Emotional Healing - My Journey with getting help

Recently God showed me how he takes us out of our ordinary routines to expose what's really in our hearts.

When Jesus went outside of his home to the desert, that's when Satan appeared.  Similarly, Jesus said of Peter, "Satan has asked to sift you. But I have prayed for you."  Further back, Satan challenges God that Job only loves God because everything is going right in his life. So God tells Satan to test Job's faith in God.  Satan takes everything away from Job and Job chooses God at the end of the day.  This story is repeated over and over again in the Bible.

Recently I was taken out of my normal routine (literally expelled from my home). I had to confront lonliness (my biggest fruit of the flesh.  You know, because we have fruit of the spirit we also have fruit of the flesh).  I realized there are roots of rejection and fear that have been lurking in my heart all along.

Over a long period of time (I'm talking years) I had felt like I saw some unhealthy patterns in my life that I needed help breaking.  But shame and embarressment warred against my need.  There was so much stigma around getting help that I justified not doing it.  Even saying that I have patterns makes me desperately want to clarify that I'm not a sex or porn addict.  I find this tendency proves my point even more.  I am ashamed, terrified of other people knowing "my stuff" and I mask it all with that "I've got it all together" pride.

Furthermore,  I thought because I had gained victory on my own through time in other areas that these fruits would just go away on their own or at least if I declared truth over them long enough I'd see breakthrough.  I even justified my ignoring help with the fact that I was in "Holy Spirit Academy."  I truly believed at one point because I was going through such a beautiful season of feeling the presence of the Lord that I had it all together.  It's true, his love enveloped me in such a special way in that season.  Then something would happen and no matter how much I declared, I'd still get entanged in lies from one trigger.

Let me just give a quick side note.  Yes, it's important to bind and loose and declare and repent.  But sometimes you have to physically step away from a situation and put some boundaries in place to help you.  This is especally true for addicts!  When Potipher's wife came on to Joseph he didn't just stand there and say "No." He actually physically ran away!  Sometimes you're putting yourself in unwise, compromising positions and overspiritualizing when you should find people to help you stop what you're doing and go in the opposite direction. (I had a teacher who used to say "Get out of the stupid room!")

Ok, I'm going to go here for a minute.  There's a whole "spiritual" practice that tells you to focus on the good and the bad will just, I don't know, melt away I guess. And there is some truth to this.  After all, we are to think on whatever is true, whatever is pure, and whatever is lovely. However, it's irrational and totally impractical to ignore a gaping emotinal wound caused by trauma. It's like placing a bandaid on something that needs stitches.  We are not actually dealing with the problem.

So now I'm out in desert, by myself, getting the help I need, does that mean I'm a terrible person? Or worse, does God want to watch me fail in front of others?

Back to Jesus' 40 days in the desert, Satan asked essentially, “if you strip everything away, are you really who you say you are?”

Jesus responded, “yes. I am.”

God didn't take Jesus out to the desert because he wanted to watch him fail.  He took him out there so that his identity would rise to the challenge.
 "And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,    and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,    and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”[a]7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?" (Hebrews 12:5-7).

I guess I did forget that God is a gentle father, correcting to bring healing, not condemnation and shame.  He does it because he loves me not because he hates me.  My fear of getting help probably stemmed from a wrong God picture.  My earthly father was hard on me.  With an exasperated tone he would say, "When will you learn?" But my God Is not like that.  He's not exasperated by my cycles of self hatred and intense lonliness.

God is after a whole, victorious you. And he will use anything to get you there. He loves you and his heart is not to condemn. Don’t let anything keep you from the victory he has for you.

Facing the Music: My Brand Of Crazy A Review Of Crazy Ex Girlfriend Season 3

In seasons 1 and 2 Rebecca Bunch swings on that crazy pendulum between funny and psychotic with a lighthearted ease.  Of course you cringe as she does weird stuff and develops (normal TV) co-dependent relationships. The plot develops rather linear, her single focus is Josh Chan and her underlying issues surround her mother and the fact that she refuses to address her underlying issues.

Season 3 makes a few dramatic changes that result in Rebecca Bunch no longer leaning on her friends in unhealthy ways but actually learning to independently sort out her issues. There are a few things I appreciate about this season.

I realized the reason I relate to Rebecca is because she’s my brand of crazy. Some people create drama about work or thrive away from drama. I have always created drama based on the romance. As Rebecca navigates what it’s like inside a relationship and outside of one in a more healthier space we get songs like the one where she imagines an Asexual altruistic universe. Since mental health is about balance its fun to watch her to navigate between extremes to where she finds her happy medium with the help she is finally seeking for herself.

One thing that is small but hugely stands out is how there’s an underlying shift to her conversations with people. In fact, the whole cast seems to have graduated from Middle School antics to interacting in kinder, more healthier tones.

One thing that the author Rachel Bloom addresses is the fear of failure.  I didn’t like how they dealt with that in the episode where her therapist gives her a star. Rebecca wants to impress him with how good she’s doing right off the bat. He challenges her to be normal and then treats her bad decisions as good ones just because she’s not concerned with her performance.  But I loved her conversation with her new old therapist, Dr. Copian, who tells her that it is ok for her to want intimacy, which she fears because of her failures

This is also when we are dealing with her crazy obsessions. She doesn’t think she can separate relationships from obsession. For example, the T-shirt scene. I absolutely died laughing when you see her smelling her boyfriend’s shirt and then she’s in therapy about her obsession and we realize she is wearing his shirt. The obsession continues but she is aware of it and realizes there are ways to avoid it.

I realized as I watched this show what has been profoundly missed in my TV watching experience- ethics. It seems these days that edgier and edgier is what flies. But this season in particular Rebecca has an affair and is forced to confront how she is hurting others and herself as she talks to Paula. Paula was cheated on last season and so her reaction to the affair is moving.

One of the themes throughout the show (both blatant and less obvious) is the fact that we will do anything to avoid having hard conversations. The season starts out with Josh Chan bailing their relationship and becoming a priest because he doesn’t want to tell Rebecca he doesn’t love her. Similarly Rebecca continues to have a difficult time confessing her own failures. Hilariously she calls a business meeting and hands everyone she has wronged a memo with all of her grievances they didn’t know about.

I love the challenging of wrong mindsets this season, especially the victim mentality. By the end of the season she has to face many lies. She has to live with guilt and shame and take responsibility for the things she’s done to hurt others.

I know some people have commented that this season the music isn’t as great, it’s too dark, and too dirty.  I want to address those things.

I think Rachel Bloom is the first prime time television show actually head-on addressing these issues in a very real way. The lack of focus on the music doesn’t bother me because it’s not as needed this season. The metaphors are still there and there’s still color and flare throughout the songs. But the cheesy shortness of the musical numbers offsets the complex dialogue and plot throughout quite nicely.

I think I already addressed it but the darkness in my opinion is so necessary. Everything in the first two seasons was taking her to ridiculous comedic extremes. This season we finally get to see where endless cycles of shame and not getting help ultimately lead to.  As I mentioned before, there’s a real theme of taking responsibility for your actions. I applaud Rachel Bloom for navigating this tricky subject so well.

I did have a hard time with how much sex was in this season but I don’t think it’s because there was less in other seasons. Certainly not season 2. She slept with a lot of people in season 2.

Of course I do think overall this season had a lot of songs about sex. My personal favorite was the song about the dude who thought he was sexually pleasing his wife and discovered he wasn’t. I can see how this can be too much for some people. And I do think she went a little far in the song “the very first penis I saw.” But if you’re going to be refreshingly honest about other things like “the miracle of birth” I guess talking about the first penis you saw makes total sense. Also, remember that these songs are things going on in Rebecca Bunch’s mind. Don’t pretend that you don’t have similar fantasies (perhaps less musical).

I think I was bothered by the constant unhealthy sex with Nathaniel. I do think one could argue that this was a great way of showing that relationships built on sex alone are not good relationships. Although I’m not sure she argued that well either.

Overall, I highly recommend the third season of Crazy Ex Girlfriend.  Owning up to our own emotional instability is rough. I’m thankful that this show gives me an outlet to do so.