As an incest survivor and spending my whole life in and out of treatment for an eating disorder and body dysmorphia, I now counsel others who suffer from complex trauma. Most of my clients had terrorizing childhoods and almost all suffered a breech in personal boundaries through touch. If a child can’t protect itself, it will find expression for what happened either in words or action, sometimes to their own detriment. Believing I was a lesbian for 12 years was a natural reaction to my choices being stripped of me during development, causing suicidal thoughts, confusion and deep shame. It wasn’t until I was 32 and my sexual abuse surfaced that I was hospitalized for starvation. I wanted to be invisible and out of the way, a common feeling I got from my parents. I struggled with self-hate and depression which would ignite anger from a religious father because I wallowing in self-pity. My clients are predominately one’s who struggle with gender identity and eating disorder’s because the parts of them who cope that way, experienced similar circumstances that were beyond their control like I had. Further demonization for these behaviors, re-traumatizes the small child trapped within causing further distance from religious practices and people.

If believers do not gracefully discern that “acting out” originates on a deep subconscious level within another, then they will be quick to judge what they do not understand. What I have witnessed countless times, is my encouragement and love toward one who is conflicted which sheds light on spiritual value before natural obedience, and his own change aligns with heaven. My prayers for many behind the scenes and sharing my own story, strips off the stigma of perversion should a client believe he or she is transgender, sexually deviant or damaged goods. I am well acquainted with entrapment of sensations, questions and judgment that an internal system embodies because, they are emotional parts that few discuss, much less can reach. But when they do, God ministers to their hearts right where it was ripped off, in childhood. It requires me to move from pity and into curiosity toward the one who is seeking validation through choice that he never had when small. I get it, because so many questioned my salvation when I was still reacting promiscuously from childhood abuse as an adult. The truth is, none of us are defined by our sin, mistakes or what we do.

Subconsciously we can live life on autopilot because the chaos on the home-front was our norm, but when Our Savior becomes greater than our pain, we stop holding onto it for false protection. There has to be a “coming to Jesus moment” for each part of our internal system that is conflicted about it’s nature of origin. That means for each memory of self-doubt, forgiveness AND reconciliation from the part who behaved badly to our self, needs to happen. I did not remember what had happened to me until Jesus knew I couldn’t shove the truth anymore and He allowed my repressed memories to surface. It is possible for all victims of either spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse or neglect to overcome the tragedies we have lived and turn the course of our lives around even if we have altered ourselves permanently. I went to great lengths to change my outside world through mutilation and much of it began with my thoughts. Once I found a love greater than I had know in a relationship with Jesus, my crooked path of promiscuity and depression was made straight and I could face the torment of my past to start healing. Utilizing my faith allows me to process what happened to me as a child without condemnation over the consequences. My love/hate relationship with food still exists but I have seen the connection so many of us make to shame and guilt through both sexual and physical appetite’s, that my own conflicting perspectives have softened.

To the degree that we judge ourselves is the same way we judge others. So if a part of me hates myself for bingeing, it could hate others with the same problem while working with a remorseful part that brings in sadness. The parts that needs proof of significance may drive me to starve to the point of exposing my ribs but another part ruminates on fantasy to fill the void. None of us like being flooded with polarized points of view that we can’t make sense of, and that is the need for mercy in those moments. That is why I am not what I eat and neither is my neighbor, because confusion, impulse and conflict are separate parts working together for the “common good” when deciding to binge, starve, alter myself or “act out”. For many years these separate parts have been rivals like siblings, yet in moments of threat, they form alliances to survive. If my self is grounded in Holy Spirit when observing another’s actions, my parts won’t have to judge from their own survival instinct and I can see where another’s behavior is protecting a more vulnerable part deep inside them.

Ministering to the broken spirit of a human soul allows the Holy Spirit to be counselor in those past memories where shame is held in secrecy. This is a topic I have written countless entries on and it is my hope for the passion of Christ to love these people where they are, just as He did for me. It may be, that after all they have done to change and fix themselves on the outside, that they find the One who loves them just as they are on the inside. Only He has been in the moments of suffering which made them believe in something they are not. Rifts in identity are made when young and pain has a way of twisting us up with counterfeit coping. I trust that this is the era in which we will see more transgender and homosexual individuals come into the acknowledgement of their worth and self-love than any other time before because it will be identifiably different.