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Let’s understand how our view of life develops.

EVENT

Bad Experience

Last week we saw how we develop protection mechanisms at the onset of “events”.

Because that event resulted in experience that was unpleasant to our flesh, we determined that it

was a “Bad Experience”.

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Let’s understand how our view of life develops.

EVENT

Bad Experience

Choice

We also saw that bad experiences are both preceded and followed by choices that are designed to prevent more bad experience.

Emotional Triggers

We saw that our preventative choices are driven and empowered by “Emotional Triggers” that we create as we grow from infancy which influence

what we do and do not want in our lives.

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Let’s understand how our view of life develops.

EVENT

Bad Experience

Choice

So let’s see if we can gain a broader understanding of our “Emotional Triggers” and expand what they really are so that we can learn

how to overcome them.

Emotional Triggers

Let me show you why they are so utterly destructive to us all, and MUST be identified and

forsaken if we are to enjoy deep intimacy with God.

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Over the years I have seen many men and women formulate emotional triggers as self-protective

agents through childhood that remained all through life.

As an example consider a young girl who was molested by her stepfather after he became drunk.

The personal trauma and impact is immeasurable, but what might you predict this poor girl is going

to establish as an emotional trigger after that event?

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The next time her stepdad finishes dinner and gets his first beer, she is going to hide in the

closet.

What is the first thing that she is going to tell herself when she finally sneaks out and sees him

passed out on the couch?

Now add to that the fact that after several more beers, he starts calling her name as she hides in

the closet, and even opens her bedroom door and calls her again, looks around and stumbles out

and passes out on the couch.

She is going to tell herself that she has discovered a way to protect herself from horrible

abuse.

She knows what would have happened had she been available to him and she just singlehandedly

prevented her own worst nightmare.

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How do you suppose she thinks and feels about her emotional trigger?

Right now that emotional trigger is her very best friend – it is her knight in shining armor.

She believes that her vigilance and creativity is her only ally against her worst enemy.

Her logic appears to be flawless and her conclusion concerning what would have

happened if she hadn’t been in the closet also seems inarguable, but what is the problem?

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She has just been ambushed by one of life’s most destructive killers. Can you identify it?

Young logic might be easily inclined to this kind of thinking rather than reporting the abuse to the parent, a teacher or police, but this is the start of

the kind of logic that enslaves and slaughters many adults all their lives.

Because of cause/effect logic she has just pledged her security to SELF-CONFIDENCE and she will pursue and protect that concept to her

last breath if the Lord does not intervene.

It has been my experience that many sexual abuse victims have recovered from sexual abuse, but

very few people recover from SELF-CONFIDENCE! Most people take that plague to their grave – and

do you know why?

For most of them, SELF has been their best and only hero, and it usually spans several areas of

life. Even though they have lost a great deal in life by self-protection, they are even more convinced of the necessity of self-reliance by the threat of greater loss if they don’t interven on their own

behalf.

It’s like taking expensive medicine for an ailment. You might not feel significantly better by taking it, but you tell yourself that you would feel so much

WORSE if you didn’t. So you remain committed to it even though you see and feel no difference!

Think about that a moment!

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Over the 20 years that I have been counseling, I have pointed out the destruction of self-confident,

self-protective behaviors to men and women, many married 3 and 4 times with often the same

results.

“The women out there smile and promise you the world – until you sign the marriage license – and then they pull way back and start fights so they

can speed dial their divorce attorney and take you for every dime they can get!”

“All men are selfish slobs and there aren’t any good ones left for a good person like me.”

Statements like these are common in the counseling office, and they might seem typical to the point of amusement, but do you know what

statements like these provide to those who speak them?

They are the grounds for justification in that person’s heart for self-protection by any means, so that further damage or loss may be avoided.

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Over the 20 years that I have been counseling, I have pointed out the destruction of self-confident,

self-protective behaviors to men and women, many married 3 and 4 times with often the same

results.

“The women out there smile and promise you the world – until you sign the marriage license – and then they pull way back and start fights so they

can speed dial their divorce attorney and take you for every dime they can get!”

“All men are selfish slobs and there aren’t any good ones left for a good person like me.”

Can you see how formidable the challenge is to help them see that they carry all that is needed to

destroy any relationship with any person right inside them? Their self-defense champion has

been cultivating trust in them from birth.

So what really is the greater threat to each one of us? Is it the sinful acts others commit against us,

or the reactions and the choices we make to prevent them by placing ultimate trust in SELF as

we summarily dismiss God?

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Let’s understand how our view of life develops.

EVENT

Bad Experience

Choice

We need to learn how we construct our “Emotional Triggers” so that we can escape them

before we become permanent slaves.

Emotional Triggers

How do victims keep pumping power into their “victim status”?

They collect people with similar circumstances and build camaraderie as they rehearse their

experiences among the group. What does repeating their suffering to fellow victims do for

them?

First of all, emotionally it gives them a common bond and acceptance. Someone understands their

suffering. They have a sense of belonging.

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But just as it was for the little girl that hid herself in the closet, they pay a horrible price for their

camaraderie.

And here is your greatest problem. You will NEVER – so long as you find value in being a

victim, be able to see the good that God purposed behind your loss or suffering. Romans 8:28-29

When you build your acceptance and the core of your being on the sin of another, or unintentional

tragedy, you will never have a reason to grow beyond it. If you don’t maintain your

victimization, you risk giving up the little acceptance and sense of belonging you do have.

At this point I must also say that many people are content with victim status and won’t give up the

sense of belonging that comes with the suffering.

I once worked with a man who lost his only son in Vietnam. His pain, years later, was still so fresh that it was obvious that since he could no longer love his son, he would vehemently hate God who

allowed him to die, and the politicians who started that war.

I did several projects with him and he was a very nice and knowledgeable man in his field. But as

soon as the words “Vietnam” or “war” came from anyone’s mouth, he would see his son die again and it was as though a demon twisted his face as

hatred spewed from his mouth. Going back to work was his only escape to any kind of pleasant

demeanor again.

As long as I knew him, he lived as a victim of the loss of an adult child, and he had absolutely NO intention of ever leaving that position. It seemed

that if he did move beyond his grief, his son would cease to exist. Sorrow kept his son alive at least

in his heart. His life ended with the loss of his son and nobody ever took that from him.

He said, “So you are a Christian are you? Can you tell me why a God in heaven, if there IS one, would allow drug dealers, rapists and murderers live out full lives, and why He saw fit to take my

only son – a great kid who never hurt anybody in his life? Can you answer that for me since you

say you know Him?”

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Suffering hurts – without doubt, and can be excruciating, but if we focus on the pain and loss

of suffering so much that we cannot see God’s purpose in allowing it, then we will never enjoy

the fruit of God’s design, and the suffering becomes pointless.

I don’t want to seem to be insensitive to suffering.

Our “Emotional Triggers” promise the relief of acceptance of others and a common bond with fellow suffering people – but in actuality they

enslave us in the very misery they were designed to protect us from, and they ultimately keep us

from the life of Jesus!