Fragile People

What makes people fragile?

That is a loaded question. I imagine there are some people who could spend hours on it, answering from their experience and acquired knowledge from lectures and books, films and gossip.

Certainly there are many reasons for people to become fragile. Let’s focus on emotional and mental fragility and not the physical. Although physically fragile people are often fragile emotionally, because of their perceived and legitimate limitations.

In my experience with people from many walks of life, the number one reason for people to be fragile emotionally has been prior abuse. They have a tendency to behave in self-deprecating or self-sabotaging ways.

As a young teen, my frequent outbursts were often directly correlated to my own poor decisions. I engaged in self-sabotage as a lifestyle. I attempted suicide, ran away, submitted to sex traffickers, hitch-hiked daily, traveled with total strangers, drank Southern Comfort and other hard alcohol every day and did any drugs that I could get my hands on. If I’d had access to heroin, I would probably have died of an overdose.

It wasn’t any normal teen angst though. It was from years of sexual abuse and the deep pain of that secret, a secret I kept so well that at times, I kept it from myself. I had a deep down belief that I had no value. I really didn’t think that way in the front of my brain, but it was always in the back of my mind, in my subconscious. The evidence of this belief was clear in my behavior patterns.

In my early adult life, I was very fragile emotionally. It seemed like I could be hurt by any inadvertent slight. My feelings were hurt so deeply and so frequently. Usually though, it was difficult or even impossible to articulate why I was upset.

My daughter was mentioning some behavior of a mutual friend that seemed bizarre. I reasoned that our friend was acting out of recent traumatic events that I’d known about. She had some pretty traumatic things from her youth as well, but in the lat two years she’d been badly hurt by people close to her. That betrayal had significant and life altering effects that changed her life forever.

She was worried that I suspected her of stealing from me because of a scheduling conflict. I had no such thought. It was the furthest thing from my mind. I actually had no idea why she was upset. When I found out, I told her not to let the devil jerk her around, that thought was straight from hell. I told her that she’s perfect to me. I assured her that she is a treasure. I prayed for her healing.

My healing came from changing my mind. I had to believe that I had value and that my life mattered. The way I did that was by using the words in the Bible that I needed like medicine.

So many times, I would read a passage about God’s love and put my name into the sentence. Intentionally memorizing passages of Scripture restructured my brain, literally. I began to think differently and I began to act differently. I drilled it into my head, that I am important, that I have a purpose, that I am accountable for every thought and every word.

Neuroscience has taught us that our brains are structured like microscopic trees that grow and change by chemical and electronic signals that cause the trees to grow or shrivel. They grow with pleasant, productive and happy thoughts. They shrivel with negative, bitter and angry thoughts.

Trauma, both physical and emotional causes negative chemical cascades that shrivel the tiny nerve endings and they shrink back, leaving a void so that electro-chemical signals cannot reach past. It causes confusion, comprehension problems, difficulty making decisions, irritability, fear and frustration.

Thankfully, we can rewire our brains. It takes effort. It takes time. We can decide what thoughts we entertain and every time a thought comes into our minds, we get to decide what to do with it. Memory is ours forever, but the negative emotions attached do not have to be. Obviously, there is no way to attach happy thoughts to abuse memories and who would want to, that would be psychotic.

We can work through the memories with new information though. We  can remember an event and break it down, stop the cascade of negative chemicals and recognize a number of healing affirmations. First and foremost, it was not our fault, we didn’t deserve it, no one does. Abusers use many tactics to deceive us, but the truth is: We are valuable and deserve respect because we are human beings, created for love.

Next Thursday, I will elaborate on what passages I used and include some strategies to make it easy for anyone to do it too.

What coping strategies keep you sane? How’s that working for you?