It’s been about a year and a half since David left me and I still can’t fall asleep at night without numbing myself and distracting my brain. My head hits the pillow and then it’s hours of scrolling through social media or watching a show I’ve seen a hundred times until my eyes are so heavy that I drift off to sleep with my phone in my hand.
I know it’s not healthy. I’m using it like a drug.
Nights are the hardest for me. Crawling into an empty bed just hits me as a cold reminder that I’m still alone. Evening exhaustion makes my emotions less stable and harder to control. The emptiness and darkness in the room gives a clear pathway for my brain to wander and land on a painful topic and just linger there. All those painful emotions reach the surface and I can’t hold back the tears anymore. And it seems the more I cry, the more reminders I get of hurt, betrayal, and memories that I don’t want to be lingering on. All of this combined makes it nearly impossible for me to fall sleep.
I don’t want to process all of this right now. I just want to sleep. So I grab my phone to get a distraction; to numb the pain and make it go away for this moment. Some people turn to alcohol or drugs to numb their pain and then others may choose the less physically damaging, but still unhealthy choice of social media and technology.
I know I need to work on healing through this, but I am better than how I used to be. The healing process is like a roller coaster. I go into deep, dark valleys and then God helps to pull me out so I can walk on mountains. It’s when I’m in the valleys that I can’t fall asleep. It used to be every night though, so I know I’m on the journey of healing. I’m just not there yet.
I know God will continue to walk me through this so that I can one day get to a point where I can lay my head on the pillow, quiet my brain, and fall asleep.
—
I don’t tell you all of this because I want sympathy. In fact, I actually don’t really like sympathy and I do my best to avoid it. I love that people care, but during this whole season I’ve found myself distancing from the people that give me more sympathy than I can handle.
Too much sympathy isn’t healthy. It leaves you feeling sorry for yourself and it pulls you down a bit on your progress of fighting out of your situation.
When David left me, I didn’t tell many people. I chose a select few who I would talk to. I chose them for their wisdom, but also because of the way they would respond to me when I brought a problem to them. They cried with me when it was needed and gave me wisdom when that was needed.
Most of my family didn’t find out until a few weeks after our son was born, when it became absolutely necessary for them to know. So I was home alone for about four months with only a handful of people knowing what I was going through.
During those four months I would get tempted to tell someone about my situation. But before I decided to tell them, I’d pray about it and decide whether I was desiring their wisdom or their sympathy.
If I only desired their sympathy, then I wouldn’t tell them.
Sympathy wasn’t going to make me stronger; it was going to make me weaker. And being in such a fragile state, I needed only things that were going to keep me strong in this season.
So I don’t share about my sleepless nights for sympathy, but I’m sharing this insight of unhealed pain as an illustration of how I handle and discuss pain and problems in my life. A lot of how I deal with my situation and process my pain may be due to my personality and my “suck-it-up” attitude. But I believe it’s what has kept me strong and maybe it’ll encourage someone to hear about it.
When we’re walking through a challenging season, it’s so easy to get bitter as we sit and focus on the problem in front of us. We think about the situation from all angles and have such a negative look on it, which makes sense because it has brought us pain and we’re now left to deal with hurt that we never thought we’d have to deal with. The whole process of sorting through the pain can create a bitterness inside of us that is hard to fight out of.
But I know you don’t want to stay bitter. If you did, you wouldn’t be reading this. You want to find a way to get out of this cycle you’re in and start healing.
A good start would be capturing your thoughts and words whenever you think about or discuss your situation.
Here’s an opportunity to turn the way you look at things around.
Very rarely do I bring up an unhealed pain that I’m struggling with to a friend without wording it similarly to how I worded my example of my sleepless nights. I don’t allow myself to let a negative comment linger in my life without ending it with a hopeful spin. I want to be specific with the word hopeful and not positive because there isn’t always a positive spin, but because of God, there is always hope.
The importance of putting a hopeful spin on everything is because it’s so unhealthy to constantly focus on the negative things. If I only focused on the negative points in my situation, I would drown so fast. There’s too many to survive that way. I would just be left feeling sorry for myself and spiraling emotionally all the time. Does that feel familiar?
When you throw a negative statement out there for your brain to attach to, it will fixate on it and announce it as truth in your mind.
So for example, if you look in the mirror and tell yourself, “I’m ugly.”, your brain will attach to that and every time you see your reflection in the mirror your brain will automatically send a reminder that you’re ugly. But if you look at your reflection and tell yourself, “I may not be the most beautiful one in the room, but I am certainly not ugly.” then that will send that new message to your brain to attach to.
Our thoughts are so incredibly important. They have the power to encourage us or immobilize us and we need to make sure we’re giving our brains the correct information in order to move in the direction of healing rather than staying stuck in our sorrow.
It’s not bad to think about negative things in your life. In fact, if you’re being triggered by something, it’s a sign of undealt with pain that needs to be healed and in order to do that, you have to process through it. But you have to process through it correctly.
So I’ll break down my thought process as I discuss pain in my life with myself or others for you so you can start talking about your situation the same way and hopefully it will help you process your pain in a healthier way.
It could be any pain that you’re dealing with or any negative thought patterns. Maybe you’re struggling with self-hatred/shame, feeling like the situation is unfair, questioning if God cares, or feeling bitterness towards another person or your situation. No matter what it is you’re holding onto, I hope you read this next section and walk through something you’re struggling with using these steps.
5 Steps to Help You Change Your Perspective on Your Pain
1. State your issue.
The best way to start is to address the issue. Bring it up to the surface to evaluate so you can process through it.
Don’t be vague. This is where we’re addressing branches that grew off of the main problem. So my issue would not be my husband left me but would be something that came because of that, like because my husband left me, I am left feeling like a throw-away person.
2. Admit that it is an issue and that it needs to be fixed.
In order to fix a problem, you need to admit that it is a problem and address the fact that it needs to be fixed. If you act like it’s not a big deal, then your effort and desire to fix it is minimized.
3. Give yourself grace.
There’s a reason you’re dealing with this pain. Validate the pain.
If you’re working towards healing this issue and not wanting to allow yourself to remain stuck in it, then give yourself grace for where you’re at. You don’t need to be immediately healed. I know we want immediate healing, but it just doesn’t come that way and you need to give yourself grace in the midst of healing.
Why don’t I just completely remove my phone from my room at night? Maybe that would be an easy solution to end this numbing, but I’m not healthy enough for that and I’m aware of that. If I took the phone away, I would either find something else to numb the pain with or I wouldn’t be able to sleep well. And when I don’t sleep well, the exhaustion magnifies my emotions throughout the day and makes walking through this season much more challenging. So I know that it wouldn’t actually be healthier for me to remove it completely just yet.
Think of people who try to quit smoking. They can’t quit until they’re ready or else they go back to it and some people end up smoking even more than before they tried to quit. Depending on where they are, some people can quit cold turkey. But for others it might be best for them to reduce their smoking habit a little at a time until they reach a point where they can quit.
So if you’re dealing with pain that you can’t seem to hurdle over, recognize what would be best for your journey and give yourself grace as you walk through healing it. This pain is here for a reason. It’s hurtful to you and it needs attention and healing, not for you to just brush it off or pretend it’s not there.
4. Analyze whether or not you’re making progress with the issue.
Are you better than where you were at one point or is it getting worse? If you’re headed towards healing, even if it’s going slower than you’d prefer, then that’s great. But if you feel stuck, like it’s not getting any better and might actually be getting worse, then it’s time to really put some extra focus on this.
5. Think about how you will eventually heal from this issue.
Don’t get too nervous reading this step. You don’t need to have it all figured out. I know you don’t or else it wouldn’t be a problem you’re still dealing with. But this is where you’re going to change this negative into a hopeful note. Your answer could be as simple as I have seen God working in my life and I know He’ll continue to heal each broken piece as I bring them to him. Even if this isn’t something you feel confident about, because I’ll be honest, sometimes it’s hard to feel like God is pulling through for you, still say it.
The truth is that God will come through at some point, but it can be hard to feel confident in that when you feel like you’re drowning in your struggles and you don’t see how God could fix it. But just stating that truth over and over tells your brain that it is truth and gives you the hope to push forward. Sometimes you’ll have to convince your brain of something even if you don’t feel it so you can push through towards healing and staying out of the bitterness swamp.
—
Now that you’ve walked through the steps, I want to share my sleepless nights illustration again and break it down with you so you can see how I walk myself through these steps. It took a lot of practice, but I can confidently say that most times I don’t even have to think about a hopeful spin anymore, I just automatically add one.
I really believe this is one of the biggest reasons for how I have walked through my situation without being swallowed up with bitterness, why it’s been unrealistically easy for me to forgive David and have so much compassion for him, and the reason I can look at my situation and firmly believe that I have a cool story to tell people rather than feeling like my life is so desperately broken.
Sleepless Nights Example:
1. State your issue.
It’s been about a year and a half since David left me and I still can’t fall asleep at night without numbing myself and distracting my brain. My head hits the pillow and then it’s hours of scrolling through social media or watching a show I’ve seen a hundred times until my eyes are so heavy that I drift off to sleep with my phone in my hand.
2. Admit that it is an issue and needs to be fixed.
I know it’s not healthy. I’m using it like a drug.
3. Give yourself grace.
Nights are the hardest for me. Crawling into an empty bed just hits me as a cold reminder that I’m still alone. Evening exhaustion makes my emotions less stable and harder to control. The emptiness and darkness in the room gives a clear pathway for my brain to wander and land on a painful topic and just linger there. All those painful emotions reach the surface and I can’t hold back the tears anymore. And it seems the more I cry, the more reminders I get of hurt, betrayal, and memories that I don’t want to be lingering on. All of this combined makes it nearly impossible for me to fall sleep.
I don’t want to process all of this right now. I just want to sleep. So I grab my phone to get a distraction; to numb the pain and make it go away for this moment. Some people turn to alcohol or drugs to numb their pain and then others may choose the less physically damaging, but still unhealthy choice of social media and technology.
4. Analyze whether or not you’re making progress with the issue.
I know I need to work on healing through this, but I am better than how I used to be. The healing process is like a roller coaster. I go into deep, dark valleys and then God helps to pull me out so I can walk on mountains. It’s when I’m in the valleys that I can’t fall asleep. It used to be every night though, so I know I’m on the journey of healing. I’m just not there yet.
5. Think about how you will eventually heal from this issue.
I know God will continue to walk me through this so that I can one day get to a point where I can lay my head on the pillow, quiet my brain, and fall asleep.
—
I truly hope this encourages you and I just want to let you know how proud I am of you for even taking the step to just try and better yourself. You’ll get there. Life won’t always feel like you’re drowning or like it’s hopeless.
Bring it all to the feet of Jesus. He wants you to bring your struggles to Him. Allow Him to provide that hopeful spin you need to wash all those negative thoughts away and release you from the bitterness that entangles you.
Dear God,
Thank You for walking with us on this painful journey. Thank You for giving us a way to take every negative thought and attach a hopeful spin onto it. You are our hope. Thank You for the way You have provided all along and I pray You continue to walk me through tough challenges on my journey of healing. I know this was never how You intended life for me. But because of the darkness of sin that has invaded this world, I’m now stuck in a situation I never thought I’d be in. Yet, I praise You for still giving me a way out and a reason to have hope in a future.
Amen