice. We have a choice to deal with our baggage, and get it “in order” – that is to clean it up and get it Healed. Or, we make the choice to just keep pushing it down into the Basement of our Heart, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. For the majority of my life, I tended to do the latter. . .

Now I really wasn’t pretending that I didn’t have any baggage (unhealed hurts) – I knew that I did. But like many people, I just dismissed those things as if they were “in the past.” I lived the “get over it – let it go – move on and forget about it” fantasy. I even bought into the “Time heals all wounds” baloney. In my “I’m okay” mindset, I never paid attention to how much that “stuff” DID matter – until I started to get the separate “Baggage Fees.” And the price I wound up paying was costing me dearly – in terms of my own health AND in my closest personal relationships.

Emotional wounds and physical wounds are really quite similar. That is,
if you don’t “get the wound treated so it can heal,” it will only wind up getting worse due to the ensuing infection. And if infections aren’t treated, they just continue to grow and get worse, as well. What I experienced
was that until I was WILLING to start dealing with my “own stuff”
(the unresolved issues and unhealed hurts buried in my Heart), I would be carrying ALL of that STUFF with me wherever I went. And, that kind of "Baggage" is NOT discriminating. It goes with us into every relationship we have – be that family, friends, work, church, our personal time and especially. . . our intimate relationships.

Dealing with our baggage isn’t easy. It takes WORK and there is some pain involved. As the adage goes. . . "No Pain – No Gain." But in reality, I've experienced that the techniques, steps and processes for True Healing aren’t nearly as painful as continuing to carry around all of those past unhealed hurts. For me, it wasn't until my pain got bad enough – that I truly "wanted to get well." And the relational benefits and Blessings have been flowing ever since.

The saying goes like this: “If you’re willing to FEEL it – Christ can
(and will) Heal it.” In my own Healing Journey, I’ve found that to be true, and our willingness to Forgive plays a HUGE role. God knows about ALL the hurts that we carry. He knows the WHO, the WHEN and HOW BADLY we were hurt. I believe He came “to set the captives free and to Heal the brokenhearted.” The question is, “are we willing to go there” and DEAL WITH that STUFF to get it Healed?

I’d encourage you to consider reading the following article I found on the internet. And maybe, when the time is right, consider talking to someone whom you feel you can trust. Pray about it and ask for help, and I believe you’ll find it. There are people who care and who can help us in our Healing Journeys. But truly. . . “God is the One who Heals” – not us.

R Butch David

Recovered Memories Helped Me Heal

(An Article by BlueCascade)

Up until several years ago, I had no memory prior to the age of eight. I didn't wonder about it much. I knew I had a bad childhood, endured sexual abuse from my father, a friend's dad, and my grandfather (mom's dad). After a series of events, I felt I really needed to get therapy for the sexual abuse I endured. I was in my mid-30s. 

After I started therapy, I became more depressed and started having
panic attacks. There were times I wanted to hide under a bed or in a closet. The fear was paralyzing and didn't seem to be connected to the abuse I remembered. I thought I was going crazy. I started hearing, feeling and seeing things. Sometimes, at night while I was asleep, I had horrifying nightmares that left me unable to move when I woke up.

I am lucky that I had a gifted therapist who recognized my symptoms – "trigger" and "dissociate". My abuse started in earliest childhood.
I don't like to mention age, because I get responses that range from doubt, to some people saying that there is no way I could remember things from when I was that young. . . but I do.

Trauma memory is not like the regular kind of memories. Some people believe in the help from a Higher Power. They were taken away when the abuse occurred. Some believe it is a coping mechanism in the brain: dissociation. In my experience, I believe it was a combination of both. 

I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, (DID) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD). DID is also referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder, but in my case, I was atypical. I joked with my therapist that I didn't even do mental illness right.

I had parts. The most severe abuse was locked into parts of my brain that I learned to recognize, as myself, at different ages. There is the baby, the 2 year old, the 3 year old, the 5 year old, and the 8 year old. I also have a 21 year old, and parts that stored some of the worst things. They were called, Shame, Impulse, and Body sensations. They were all parts of
me, and I recognized them as such, even though, at times it was excruciatingly painful to do so.

When I would go into a dissociative state, I would experience the abuse like I was there again. I would see, hear, feel, and taste, just as I do when I am present. But this was a nightmare world of torture and abuse. I had more perpetrators: an aunt, my dad's brothers, and a church friend of my dad's that swapped daughters with him. I had always told myself that I was lucky. My abuse wasn't as bad as some.

At least in my life, before these things surfaced, the "worst" didn't happen. But the worst did happen, and more. I didn't want to know all this. I didn't want to accept it. I wished I was crazy, I wished I was dead. My therapist would remind me that I had already gone through these things at a very young age, and I had survived it.

This process was about Healing. It was about taking the pain and suffering from the baby, and all the others. It was about assimilation of these parts and bringing myself together.  When I look back on those days, I wonder how I survived it. The thing that was always on my mind was that I wanted to be happy one day. I wanted to feel joy, and as long as my parts were separate, that would never happen. It was the hardest thing I have ever been through.

It takes courage so strong that I didn't think I could find it. Think about the child I was, the baby, the 2 year old, etc. – I was able to survive thanks to Divine Intervention and the amazing mechanism that allows children to dissociate.

I have felt happiness, I have felt joy. If I didn't commit to my healing journey, I don't think I ever would have felt those things. To those of you with repressed memories, get help. Find it, it is out there. 

In order to heal you have to remember, but you don't have to remember everything. You have to bring yourself together, you have to accept things no person should have to accept, but you can get through it. When you do, life starts to look good. For me, life looked good for the first time in 40 years. What has been fun is I can enjoy things. I experience things, like a child does, at times. I'm filled with wonder and awe. Sometimes I feel a little foolish when I feel, and act, like a kid. But I figure I deserve it. I didn't get the opportunity when I was a child, and I am trying to make the most of that now.

http://healingsisters.org/bluecascade/recovered-memories-helped-me-heal