Decoupling Our Identity
“But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;” (I Peter 2:9)
I am coming to you from the messy middle for today’s spiritual blog. This is the reality of having CPTSD…it’s messy. Last week’s spiritual blog, “Peace in the Midst of the Storm,” lasted for a day or two before I became so triggered and activated that I was incapable of focusing on anything besides safety.
This, too, is normal…not just for those of us with trauma, but for all humans. We all have a biological priority for safety. When we’ve experienced a lot of trauma, there are just more things that threaten our experience of safety.
There is a part or many parts of me that want to cover this up and pretend it didn’t happen, but my core value of authenticity drives me to expose my reality to you. I know I am not the only one who struggles, especially in the workplace, so I want to normalize this experience for both me and you.
On Tuesday, I could tell by the way my brain was working — or not working — that my system was starting to prioritize safety over job performance. I had difficulty concentrating, connecting dots, thinking, and even completing coherent sentences. I tried to stay focused on the Lord and the work, but by Thursday, I was not functioning well at all. My sleep was being impacted, which is very common for trauma survivors, and it was impacting my ability to manage my emotional regulation.
By Thursday evening, I was a puddle of tears, so I sent an emergency flair text to my therapist, and she was able to squeeze me in Friday morning for a quick connection to help me get regulated. Even with all the regulation tools in my toolbox, I still get activated at times beyond my ability to regulate myself…again, this is normal.
I was so activated that even she was unable to help me get re-regulated in the time we had (virtually). I had to do some intense self-care by taking a mental-health day from everything…even my coaching business. I was not well, and I would not have been any help to my coaching members if I had shown up like that. Instead, I spent time with my grandson (who is totally my co-regulation partner at eight years old), and we went for a walk in nature, which really helped.
I took the whole weekend off from all coaching business activities so I could recover. For those who have never experienced being activated in that way, let me tell you…it is exhausting to recover from. I took naps on both days and got a lot of extra sleep, which also helped.
Once I dug out of the emotional hole I was in and my brain came back online, I was able to do some journaling, which gave me so much clarity. I spent a couple of hours journaling with the Lord this morning, and He helped me to see what happened and how I got to where I was.
It is not uncommon for trauma survivors to feel threatened by authority/leaders in a “power over” position, which is what happened to me. What made it so big was that I was working with leaders from all over the globe, and so it literally felt like the whole world was a threat. Not only that, but I felt like I could not react, respond, or say anything because that would be used against me.
I won’t go into the details of my journaling session except to share with you that the Lord showed me how my identity became entangled with or coupled with the work I was doing. Any threat or resistance to the work became a personal threat to who I was as a person. I realized that work is NOT who I was but rather what I did.
By decoupling the success/failure of the work from who I was as a person/employee, I could finally breathe…and gain perspective. The success/failure of the project I was working on did not determine my value as a person…especially to the Lord.
“But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;” (I Peter 2:9)
I am chosen by God. He was the one who called me to Himself. I didn’t choose Him…He chose me. He is the one who determines my value and not anyone or anything else. He valued my soul so much that He sacrificed His only Son to buy me back from the slave market of sin. He did that for you, too.
It is easy to allow our successes/failures to determine our worth or capability. Our identity (how we see ourselves) can be influenced by our accomplishments or failures…but that is not who we are. We are who God says we are…loved, chosen, adopted into the beloved.
This has been a big growth opportunity for me. I still have some work to do to correct the limiting beliefs from my past, but who I am is no longer determined by the work that I do.
I hope this has been helpful to you. Let me know in the comments if this resonated with you at all.
