I know you've been told that those who have been through trauma will always be traumatized, that there is no healing for it, that all we can hope for is a better limp through life, learning skills that handle life better, and that you're never really going to be healed. I'm here to tell you that is not true. Healing is quick; what takes a bit longer is rebuilding you into the amazing, incredible, God-designed person He always meant you to be.

10 things you must do to break free of your past

1. Counseling

I know that seems like a really simple answer. But if you could have gotten over your abuse on your own, you would have. I have a trauma background; I know what this is like, and I know I could not have done a lot of this on my own. But you do have to find the right counselor. I've had a lot of people come to me after counseling with others because they didn't get any help. For me, we have Christ in our session, and He is the one who actually heals. You have to find the right counselor to do counseling, and it doesn't have to take forever. We could do this on a weekend. The idea behind counseling is not tolerable recovery but full restoration and permanent, complete healing.

2. Grieve

When we have been through trauma, when we have a painful past, there's a lot that we've lost—what could have been, what should have been, the life that should have been there. We've lost some of ourselves; we've lost trust. I mean, there's a list, and we have to actually look at that list and say, "This is what I've lost," and bring it to the Lord for healing. But then I can also say, "What good can I bring out of this?" What changed in me and who have I become because of what I went through that I could not have done otherwise? I have to raise that anger to the surface, right? Anger is a part of grief, and sadness must be felt.

3. Life Skills

When we are in trauma, we are in survival mode. Survival skills are not the same as life skills. I have to kind of look at what my survival skills were. Some of those survival skills—we've talked about self-protection and not trusting—are survival skills that say, "I don't want to get hurt again." And then, I have to look at what life skills I didn't learn. Often, there are relationship skills. There are processing skills—how I think about things—and quite a few different emotional skills that I need to learn. All I need to do is really pick the top five that have actually changed my life if I had them going and get started on them.

4. Healthy relationships

When we have been through trauma, we don't trust many people. But there are really good people out there, and all we need to do is learn the red flags and the warning signs; not everyone has them. But when I can find out what those are, then I can really protect myself from the few people that I need to protect myself from. I also need to find some good, safe people to do life with; that's a really good life skill.

5. Self-love

I need to learn to love myself in a healthy way. Those who have been through trauma or abuse often don't love or like themselves. Their inner critic or inner bully is constantly telling them, pointing out all of the minutiae of things that aren't good about them. As well as the big ways of saying you aren't good enough, you can't do that, you'll never have, etc. But it is unconditional love that brings us healing, and we get that first from Christ, and then we start to join Him in loving ourselves. When we do that, the inner critic's voice changes to Christ's, where He talks about how He loves us, how He likes us, and how He has hope and a future for us. We begin to speak the truth to ourselves, and that truth then sets us free. I'm not constantly beating myself up anymore.

6. Inner healing of all memories

This is what I'm really good at. In intensive counseling, I work with someone, and we bring Christ to those memories. We go back, and we heal them completely because we're not stopping after a 50-minute session; we keep going until that memory feels like the peace of Christ. We trade the pain for peace. We reframe that memory, we see it through His eyes, and we do all the work that needs to be done until we can walk away from that memory. We do that, memory after memory, until there's nothing left to work on. Then we look back at our past, and what we see is Christ there; what we see is that we were always loved, we have never been alone, and God is pleased with us.

7. Only One God to whom you please

When I come through trauma and abuse, I'm often a people-pleaser, to one degree or another. And I need approval from people, which makes them my master because what they feel about me determines how I feel about myself that day. But I want you to know that we can have a skill that says, "I only have to live for God to please Him." When I am living a life that pleases God and you don't like me, it's okay. I don't need you to like me, but God does. I'm not doing anything wrong if I'm living a life that God loves. He alone knows who you truly are. No one else gets to design you, determine you, or tell you who you are. He alone loves you fully, and He is your safe place, the one that you go to to find out who you are.

8. Hope

You're not trapped in trauma and painful memories. You can absolutely be fully, completely, and permanently healed. You have a future free from the abuse results if you decide to take the steps to gain it.

9. Resources to combat helplessness

You survived the abuse; we came out damaged, but we survived. Now we just need the resources to up level our lives, to learn the skills that we didn't learn, and to learn how to live a healthy life. We can grow, we can change, and we can become.

10. Resolve your anger

Righteous anger is good for us. Christ had righteous anger. We should be angry over things that have happened to us and to others. But anger covers pain. So if I'm feeling anger, it feels a lot better than pain. But I also need to deal with the underlying wounds; the pain is healed, and now the anger can be dealt with in a righteous way. And then I need to forgive. I know forgiveness sounds like it's not fair, or just, but it doesn't let them off the hook; it just transfers them to Christ. They are still on the hook for everything that they did to you. It just gives you freedom.

Rachel's Testimony

You see, we can remove your trauma, we can rebuild your heart, and you can step into your truth. Like Rachel, who had come to me after one of the hardest childhoods I've ever heard of, she was now filled with anxiety and had a hard time leaving her home. She had a lot of painful memories that kept her life small. When she felt this big call on her life, she just didn't know how to break free so that she could live it. She had been working really, really hard to heal herself. She had been to some counseling but was still just limping through life, and the anxiety made her life even smaller.

You know, she could have kept going on like that. Don't we all? We've learned how to walk successfully with our limp, but she wanted real success. She wanted success as a person, success in business, success in relationships, and success in her life with Christ. So she came to me, and she was totally skeptical, as everyone is. When we started working, we started the process of reclaiming her life.

The first was a weekend counseling intensive. In that intensive, her painful memories were completely healed in just days. Her shame was fully removed over the weekend. She loved herself for the first time in her life, and that was so amazing to see. She knew that the life she had dreamed of was finally possible. Then we spent the next three months together rebuilding her heart and her confidence in her dreams.

You see, just because we're healed does not mean that we are whole, confident, and ready to live a healthy life, or even know how to. But she was totally ready after our time together. We wrote out a new life script for her. It wasn't a victim; it was victorious. It wasn't someone who had been through trauma and the weight of that; it was someone who was now equipped and empowered for a life with Christ. She loved the new script. It was the true path for who God designed her to be, and she felt it to her core.

This was it! This was the life that always seemed just out of reach, and it was now within her grasp. She could see that a successful life was now hers to claim. So if this resonates with you, if you're tired of your limitations, if you're tired of feeling not enough or too much, if you're tired of not being able to just live your life today because of your past, be healed, whole, and free

If you want more—more success, more joy, more freedom—and a mind that supports you rather than bullies you, then let's talk. Let's talk about what your life will be like after you are healed. After you are rebuilt, reconnected, and whole, after you are set free to pursue your dreams.

If you are a Christian woman who wants to answer the call of her heart, rock the world, and live with power and joy, then I invite you to book a consultation with me. I only take on two clients a month. So we should meet and make sure that the weekend intensive and the three months of follow-up live coaching are right for you. When we meet, I will tell you what our great God can do for you and what your life can be when you are set free. That's a kind of vision for who you will be after you are healed, whole, and free. I am so looking forward to our time together.

Discover how you can heal your trauma and abuse memories in just one weekend. Book a consultation or email me at [email protected].

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