Last week I had an incident that caused some emotional pain and I wasn’t sure if I was triggered or not. The gist was that I felt accused for something I did not have in my heart, and it hurt. Most of the time, I tend to think of these kinds of painful bumps as triggers. After doing Immanuel Prayer twice, once to feel the pain and the other to listen to Jesus, I still wasn’t sure what He wanted me to know about it.
During the second time, I did hear Jesus tell me to affirm this person rather than giving them a good shame message. That was a relief to hear! I shared the story with Dr. Jim Wilder and he said that it was possible it was not a lesson I needed to learn but rather an opportunity to practice the skills I had been learning This caused me to ponder some new ideas about lessons and growing in maturity.
During this time I was reading the book Rare Leadership by Dr. Marcus Warner and Dr. Jim Wilder; specifically the chapter titled “Turning on your VCR—Validation, Comfort, and Re-patterning.” I have been teaching about Validation and Comfort and liked what the authors said about adding the Re-patterning.
I know validation has to come before comfort and I see comfort as voice tone, facial and body language, and/or proper touches, but here I was reading that helping ourselves or others see an alternative perspective was part of comfort.
Since I am adamant about not trying to “fix” a hurting person, I gave this some greater consideration. The authors are in agreement that validation comes first and we should not fix people. Then I realized Jesus had given me an alternative perspective when He told me to affirm the person that had hurt me. So, I am adding alternative perspectives to my lessons on Validation and Comfort, since it is part of encouraging.
Here are some of my notes from Rare Leadership page 168-169.
We are to do these things with ourselves for validation, learn the new patterns, and do them we are able to validate others.
- Name the emotion.
- Realize where it originated (not necessarily from the past, but the current event. It may or may not be the result of a trigger, so don’t eliminate that possibility).
- Understand the level of intensity of the emotion. (Part of synchronizing)
The new pattern is noticing that I am upset, then validating and comforting, which speeds my return to joy. This then sets up a new pattern that helps me self-calm, and I can return to joy faster. (I think the more we do this with ourselves, the easier it will be to do that others.)
We are meeting someone in their emotion, not in ours; we name it accurately; and they feel understood and cared for. When they feel understood, they will be far more open to an alternative perspective or solution.
So to recap the three steps using my current event—I went home and talked to Jesus saying, ‘I am hurt.’ (named it). I got hurt when the person said ____ to me and I knew in my heart it wasn’t true (originated). At first the level of intensity was very big. (Later I realized that might have been the enemy.) So I felt what I needed to feel and then went about my evening. Later as I wrote in my journal I heard Jesus say to affirm the person and not worry about speaking to them (an alternative perspective).
It was cool to realize while discussing this event at Joy Group that my Relational Circuits did not go off in the moment that the event happened. Knowing we’ve grown is always a blessing!
I also realized at Joy Group that after this hurtful incident when I was crying with Jesus and letting out the hurt, that the enemy was amplifying attachment pain and making it worse. I didn’t want to have a rupture with this person—that was the main problem—that I felt disconnected from someone I love very deeply.
Anyway, all in all, getting through the whole thing went a lot faster than the last time someone said I was doing something I didn’t have in my heart. And it went a million times faster than all the times from my distant past when I felt falsely accused.
Validating and comforting ourselves changes how we relate, calms upset emotions and makes it easier to be glad to be together again because we feel loved and understood.
