Everywhere I look, I see people talking about self-healing. 

Hashtags like #selfhealer #selfhealing and #selfhealingjourney are splattered across Instagram and TikTok. In one way, it's indicative of the level of internal pain so many in this generation are processing. But in another way, it's heart-wrenching to see so many who feel that their only option is to try to heal themselves with nowhere else to turn.

In the recovery community, there’s a lot of emphasis on learning to articulate and express emotion. If we have been wounded, hurt, broken down by others - healing is needed. 

But can you heal yourself? 

Is that even possible?

It's actually not. 
And here are a few reasons why:

• You can’t heal in the same environment that broke you. 

We are broken in community. We heal in community. That means if our environment has been causing toxic dynamics, we are wise to seek safe dynamics elsewhere. If others in our circle wish to join us on that journey, then they become part of our safe community too. If not, then we prioritize the pursuit of healing safety and God's truth, regardless. 

• You can't fix your own brokenness; you aren't divine. 

If we approach healing from a faith perspective -- and you already know WILD takes a faith perspective rather than just a secular view -- if we understand the interaction between our own hearts and the beautiful love of God, then we realize it’s completely impossible to heal oneself. Healing has to originate from outside of us.

• No one else (including myself) can make up what is true.

Is it my job (and yours) to decide for myself that I'm going to commit to the work of healing into a radical relationship with what is true? Absolutely. Does that mean I get to make up my "truth" as I go along? Definitely not. It means that the only path toward soul rejuvenation happens when I align myself with what God says is true. Not my idea of what I want to be true in order to make myself more comfortable with my own sins.

We cannot heal ourselves outside of the healing power of God.

I want to be gentle with this concept, because I realize that for most survivors in the faith community, there is often a tremendous amount of pain wrapped up in our relationship with God.

It is incredibly common and normal to have an experience where spiritual abuse, or an aspect of power and control, or clergy abuse, or neglect by someone you looked up to in a spiritual role -- all of those negatively impact our picture of God. And understandably so.

But we cannot heal ourselves in a vacuum, outside of the intervention of God. And the things that broke us in the name of God were NOT God.

They were the works of harm dressed in God’s clothing. Sometimes they were the actions of pure evil. Other times they were the actions of those with good intentions but flawed understanding.

On the journey of healing, it is absolutely vital to embrace a perspective and framework of pursuing truth as God defines truth.

Don’t freak out, I’m not talking some kind of tyrannical, “You must follow the truth, and the truth alone!” type of coercion or control. Before you hyperventilate, (hey, sometimes I do, too) let's just crack open open a conversation.

Healing is an inside job, but it is not a self-sufficient job. 

Healing is the gradual result of pursuing a radical commitment to truth. Transformative, experiential soul-healing results from developing an accurate perception and relationship with what is true.

Survivors often experience toxic thought loops. I struggled with this for years, which is why I created a Soothing Scripture playlist to restructure negative thought pathways and change mental soundtracks.

When we are willing to be courageous in learning to pursue and embrace the truth, there's a wellspring of healing. This begins with learning to recognize when we’re lying to ourselves or repeating other people’s lies. 

Sometimes, we lie to ourselves based on things like:

• years of deep-seated insecurities. 

• something hurtful someone said back in grade school. 

• negative feedback we've heard from our parents or spouse a thousand times over. 

• toxic messages from our surrounding cultural environment.

The actual source is less important than the process of recognizing that we are snuggling up with those lies every night, and wearing them next to our skin every morning. As long as we're telling ourselves lies:

• lies about God,

• lies about others,

• lies about ourselves, 

...we’re going to have a barrier to healing. 

Healing happens only when we internalize an accurate perception of truth. This requires a radical commitment to humility, to recognizing when you’ve believed lies, to rewiring those toxic thought loops. 

STEP ONE: We let God speak to us about Who He is. 

God is not a god of tyranny. 
He is not a god of indulgence.

He is a God of justice and mercy, and those two things blended together create His love. God is a God of faithfulness. 

God does not want women or children or men--anyone vulnerable and high at risk--to be enduring abuse. The entire book of Isaiah emphasizes this ad nauseam. 

When people act in abusive patterns of behavior, especially in God's name, they misrepresent Him and trample the third commandment. 

So when we have a more accurate understanding of our picture of God, when we have an accurate perception of the truth about God--who He says He is, and what His character is actually like--then we can begin to believe what He says to us about ourselves. 

We begin to have a more accurate and truthful perception of ourselves. 

And as we pursue that recalibrated perception, it means we may have to rewire some things that we believe about ourselves. 

We may have to accept some ugly truths about ourselves. 
We may have to reject some unkind lies about ourselves.

But as we have that perception and understanding of truth rewired about ourselves, we can have a truthful and more accurate relationship with other people. 

It starts with a better, more accurate understanding of God, it leads to a healing understanding of how God feels about us--what my identity is--and that leads to really healthy boundaries. Because you become more confident in who you are as a child of God, and that God does not want you to endure mistreatment and that is not helpful or healing for the character of the other person, either. 

It begins to disentangle our enmeshed understandings about the people around us. It clears that fog and brings clarity. All of those things are incredibly healing. 

But we have no healing power solo. Healing happens in safe community.

I talk often about how important it is for survivors to find safe spaces to tell our stories. It is absolutely healing and important to tell our stories, but just telling our stories doesn’t get us anywhere except stuck in a loop.

If we get stuck in just repeating our angry story--even if we’re right--we’re not going to heal further than that because we’re not moving forward through the additional (and equally important) stages of outrage and anger and recognition into the stage of healing. If we stay stuck, we won't reach the point of recreation of who we are as confident, strong, secure. Once we reach this point, it doesn’t matter what those around you like or dislike because you are at peace with your conscience and at peace with God. 

If you have confidence and peace that you are aligned with God in healing and pursuing truth, then you have a sense of security that you don’t need to worry about pleasing everyone. You can rest knowing you are in alignment with what you know to be true.

It is very healthy to tell our story; it is unhealthy to stay stuck in the same place in our story.

That healing includes the arch, that curve of understanding so we move on into healing and a new life that comes with confidence and peace and security and joy. So we do not have any healing power in ourselves. 

Healing comes from pursuing truth as God defines it. 

Pursuing truth brings peace. 

It brings freedom, because we are not living on a foundation of lies in our heads--even if those lies are those we tell ourselves.

Someone told me once, “my story is not about being angry. It’s about doubting myself and a huge sense of fear. I don’t worry about pleasing others, that’s not my problem. I’m just saying I think I’m a little different from what many deal with.”

You may very well be in the exact same place. That sense of fear may also be driving whatever parts of your heart and mind that are still healing and driving a sense of insecurity. 

If you’re not in an anger stage, but maybe in a fear stage, it can be very crippling. 

God wants to lead us past the fear into a confidence in Him. 

He is able to do that through our relationship with and pursuit of truth and the healing that brings.

Another person shared, “I wonder if we as Christians can ever be truly healed, or if we are going to just be partially healed and carry results of our pain for the rest of our lives?”

I think that depends on how you define fully healed. 

If you mean fully healed from the perspective that you have no scars, nothing affects you anymore, there are no triggers, you have no memory of it, or it’s all faded away… then no. 

I personally believe complete and total healing will come when Jesus returns, makes us immortal and transforms us into sinless beings who live in heaven with Him. That’s my personal belief. 

But I do believe that we can be--maybe not fully healed, because we’re not perfect on this side of heaven-- but deeply healed. 

I believe we can even eventually reach a place where we are able to thank God for some of the pain we’ve experienced... because of what the pain has taught us and how we have been led to become more compassionate human beings, able to understand and connect with others who are in pain. 

I believe we can be healed to the point of no longer being reactive, no longer being obsessive, no longer being angry and insecure and fearful -- but we will always have scars on this side of heaven. 

I believe that if we allow those scars to be talking points in our testimonies of how God stopped the bleeding and allowed us to heal as we pursue truth, I think that those healed marks can serve a purpose even beyond the pain. 

It takes a long time. 
It takes a lot of willingness to journey and trust.

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