How to fill up the lonely hurt inside

I wrote this way back in 2008. Through the journey I documented on this blog and because of Jesus Christ I managed to completely turn around my life. I did it through Jesus Christ. I studied Him and what the bible has to say about us and our lives and His headship of us. Please read my testimony (very short version). You can turn your life around too… spend time reading this blog and implementing the parts that you think relate to you. God bless you 🙂

This post is part of a series and I recommend you read both:

• How to fill up the lonely hurt inside (newer)
• What to do when you’re feeling empty inside

You may have seen a previous post of mine from long ago: What to do when you are feeling empty inside. It is by far the most popular post on this site and is the most read post almost every day. I have been feeling the need to write about love and healing again for a while now – and this is the beginning of that.

Disclaimer: If someone was to come up to me and poke their finger in my face and accuse me of still struggling with addictions, still struggling with self esteem, still struggling to love myself, still struggling to find motivation on some days… then I would say yes to them… you are right, I do.

But then I see that these days are less and less frequent and the trend is UP. I then realize how far I have come and what I have learned. I also see that the fruit of my experience is good and what I have to share is good and I know I can write something that can help others.

I am not a trained counsellor, but I have been called “an accidental volunterr”. I simply love loving people. As a result, I help a lot of hurt people the best I can. I don’t look for them, they find me and usually they have no one else to turn to.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I almost never hear a story of trauma/hurt that I have not experienced myself. When I tell people even a fraction of what I have been through, they ask me how I survived.

I hesitate to write, because I am not 100% healed and done and dusted. So it feels like a lack of integrity for me to talk about how to heal and recover. Although I am still struggling in some ways, I have a lot of experience in recovery, I have a lot to share – and I will try to share some of it in a way that is integrous and safe. If it works for me, there is no reason why it won’t work for you. I don’t have it all together, but I have some and I can share that some with you.

Recently someone left a comment on that “empty” post and I think it is such an excellent summary of what hurt people experience, that I will list the main points here and then I can explain the way out. This is what this person wrote (you can read the full version by clicking that link) in bullet points with my thoughts:

• I am lost, unsure of everything and
• I do not feel alive inside

So many people feel this way, it is astonishing to me. Whenever someone says they feel “lost, unsure” I always think to recommend a book by Dr. Henry Cloud (he wrote the boundaries books). He is a Christian and his excellent book is called “Changes that heal“. I recommend it.

• I have felt this way for as long as I can remember due to many bad experiences from abuse in childhood
• to extreme anger at my mother who raised me alone
• and a father who abandoned me and her before I was born
• and a violent relathionship that went on for 7 years

This person has listed the 4 reasons that have caused her current way of feeling extremely accurately. I highlighted the key problems in green.

• my anger and not being able to forgive is like a paralysis for me
• the rage I am feeling is destroying me

I think that anger over what has happened is completely appropriate in this situation. The bible says to BE ANGRY, but don’t sin. Here is a really fantastic study on anger.

Figure out who in your life is good for you and who is bad for you – and get away from the bad ones. A lot of anger and rage comes from being around harmful people. Get away from them and your rage may decrease. Get around loving people and how you feel about yourself will certainly improve.

• I am begining to see forgiveness as a weakness because the same people often wrong you again.. boundaries or not.. how many times can you forgive.

You mentioned boundaries. If people are still boundary-busting then your boundaries are too weak. You may have to do the hard work in figuring out who in your life is harmful to you and remove them from your life if they won’t change. You simply must look after you.

Children want the milk to be put on the table, they don’t want to go milk a cow. They want bread – with no crusts! – and they don’t want to go harvest the wheat and mill it to make the bread.

Adult children also suffer from this same childlike outlook on life. How does someone become an adult child? Abused people sometimes get stuck and maybe haven’t grown up inside because they feel emotionally tired inside. They may be able to do all the normal things to manage a day to day life, but emotionally they hunger for a parent. Adult children still want parents to look after them.

But. You and I are the adults now. Even if we have parents, we perhaps can’t rely on them for affirmation and support and healthy guidance. We are the adult now. Even if its exhausting and deep down we still want a parent to look after us… we are adults now. We must look after ourselves.

• I seem to have over the years only ever kept in my head the bad things that people have said.. silly when I have had more compliments than insults

Let me explain how this works. When we are children, we internalize what our parents teach us. Don’t walk across the road, hold an adults hand. Don’t talk to strangers (“stranger danger!”). Don’t run with sharp knives. These lessons are taught by parents and our mind stores them so thatwhen no adult is around, we can remember what the lessons in life are and they will help us survive.

So every child grows up in a home where they hear messages that they store for later use. That later use is like a tape recorder. The lucky child has their life shaped in a good way. That is stored and played back later on when the parent is no longer around. Unlucky children are given awful lessons and those rules are played back later in life – with bad results.

A lucky child grows up and sees their parents fight fair and with good boundaries and reconciliaton and ongoing love between the parents. That child then learns how to fight, and later in life that child repeats what he/she has learned and follows the messages as they are played over and over in that child’s head.

But an unlucky child has terrible lessons and messages stored in their head. They repeat over and over as an adult, shaping a life in a bad way.

BUT do not think you are a victim to this. You can stand up and reprogram your thoughts. Argue back and tell the truth to yourself. You can learn to have a positive explanation style (see my post: Getting out of depression (learned helplessness) by learning to be optimistic and get the book I mention in that post!).

“Still trying” continues…

• My self love is at 0%
• I feel I am emotionally bankrupt

Through verbal or physical abuse you may have learned that your value was nothing. Through abandonment you perhaps learned your value was nothing. Through sexual abuse you may have learned that you had some value to someone – but how could you know that they were tricking you?

If you hear God speaking – as some deeply hurt people do – you will probably have heard Him telling you that these “truths” about you are in fact all lies. And yes they are. No matter what your painful surroundings taught you, its a lie.

Here is the truth: Jesus loves you and you have tremendous value.

Jesus didn’t design the world to be like this and I have noticed that many abused persons know that is the truth. We all feel this shouldn’t have happened. Those who have suffered to extremes no longer care about how it should have been, they just try to get through and survive. Even when the danger is in the distant past, they still find no reason to begin loving themselves and begin living again.

This is a very sad state. But it is reversible. How is it reversible? You have to stand up. I know it is hard and exhausting, but you need to do it. Give up being an adult-child and be the adult in your life. For those who are don’t feel they have a good reason to live their life and really give it a go and improve things, to them I offer this biblical “I dare you to do it” statement… go ahead and bring glory to God in your body:

You were bought with a price [purchased with a preciousness and paid for, made His own]. So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body. – 1 Cor 6:20

The enemy tried to make you suffer, but you’re here, reading this page, written by a person who knows what it is like to suffer. And now I am gradually learning what it’s like to live an abundant life.

You can bring Him glory by dressing well and taking care of yourself.
You can bring Him glory by doing well in your job and being promoted because of good and honest work.
You can bring Him glory by eating meals that you enjoy.
You can bring Him glory by paying down debt and by storing up when the harvest is good and He has blessed you.
You can bring Him glory by having good boundaries.
You can bring Him glory by using the gifts and talents that He gave you.
You can bring Him glory by using your spare time to share what you have been through with someone else who might be lonely and looking for support as they go through their own journey.

Some people will hear a voice inside say “but I dont want to love myself if no one else loves me”. That is a difficult thought to combat, but you have to speak the truth back, you have to argue back, you have to replace that lie with the truth.

• I know that healing is a lengthy process but I want to be happy right now

This “right now” thing is extremely common. I hear it a lot. When I pray with that person I try to explain that humans can only grow at a certain speed. I ask the person what speed they want God to move at and they say 1 million miles p/h. I ask what their personal speed limit is. They say 40 mph. Usually this gets the message through, but only for a moment.

People who want it all right now are still being adult-children. It’s just not realistic to recover in one second, because you would not recognize yourself! But the people are usually very determined and I pray for their healing and they get a good strong dose of it… their head spins as He heals their brain chemistry… and they struggle to get used to the new them in the days to come. Amazingly that person will then ask for more healing even while they are struggling to get used to the last round of healing!! 🙂

It’s great that we want all the healing that God has for us and we believe that Jesus can and does heal and He is Lord over everything and there is no limits to His ability. But. We are the ones who have the speed limit, not Him. Take it a day at a time and be adult about where you are and how far you have come. Be your own parent. Give up your adult-childhood and become the adult in your own life. You have God on your side and you can do it. I am doing it, you can do it too.

• I have locked myself away from most people for the last ten years trying to minimise the contact I have because I feel I am not worthy or that I will be hurt by getting close to people

I also isolated myself after abuse as a teenager. This is very common, but very unfortunate. Isolation, or making yourself be alone (for a variety of reasons) will only extending the length of time you will go on suffering.

Isolation is part of what hurt you as a child and to go on isolating yourself is to extend the hurt. We human beings are social creatures. You may not know that. Your childhood taught you to be isolated. I sat outside my house as a child fighting back tears, fighting back feelings of trauma, telling myself not to feel, I won’t feel, I refuse to feel… until eventually I sat in quietness with this loud rumbling murmur of pain in the background.

What I was doing was trying to get through and survive, trying to keep my head down and not be noticed. To be noticed would bring more suffering. Does that sound familiar to you? I bet it does. But here’s the ironic twist in the story. Unfortunately, my choice was the worst choice I could have made.

If I had spoken out perhaps child welfare would have come and helped my parents, perhaps they would have been forced to confront their issues and heal the home. Perhaps child welfare could have protected me from predators. The isloation I was experiencing would only greatly increase the cycle of damage in my life and make me even more vulnerable to predators.

Isloation is only good if it keeps you away from bad people. But isolation from good friendships as an adult is unhealthy for human beings. Think about it. God is 3 “People” in relationship: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. God began the history of the world with a marriage and He ends it with a Marriage. Jesus walked around with 12 men. He taught about the need for the 1 lonely stray lamb to get back into the group of 99. His bible speaks extensively about the need for fellowship and for one anothering.

“Still trying” wrote more in her comments…

• this is a waste of a life and I want to stop the cycle I am in but dont know how

In the same way that admitting someone is an alcoholic is the first step to recovery, your words above are a vital step to your own recovery. Now take step 1 (get away from bad people) and step 2 (be the adult) and 3 (stop isloating) and 4 (bring Him glory by LIVING your life) and keep going from there.

• why is it that when one thing upsets me it brings up old hurts and I roll them all into one and I can be angry or tearful for days
• why can I move heaven and earth for other people and be so unkind to myself
• I have tried affirmations and prayers but I have to say I want to believe god loves me but I feel so dirty is it really possible?

Please notice the words I highlighted in green. These are words your are using to describe your own thoughts. That gives you a clue to the problem – read on for an explanation.

Joyce Meyer said it so well when she wrote about “The battlefield of the mind“, because it is true – the battle is in the way you think. We can see this truth in God’s bible as well. Prov 23:7 puts it this way: “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he”. I would explain it this way: the lessons we learned (through suffering) are what keeps us bound.

Is it sin that keeps us bound? If you believe that Jesus is the Christ and He has paid for your sins  – as a Perfect Sacrificial Lamb on the cross – then you are freed of the effects of sin. The sin done to you is not able to bind you. Your own sin cannot bind you. Inherited sins cannot bind you. The sins done by Adam and Eve cannot bind you. He has set you free.

But. If Jesus opened the door to your prison and yet we still struggle to leave the prison… it makes sense that something is still keeping us bound. What is stopping us? We can be aware of the problem and we can want to feel better, so what is it that is keeping us bound?

The door to the prison is open, but maybe we don’t know how to use our legs, maybe we think we need help or support or a map to get out, maybe we think we don’t have a good reason to leave, maybe we think there is nothing good for us outside – these are just lies.

The door is open, and we have to change the way we think and get the courage and motivation to leave the prison. Changing our thoughts is tough and I won’t pretend otherwise. The lessons we learned in childhood have been stored and they are repeating inside our head. But we have to stop being adult-children and become the adult in our own lives. We have to speak back to those thoughts and correct them. Speak the truth in love and with kindness, but be firm.

• I am not a unkind person nor do I wallow in self pity, I try to keep my mind and heart open, I do good deeds for others my experiences has enabled me to understand other people who are in pain.. (I sometimes volunteer helping young persons with similar backgrounds)

I have no doubt that God has seen your heart and He is moving Heaven and earth to help you, because of your heart. You are willing to love in spite of your past and this has brought favor on your life. You can and must stand up inside yourself and walk out of this – and He will certainly continue using you as you recover and grow stronger.

I love how The Message can put things so simply sometimes…

Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively! – 2 Cor 6:11-13 (MSG)

I would not be surprised if for some people the lessons of life are written in LARGE HANDWRITING and we need to hear this message from God over and over until we believe that He has something good for us. So here is a truth from His own lips…

For thus says the Lord–Who created the heavens, God Himself, Who formed the earth and made it, Who established it and did not create it to be a worthless waste; He formed it to be inhabited—I am the Lord, and there is no one else. – Isaiah 45:18

God formed the earth to be inhabited! NOT to be a worthless waste!!! This is the same logic as in the original command which He gave Adam and Eve – and it’s the same command to you in your life.

And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man] – Gen 1:28

So I say to you… GO AHEAD and live your life and IN THAT WAY you will bring honour to God and bring Him glory.

You were bought with a price [purchased with a preciousness and paid for, made His own]. So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body. – 1 Cor 6:20

Yes, the enemy brought evil into your life. He comes to steal, kill and destroy. But that is not God’s intention for your life or for the earth. The devil hurt you and your family, but God is greater and He wants you to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth!

The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows). – John 10:10

If you choose, you can begin to recover and move forward now, be the adult in your own life – be the captain of your own ship – and LIVE!

Remember: God did not create your life to be a worthless waste. NO WAY! He created you to be fruitful, multiply and to expand – and in this way to serve God and humanity (in loving them) and this is how you can bring glory to Him in your body.

Uh-oh. This is nearly the end of the post. I know from my own experience that some people will read this to the end and then sit there, wondering why their life has not changed. You read all of this, you agreed with all of it, you want all of it… now the post has nearly ended and your life is not changed. Why not?

Remember: Children want to be GIVEN milk, not go out to the cow and milk it. BE the adult in your life. Get up and go milk the cow. Get up and go harvest the fruit for dinner. Get up and go form friendships. Be fruitful. Multiply!

Some people may say that we are blessed so abundantly that they will just be passive and wait for the blessings to come. Let’s look closer at this. When God promised all those blessings in Deut 28:1-14, did you stop to notice how He promised to bless them? Take a moment to read the blessings in The Message version, it’s very beautiful Deut 28:1-14.

But wait… HOW did He promise to bless them? Are they to be passive? Take a close look in the AMP at some sample verses Deut 28:4-6:

Blessed shall be the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading trough. Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. – Deut 28:4-6

Did you notice all that activity? The fruit of your body (the work you do), the work you do with your beasts, your basket (gathering), your kneading trough (the work you do), blessed when you go OUT and IN. There are more wonderful blessings in Ezekiel and there too He says He blesses the work of our hands.

All these things are activities. He wants to bless your LIFE, your activity. So go live! 🙂

Keep on reading

Some Christians want God to snap His fingers and heal them and they refuse to get help. Is this the right approach? Maybe take a moment to read my post: Should Christians get counselling for healing?

For further reading maybe try this post Emotional healing… what’s it like? or read some of my other posts on healing. I have written a companion post that you might benefit from reading: How to fill up the lonely hurt inside.  Get into the discussion. Share your experiences. Help someone. Receive help from someone too perhaps.

Forgiveness…

• How to forgive someone
• Forgiveness releases us to be healed and whole
• Forgive to be forgiven

These posts might also help you:

• Love God, love others, love yourself – a biblically balanced life
• Getting out of depression (learned helplessness) by learning to be optimistic
• A biblical strategy for balanced healing: faith, hope and love
• How to fill up the lonely hurt inside

and also try

• Heal your identity – it will help to fill the emptiness inside
• A vital step to health – thankfulness
• Seeing the truth, accepting, forgiving and recovering

Or try some other posts that I wrote:

• Why does the bible say to love yourself?
• God has a plan to prosper you… what to do while you wait
• Emotional healing… what’s it like?

These are posts about growing and forming deeper relationships that let us feel connected and warm inside:

• Creating deep intimacy (into-me-see) in relationships
• Fantasy stops us growing into adults
• He has written your name on the palm of His hand
• Why does the bible say to love yourself?
• God has a plan to prosper you… what to do while you wait
• Thank You Lord for a victory
• Emotional healing… what’s it like?
• Unrealistic expectations
• Healing the broken inner person
• Look after *you*
• God wants to heal *all* of us, not just part of us
• The $20 bill – you are valuable
• Get a life! Want things
• The desire to find our missing inner self (Imago – part 2)
• How we build an Imago – Part 1

God loves you!

Send me a Facebook friend request, I would like to be your friend and maybe connect you with other people who are also walking this path with you.

Please leave a comment on this page if you’d like? Use a pretend name if you’re not sure you want to reveal your actual name.