Managing the self is very important in the healing process. “The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self–awareness, i.e. By activating the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside and thus allows us to feel what we’re feeling (the technical term for this is “interception”– Latin for “looking inside.”.  Most of our conscious brain is dedicated to focusing on the outside world; getting along with others and making plans for the future.  However, that does not help us manage ourselves. Neuroscience research show that the only way we can change the way we feel is  by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.  Traumatized human beings recover in the context of relationships: with families, love ones, AA meetings, veterans organizations, religious communities, or professional therapists. The role of relationships is to provide physical and emotional safety, including safety from feeling shamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face,and process the reality of what has happened.

Managing your terror all by yourself gives rise to another set of problems: dissociation, despair, addictions, a chronic sense of panic, and relationships that are marked by alienation, disconnections, and explosions.  Patients with these histories rarely make the connection between what has happened to them a long time ago and how they currently feel and behave.  Everything just seems unmanageable.   .THE BODY KEEPS SCORE by Bessel van der Kolk, MD

We have found how essential people are in supporting a survivor.  The wiring of our brain circuits is devoted to being in tune with others.  Recovery from trauma involves reconnecting with fellow human beings. These connections are critical in helping those traumatized survivors to trust, love and to recover the self.  Too often non survivors are too afraid of relationships with survivors for a variety of reasons.  Jesus was the only man who not afraid of the man from Gaderenes “had his  dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him even with chains, because he had often been in chains had been pulled apart by him, and the Shackles broken in pieces neither could anyone tame him.”  Mark 5

Jesus saw his need and cast the demons out and set him free!  Why because He had compassion for hm.  The disciples stood with Jesus– they did not come to mock,tie or shackle him but stood with him.  A community of believers.