9: BREAKING FREE FROM PAINFUL MEMORIES
THERE IS AN OLD SAYING THAT “time heals all wounds.” The idea is that healing for damaged emotions as a result of traumatic or distressing events happens automatically with the passing of time. The truth, however, is that time alone heals nothing. No matter how much time goes by, unresolved emotional pain will not heal by itself; it must be identified (named) and processed (shared with others) accordingly. We will talk about how to heal unresolved emotional pain in a later chapter, but in this chapter, I want to show that according to Scripture, we must go back and resolve the pain from our past in order to move forward into the future.
To do this, we must first understand how memory works.
During the many years I’ve been a pastor, I’ve had people challenge the need to resolve past issues through counseling. To support their point, “no counseling” advocates often refer to Paul’s words in Philippians 3:13-14: “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” At first glance, it may look like the “no counseling” advocates have a point: Paul seems to commend “forgetting what lies behind.” In order to understand what Paul really means, we must look at the context.
Paul’s entire discussion in Philippians 3 is a comparison of his former, self-directed righteousness according to the law with true righteousness that comes from God by faith in Jesus Christ.
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
PHILIPPIANS 3:4-6
Paul was a Pharisee who had worked rigorously to uphold the righteous requirements of the law. In fact, he was very proud of the fact that he was blameless (without any fault) in carrying out the letter of the law. The Mosaic law said, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). Paul never murdered anyone. The Mosaic law said, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). Paul never committed adultery. The Mosaic law said, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16). Paul never did that either. According to carrying out the letter of the law, Paul was blameless. These acts of legalistic righteousness had been Paul’s trophies, evidence that he was a good Jew, in right standing with God. In other words, before Paul met Jesus, he believed that his relationship with God was secure based on his good works.
And yet, after his conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-19), Paul realized that all his good works accounted for nothing. In fact, he refers to his legalistic righteousness as “rubbish” (Philippians 3:8). The English word rubbish does not convey the graphic comparison Paul was making. The Greek word translated as “rubbish” here, skybala, is used in reference to various kinds of filth, including human excrement.[1] Paul is being intentionally graphic, maybe even offensive, in his choice of words, but he is making the point that human effort can never produce right standing before God; righteousness can only be received as a gift from God through faith in Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:9-10). By “forgetting what lies behind,” therefore, Paul is not advocating that believers should just move on from the pain of their past; he is arguing that, theologically, his previous focus on religious achievement is irrelevant to his right standing with God.
Paul does not argue for us to forget past events. As you read Scripture, especially the Old Testament, you will discover that God wants his people to remember their history.
Remembering the Past Is Important to God
God is an eternal being, not limited by time and space. And yet, he remembers what he has done in the past. Consider the rainbow (Genesis 9:16) and the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Leviticus 26:42). Not only does God pay attention to the past, he wants his people to as well. God commanded the Israelites to remember their time in Egypt, specifically, the fact that he delivered them from their bondage and oppression (Deuteronomy 5:15). God commanded his people to remember his faithfulness to them in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2). Today, believers are encouraged to remember all that God has done for them as well (Psalms 77:11; 103:2).
In order to remember the past, God established feasts and festivals, including Passover, Pentecost (Festival of Weeks), Festival of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah), Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and Festival of Shelters (Sukkot). God commanded the Israelites to set aside these times to remember his faithfulness to his people, making special note of God’s protection, provision, and presence.
This emphasis on remembering also involved building altars. Throughout the Old Testament, an altar was a symbol to remind people about God’s faithfulness. For example, after God appeared to Jacob at Bethel, he built an altar to remember the Lord (Genesis 28:18). Again, after God delivered Jacob from the hand of his brother, Esau, he built an altar to the Lord (Genesis 33:20; 35:1-3). After Israel defeated the Amalekites and after receiving the Ten Commandments, Moses built altars to the Lord (Exodus 17:14-15; 24:4). When God dried up the Jordan River so the Israelites could cross into the Promised Land, God commanded them to build an altar to remind future generations of what he had done for them (Joshua 4:1-9).
Various iterations of the word remember are found in forty-seven verses of twenty-eight chapters in nineteen books of the King James Version of the Bible.[2] Remembering past events is important because what we choose to think about regarding God’s character and nature and our experiences affect the heart—and therefore our Christ-formation and the abundant life. The meaning we attribute to a painful life experience can promote thoughts and emotions that distort our perception of God, self, and others.
As an example of how this works, let’s compare Adam and Eve’s experience before versus after the Fall. Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve only experienced good; they had no experience of evil nor the fruit of sin, namely shame, fear, and eventual death. God commanded them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17) not out of selfish ambition or jealousy (to keep them from becoming like him, as Satan implied) but to protect them from harm. God did not want them to experience evil and the devastating consequences of sin.
Sadly, Eve was deceived and chose to believe Satan’s lies instead of God’s word. She ate of the fruit and gave some to Adam, who ate of it too. Then “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (Genesis 3:7). Sin distorted how Adam and Eve thought about nakedness and each other. No longer was the vulnerability of nakedness good, but something to fear and be ashamed of.
Sin also changed the way they thought about God. Before the Fall, the only thoughts they had of God were good: He was a loving creator who placed them in a beautiful garden and provided everything they needed in abundance (Genesis 2:8-9). Sin changed how they thought about God. Love for God was replaced with the fear of God:
They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
GENESIS 3:8-10
Sin birthed the feelings of fear and shame that distorted Adam and Eve’s perception of God, self, and each other. Now, instead of living naked and unashamed (Genesis 2:25), they tried to hide their shame, weakness, and vulnerability behind a fig-leaf mask. And the same is true for us today.
Whenever you encounter sin, whether your own or a sin committed against you, you will experience shame and fear that can affect your perception about God, self, and others. For example, say you’re walking through Central Park in New York City on a beautiful summer evening. It’s late and there are few people around, but you feel safe and it’s such a beautiful night, so you keep walking. Suddenly from behind the trees along the path, a masked man with a gun jumps out and demands your wallet. You realize you’re in mortal danger and freeze. Instead of waiting for you to pull out your wallet, the man hits you in the head with his gun, almost knocking you out. While lying on the ground, dazed and confused, he forcefully grabs your wallet and runs. As you lie there in pain, you realize you have been violently assaulted and robbed. Thankfully, the thief didn’t take your cell phone, so you call 911 for help.
The next day, as the shock begins to subside, you start to rehearse the events of the attack. The physical pain from this traumatic experience is bad enough, but now you start to berate yourself with thoughts like You’re so stupid, what were you thinking? and This whole thing is your fault; you should never have been walking alone at night. You might even begin to have doubts about God: Where was God in all this? Why didn’t he protect me? If God loved me, he would never have allowed that to happen. A traumatic event like this could make you distrustful of other people, causing you to fear a stranger walking toward you.
Instead of beating yourself up and entertaining doubts about God, you could reframe your experience by thinking, I could have been more careful, but it seemed safe; there were other people around. Or, The thief is the bad guy here, not me: I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could also remember that Jesus never promised us a pain-free life, but he did promise to always be with us and to give us the strength to endure all things. The assault was a painful experience, both physically and emotionally, but how you choose to process the event will determine how much more pain you will experience as a result.
How we process an experience gets stored in our conscious and nonconscious memory and will largely determine the extent of toxic emotions or helpful emotions. So much of it depends on what we choose to think about.
Understanding the Nonconscious Mind
Memories contain both thoughts and corresponding emotions. Caroline Leaf writes, “Every time you build a memory, you activate emotion. . . . Memory and emotions, like body and mind, are inseparable.”[3] The brain stores the memories of all your experiences and their corresponding emotions in billions of interconnected neurons. Most of them, however, are not readily accessible. Daniel Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, argues, “Much of what occurs within our neural, relational, and mental lives is not within the experience of awareness.”[4] Neuroscientists maintain that less than 0.1 percent of a person’s thoughts are accessible at any one time. In other words, we are not aware of how most of the thoughts and emotions stored in our memory affect us. Leaf argues,
The nonconscious mind is where 99.9 percent of our mind activity is. It is the root level that stores the thoughts with the emotions and perceptions, and it impacts the conscious mind and what we say and do.[5]
Most of the thoughts that drive our behavior emanate from our nonconscious mind—a deep place in the heart that holds our true motivations that only God knows (1 Kings 8:39; Psalm 44:21) (see Figure 9.1).
FIGURE 9.1
The Bible indicates that the human heart—the immaterial part of the self—is deep and that only God knows the thoughts and emotions therein. Consider the following verses:
- “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water” (Proverbs 20:5).
- “He knows the secrets of the heart” (Psalm 44:21).
- “You alone know each human heart” (2 Chronicles 6:30, NLT).
- “Lord, you know everyone’s heart” (Acts 1:24; see also Acts 15:8, NIV).
- “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
Neuroscientists refer to the deep places of the heart as “the nonconscious mind.” It is the repository of past thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that make up memories. Even though these are beyond awareness, they affect the conscious mind and influence what we say and do. Robert Saucy rightly pointed this out: “Simply stated, the deeper something is in our heart, the more it influences our life.”[6] The thoughts and emotions that exist in the nonconscious do not dissipate over time but linger, and if they are toxic, they can leave us feeling overwhelmed and disconnected.
Buried emotions are buried alive but are prone to being triggered by a current experience. In his book Rewire, Richard O’Conner refers to the nonconscious mind as
The repository of the repressed, the hidden truths about ourselves we don’t want to face, the use of defenses like denial to help us not see uncomfortable reality. This is the part that contains all the feelings and thoughts we don’t want to be conscious of. . . . The feelings we repress—fear, anger, guilt, shame, and others—can have pervasive effects throughout the automatic self. That repression distorts how we see reality and influences our feelings and our behavior in ways we can’t begin to see. . . .
When our feelings are in conflict with each other, or are unacceptable to us, we use defense mechanisms like denial and rationalization to put them into the unconscious part of our minds.[7]
Therefore, most of the thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that contribute to the spiritual/emotional conflicts that hinder Christ-formation and the abundant life reside in the nonconscious area of the heart. Robert Saucy explained it this way:
One of the greatest hindrances to our healing and growth is leaving the issues that trouble our life and stifle our transformation hidden and unknown in the depth of our heart, split off from our conscious thought. So long as we think that we believe something, but the real thought in the depth of our heart is different, we will never experience personal transformation. . . .
An honest appraisal of our spiritual condition—and that means the condition of our heart—is absolutely necessary for spiritual health and growth.[8]
In order to access and process the hurts in the deep places of the heart, it helps to have a basic understanding of how memory works.
How Memory Works
Picture the two rails on a railroad track as an illustration for how memory works. One rail symbolizes implicit memory, and the other rail symbolizes explicit memory. The two memory systems work side by side. One is not more important than another, but they encode different aspects of the same experience.
Explicit memory—also referred to as episodic memory—encodes the details of an experience. According to Daniel Schacter, professor of psychology at Harvard University, the episodic memory system “allows us explicitly to recall the personal incidents that uniquely define our lives.”[9] When you are describing your last vacation to a friend—the sights, sounds, and smells; the food you ate; and the people you talked to—you are accessing explicit memory. Explicit memory is conscious—a fact that will be addressed in detail in a later chapter. Whenever you are aware that you are remembering something, you are accessing explicit memory.
As important as it is to understand how explicit memory works, it’s equally important to understand how implicit memory works because a high percentage of the thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that hinder Christ-formation and the abundant life reside therein.
The implicit memory system resides in the nonconscious, that deep place in the heart that is beyond awareness for several reasons: Some processes are too deep in the brain, some run faster than conscious thinking, and others are much slower than what we usually notice. It will be helpful to associate implicit memory with the phrase gut-awareness. I’m sure you’ve had the common experience where you believed something was true but didn’t have any hard facts to back it up; you just knew it in your gut. Theologist John Coe and psychologist Todd Hall provide a helpful explanation:
Gut-level memory is not verbal; it is not memory of facts that can only be captured in words, or of events in our life that we can consciously (explicitly) recall. Instead, this kind of memory is recorded and packaged in a different “language” or “code” than words—it is recorded in our emotions, perceptions, bodily sensations and our body’s “readiness” to respond in certain ways.[10]
The thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that reside in “gut-level” memory can be triggered unexpectedly by a current event. For example, imagine that, as a sixteen-year-old, you were in a serious car accident while driving a group of friends to the beach. The accident was not your fault, yet two of your friends died and you ended up in the hospital with life-threatening injuries. You spent months in physical therapy and psychotherapy as you tried to work through the guilt and depression resulting from the accident. Now, fast-forward twenty years. You’re driving on the freeway with your wife sitting next to you and your three kids sitting in the back seats. And even though you haven’t thought about that teenage accident for years, when the guy next to you cuts you off, you go into an immediate, homicidal rage. Now, you start tailgating that “jerk,” putting the same people at risk you were trying to protect moments before. Emotionally and physically, your response doesn’t make rational sense. You’re having a completely disproportionate response to the situation.
What’s going on? Could it be that, even though you hadn’t thought about that teenage car accident in decades, you have been carrying the pain and guilt in your implicit memory and it was triggered by a careless driver? Painful thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, which are stored in implicit memory, can burst into the present in dramatic, even dangerous ways if they haven’t been processed appropriately. Whenever you have a disproportionate reaction to a current event, it’s very likely that an underlying thought, emotion, or perception is being triggered. If you don’t pay attention to these experiences by addressing the underlying cause, they can negatively impact your life and the lives of those around you.
Both explicit and implicit memory systems affect the limbic system in the brain, the area largely responsible for processing emotion. Every thought has a corresponding emotion and perception, which releases a chemical messenger in the body produced by the hypothalamus. Leaf explains,
What you think and feel prompts your hypothalamus to begin a series of chemical secretions that change the way you function. . . . the hypothalamus gland is actually the facilitator and originator of emotions in response to life circumstances, such as fear, anxiety, stress, tension, panic attacks, phobia, rage, anger and aggression.[11]
Thought, emotion, and perception prompt adrenaline, cortisol, and dopamine to be released into the brain. These, in turn, influence the will—the decision-making gear in the heart—and promote different types of behavior.
Now that we have explored the conscious and nonconscious aspects of the heart and the two types of memory (explicit and implicit), we can better understand why God wants his people to remember the past. Human behavior is complex, and there is a lot going on in the deep places of the heart. When painful memories stored in the nonconscious are triggered by current experiences, they can produce a chain reaction of negative thoughts and emotions that distort our perception and drive sinful behavior. God wants us to do the hard work of confronting those nonconscious memories that influence our current behavior—to make those connections between our irrational behavior (such as the road-rage example) and the implicit memories that inform them (like the emotions associated with the teenage car accident)—so they can be healed and transformed, so we can experience the abundant life.
The way to resolve the root problem underlying the spiritual/emotional conflicts that hinder Christ-formation and the abundant life is to rewire the brain with healthy, biblically informed thoughts. In the next chapter, I will show you how this process works.
Restoring My Soul with God
It can be scary to think about working through painful past experiences, but as you have learned in this chapter, pain doesn’t disappear over time. For the next five days, take twenty minutes each day to work through the following questions, asking God to reveal any deep hurts that might be hidden in your heart.
Read Psalm 139:1-6 (NLT) each day before taking the steps below.
O LORD, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, LORD.
You go before me and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand!
- Ask the Lord to search your heart and reveal any hurtful memories he wants to reveal to you. Write down the memory in a conversational way, being as detailed as you can. If you have difficulty, think about one of the examples you wrote down on your lifeline for the exercise after chapter 1. Tell the Lord you are having difficulty and ask him to help you. (Example: “Lord, I remember when Slim used to tease me in middle school when I lived in Utah. He used to call me ‘prune picker,’ and all the kids would laugh at me. I felt so sad and alone. I didn’t feel like I had any friends. I felt rejected, like I didn’t even matter to anyone.”)
- Now, ask the Lord what he wants to say to you about that situation. (Example: “Oh, Kenny, I was with you every time Slim teased you. I heard his hurtful words, and I saw your broken heart. I have kept every tear in my bottle and written down every situation in my book. I, too, know what it’s like to be despised and rejected. I love you. I’m so sorry that you were bullied and that kids would laugh at you. I want you to remember that you matter to me. I gave my life for you because I love you so much. I died so you can live. Come to me, and sit on my lap. Lean your head against my chest, and feel my heart beating for you. I’ve got you my dear, dear little boy.”)
- Now that you have finished with this exercise, read it to a trusted friend. Repeat this exercise for the next five days and see what the Lord brings to your mind.
Restoring My Soul with Others
- If you feel comfortable, share your experience with the exercise in “Restoring My Soul with God” with your group.
- What do you think the following verses mean?
- “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
- “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).
- “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
- What are some of the fears or concerns you have about processing hurts from your past? Discuss.
- What are some reasons why God had the Israelites build altars (see Genesis 35:1; Joshua 4:1-7)?
- What questions do you have about implicit and explicit memory? How do you see these answers informing your understanding of Christ-formation and the abundant life?