Do you remember a time when you were hurt very badly? Does it continue to haunt and hurt today when you recall it from memory?
We all carry emotional baggage, or what I’m calling emotional wounds.
Sometimes, we blindly accept that our wounds are necessary to make us who we are or that there’s no real cure for them other than time. We’ll even hear well-meaning pastors or teachers suggest we simply need to learn how to bear our burdens to one another or let go of the past.
I was never a member of a congregation that understood how to help others overcome their past.
The Onion Process
God created our psyche to wrap wounds in protective layers, like an onion. You’ll find that after one emotional wound is healed, another may replace it.
The process I’ve outlined below is an outline of your conversation with God. It consists of the following major points:
- First, you must decide: you desire to be healed, or you want the pain it brings. It’s your choice, but you can’t have it both ways.
- Identify a hurt, wound, or hurtful feeling.
- If necessary, confession of sin surrounding that wound;
- Confessing that you want the wound removed
- This is a particularly important point. You cannot be double-minded in this regard.
- Asking for the wound to be removed and healed.
- Accepting the healing.
- Identification of new emotional wounds
- You’ll know you’re finished when you are at peace with the incident that caused the wound.
The Emotional Healing Process
Speak these things aloud.
Recall that whenever Jesus healed someone, He spoke out against their sickness. When God made the universe, He spoke it into being. We are made in His image; using our voice is part of His design.
Have faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him
Mark 11:22-23
- Recall a situation that caused a painful emotion.
- Identify the emotion, giving it a name. It’s okay if all you can call it is pain.
- Tell Jesus you want the emotion removed from your soul.
- Ask Jesus to heal the wound in your soul and the emotion you feel.
- Tell Jesus you receive His healing.
- If the emotion is there because you may have believed a lie about that situation, ask Jesus to show you the truth about the situation.
- An optional step is asking Jesus to give you something positive to replace the negative emotion He is removing.
- If you ask Him to take away sadness, you might ask Him to give you joy.
- If you ask Him to take away anger, you might ask Him to give you peace.
- Rest for a moment – a minute or two. Ask for His presence to come, and rest in Him.
- Recall the situation that caused the painful emotion.
- If there is a new negative emotion, begin again at Step 1.
- If the emotion is tied to personal sin, ask God to forgive you and receive His forgiveness. It is good to remind yourself of forgiveness principles, such as 1 John 1:9
- Say that you believe His blood has taken away the penalty and consequences of your sin.
When I was very young, I was molested/assaulted by an older man. After my memory of the event resurfaced, my emotional healing process progressed something like this:
- Jesus, I feel anger towards that person. I don’t want to feel this anger anymore. Please take this anger from me and heal the wound in my soul; I receive your healing. Please give me peace in place of this anger.
Once I was done with this process, I paused for a moment and then recalled the event. I observed that I then felt a different emotion and went through the process again. After several iterations (I don’t remember how many, or the emotions other than anger), I was completely healed of assault against me. It\’s now like a distant memory to me, as if it were something written about me, not something that happened to me.
My Journey into this Process
I should also mention that before I learned this emotional healing process, I had thoroughly used Neil Anderson’s Victory Over Darkness and Bondage Breaker. I think his books will help you immensely, but they don’t always result in helping you heal the resulting wounds.
Thereafter, I developed a process that was different than above, which worked well enough. I then found Praying Medic’s work Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps and have continued to use it and other methods ever since.
A Recovering Legalist 