Another day at the table

Therapy is a wonder. It is nothing like I thought it would be and it’s exactly what I need. It is not a replacement for God or the Bible or sweet fellowship. It does not take the place of time spent pouring out my soul and then listening quietly for the still small voice of the Savior. But it is a good thing right now and very helpful.

A good therapist—a Christian one if that’s important to you as it is to me—can help reroute your unhealthy thinking, always pointing you back to Jesus. Mine is worth every penny we pay her and much more.

Years ago I heard a song about the table of grace and how there’s a place for everyone. The last line said, “You’re always welcome at the table of grace.”

I wonder when I forgot about that. 

Here’s the thing about sitting at a table: the surface is level. The chairs are all the same. Everyone gets to give and receive. It’s not an interview, it’s fellowship. It’s not interrogation, it’s listening and speaking with compassion. 

I’ve been struggling the last week or so and when I realized why it was happening, I was at once sad and fascinated.

Did you know that your nervous system remembers the time of year when a trauma occurs? I’d heard this before—from experts—but I was still a skeptic. That is, until I experienced it myself. I could go into a long, detailed explanation about the whole event, but the details don’t really matter. What matters is that my therapist took me back to the table again, which is where things always happen. (Last time we did this, I wrote about it here.)

When I am in a period where I feel very dysregulated and anxious, on the emotional roller coaster, I default to my favorite question: What is wrong with me? I do it all the time. I just assume I must be the problem. I must be the one who is doing or thinking wrong. I must be at fault in some way. It has to be me. (Side note: This is actually a coping strategy. We think if the problem is us, then certainly we have some control over the solution. Except not really.)

I hate even asking the question what is wrong with me. It sounds whiny and needy and I can’t stand being that. I want to be capable, able to handle it all. I don’t just want to look like I have it all together, I want that to actually be so. Hi, I’m Karen. My life is nothing but highlights and I never struggle and I am the picture of perfect emotional regulation. 

If only that were true. 

But it’s not, so I went to therapy and dumped all my current struggles on E, my wonderful, sweet, kind therapist. Then I asked her the same pressing question, and, like usual, she did not give me an answer. That’s the first thing they learn in therapist school: never give a direct answer. She agreed that my nervous system was remembering what happened all those years ago and that this really is a thing. I wonder what made God design us like that? I can’t wait to find out one day.

She could see that I was upset and struggling to regain composure. She asked if there was some anger in there too, if maybe I was angry with that part of me that kept “falling apart” and how is she so perceptive? Do they teach that in therapist school too? She suggested visiting the table again. I closed my eyes and pictured me sitting at the table, the same rough-hewn one I’d sat at with Jesus many times, except he wasn’t there just yet.

E said, “Now picture you sitting across from the part of yourself that remembers this hard thing, looking at the part that is feeling the same decades-old pain, the part that is dysregulated and crying and anxious. Can you picture that?”

I could.

She asked, “What happens?”

I looked at the hurt part of me sitting across the table, the part that remembers what I went through like it was yesterday, how I felt alone in my pain because surely we don’t talk about this. And all in an instant I physically felt the anger melt away. I felt my shoulders fall just a little and my body relax into the couch I was sitting on.

I said quietly, “I feel compassion for her.”

E said, “She’s been through a lot, hasn’t she?”

I had to admit that yes, she’d been through a lot. She’d suffered and kept it all to herself, not asking for any support.

E asked, “Would it be okay to offer her some support now?”

Yes. Yes, it would.

I looked at the bruised and wounded part of me that had suffered for so long and knew that anger was not the answer. Frustration with that hurting part of me was not helpful. Compassion was. And I think for the first time I got a glimpse of what it means for Jesus to have compassion for us.

We are bruised and broken, suffering in silence. We can’t fix ourselves, can’t help ourselves. We have no hope without him tending carefully to our wounds. He doesn’t get angry with us when we’ve been hurt. He surrounds us with compassion.

He is before and behind us:

. . . for the LORD will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rereward [rearward] (Isaiah 52:12)

He is beside us:

I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. (Psalm 16:8)

He surrounds us:

As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever. (Psalm 125:2)

He is above and below us:

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. (Psalm 139:8)

Wherever we go, he is there:

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. (Psalm 139:9-10)

The answer is compassion.

I wondered if self-compassion was actually selfish in some way. It seems like any time we focus too much on ourselves, there is a danger of becoming self-absorbed and I surely don’t want to do that.

But then I remembered that God tells us,

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (Mt. 22:39)

And when he is telling husbands how to love their wives, he says this:

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church . . . (Ephesians 5:28-29)

Nourishing your own flesh is pretty common sense. You eat, you sleep, you shower, you stay in bed when you’re sick. But loving yourself is more than that: it’s cherishing.

If your nervous system has been disrupted by past trauma, it may very well remember every year. If that happens, your nervous system—which is part of your physical body—needs loving kindness. It needs tender care. It needs to be cherished with compassionate understanding. Sit across the table from that wounded part of you and offer it some gentle empathy.

Some tools that have helped me:

• Give your body rest.

• Nourish it well.

• Get out in the sun and walk barefoot on the ground.

• Activate your vagus nerve: breathe in for a count of four, hold for a count of seven, breathe out for a count of eight. Do that three or four times.

• Hum or sing—this also activates your vagus nerve.

But above all, offer your wounded part some compassion. That’s what Jesus would do.