Suffering is Satanic — Stop It.

Point-blank period. At some point, your suffering becomes an addiction. And when you are aware of the addiction, it’s your responsibility to put an end to it. But more so than that, suffering is satanic and rooted in evil. Also, there is nothing in Christian scripture that alludes to statements that you must suffer in this life, although you might. There are passages that point towards the undeniable suffrage of the believer, due to the attained nature of this world, but not due to any necessity of suffering to “earn” your right to humanness or godliness. Bottom line, Jesus put an end to any suffering he came across. Even in the case of narcissists — Jesus handled them in a way which forced them to look inward. While it’s their own doing, that keeps theirselves in a place of drowning in evil ways, narcissists are still humans, and they are suffering. Jesus was aware of this and didn’t take it lightly — because He doesn't believe that you should suffer... he responded to and handled them accordingly. Are you getting it yet? 

I wanted to write on this topic because so many of us wrestle with the “but how do I stop?” or, “when will it end?” questions, as I did, for years. So many of us out there have learned that faith, religion and spirituality, a relationship with Christ, with Abba, means that you have to suffer and sacrifice parts of yourself, that you have to shrink to be perfect. The only reason I feel I can write on this, is because this was the lie I was fed at 9 years of age, resulting in the development of C-PTSD in my most poignant years of evolution as a human being. There's a gravity to this that I think is overlooked when it shouldn't be. That gravity being: your being learned how to adapt and continue learning and growing like any other human, even with an unresolved factor which by definition, you should have never survived. Do you understand how capable you are, when you take a look with this birds-eye view?!

For me, it wasn't just this unresolved religious trauma that provided this lie, causing my C-PTSD, there were a few other factors, narcissism and control being the main culprit to it. Do you know that narcissist control and abuse has the same impact on the brain that is created from torture tactics on prisoners of war? So if you're new here, wondering who I am and what I'm about — know that I'm a regular person who learned life wrong simply because of experiences and dynamics of relationships I was in. But I'm also a regular person who has unlearned the lies — at least identified them. The blindspots and cobwebs in my mind have been "cleared out" so to speak. And look, while I'm pretty dang proud of the work I did on my own, it's a 1000 times easier with God. 

And while this may be a blog post for another day, and don’t get me wrong on what I'm about to say — but, speaking as the former scapegoated, traumatized kid — it’s extremely difficult to feel free and exist in a country that praises veterans who signed up for their position, wherein some of them have experienced suffering, but childhood trauma and sex-trafficking survivors are discarded and avoided when they may have the same symptoms of suffering or worse. I get it, it's uncomfortable and being victim to something doesn't scream "hero", but hear me out. This is not about recognition, this is about the fact that we have the same skillsets and potentially increased resiliency but are overlooked because people “don’t like the look” of an abused kid; a foster child; a young adult failing in classes at school, because life at home is so stressful; a grown adult who has never had the chance to unlearn everything from their upbringing or past, but wants to. People don't want to "hear it". People will respond with, "life's not fair," "you don't get to choose the card you're dealt." But here's the thing — we could change the game. I’m convinced, that if you mitigate the habit of self-abandonment and learned helplessness, within societal provisions and structure, we won’t just improve community and reduce crime, we’ll improve the economy. 

Because when a former scapegoated child understands that, in a sense, they have nothing to do here on this earth BUT make money and build a life — all the effort that went into tearing their own selves and life down will invert itself, sort of like how a fig fruit was created. The tough thing for us is letting the wasp die. (We value life that much — we don't even want to let it die) My question is though, if veterans with the same impact and symptoms of suffering receive benefits, why don’t the kids receive benefits, the ones who suffered their entire upbringing? The United States seems to be obsessed with lost children when we lose them, but when it comes to the actions and measures required to preventing the loss in the first place, it turns into a frenzy of “we can’t take away people’s rights” or, "they're of legal age they can make their own choices". Age doesn't mean anything if the development never formed. When it comes to helping the kids who survived, especially into adulthood, our backbone is “you’re on your own”. Honestly — why? If it were built into our minds and vision to have a different backbone, we’d build it, and we’d stop losing the kids (adults too) that get turned into news articles, entertainment and gossip. 

But back to stopping — how do you put an end to your suffering? Since suffering is rooted in evil — here’s what Proverbs 4:14-15 says about that, “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it; Do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on." Simply put, say no. Leave. Walk out the door. Simply put, you choose to close the book on that way of living. And just before these verses we have verse 13 that reads, "Keep hold of instruction, do not let go; guard her, for she is your life." In other words, your only option is to rely on instruction. Your only option is to learn. Honestly? Easier said than done. Learning takes focus, dedication and effort —you could learn or be passive. Learn and you gain something. Be passive, and essentially, you go nowhere. Bottomline then.. you have to move. You have to make the change. And also, maybe you're like me and you learned life "wrong" or what joy and happiness was, or how a marriage works. So how do you even trust yourself to learn in the first place, after being fed lies from a narcissist your entire life? After learning "wrong" and failing? I'll make this super simple: what's the thing that makes you say, "I want to figure this out" and is it healthy, wholesome, good? Follow that. 

So of course, this may raise some controversy around dealing with/processing trauma. Because those words, "I want to figure this out" is what I thought to myself at 26 when I had nerve pain all over my body and a right leg that had pulled up by three-quarters an inch, along with terrible tension headaches, low back pain, buckling knees, and two previous diagnoses that didn't "add-up" for me. I had to figure out what was wrong and what had happened to me so I could: 1. Stop the suffering at its root. 2. Get to know myself, and develop wisdom. 3. Finally step into a conscious life. But folks like me attribute trauma as a portal to evil. While this is true — you still have to get the trauma out of your system (so you stop attracting it!), and there's a lot of ways to do this, but the bottomline on this is if you don't know that you were traumatized, you'll never heal your trauma. It's the whole concept of "you don't know what you don't know" even though you have some clues about it. Looking at your trauma to deal with and heal it doesn't mean following the way of evil — really it's all about your mindset, intent and approach. The key question being, are you actively trying to improve your life by "looking" at your trauma so that you can fully process it out/through and be done with it? Are you staying connected to others? Are you continuing on with your endeavors in life? Even if not at the full desired capacity? If the answer is yes, great! If instead, you are wishful, hoping, relying on luck or someone to save you, for your pain and agony to end, using means of treatments to cope and "finally one day" be free of your pain — that's all you're gonna get. More days of, "finally one day". What I'm getting at here is, it is in your hands and within your ability to put an end to your pain without harm to yourself or others. All you do is say no. All you do is say, "I'm going to take care of this," "I'm going to figure this out," "I'm going to show up for myself."

But if you're not comfortable with exercising that authority of self — that's your first habit to build. That's what I'm here for. Believe me, you can do it. And remember, take breaks and eat your tryptophan along the way. 

-B

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