I was trapped in a car with a prayer counselor!
It was a three hour drive to our vacation.
Kathy decided I had control issues.
That had to get fixed…. right now!
I couldn’t escape.
Click on the video and I’ll explain what happened.
To live a transformed life, you need to continuously be unloading baggage.
Now I want to hear from you
How has God helped you unload your baggage? Just leave your comments in the box below.
Do you have control issues?
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Iâll talk to you next week,
Grant
Comments 12
Really like this one…God has His way of getting our attention even if it means getting us in a place of no escape.
I got caught up in over reacting to the over reacting people responding about the letter from the frustrated mom that was in the news. Thank goodness I don’t get offended like I used to. Thank you Lord that you don’t judge us by your standards, but give mercy and grace.
Thanks for sharing.
Havn’t been reading your posts for awhile but checked this one out this morning right after having my quiet time. All I can say is thanks for the laugh and the reality check. You’re candidness is appreciated.
Author
Carolyn, it just goes to show that you should never miss an issue of my blog. They are all life changing…… or you get your money back!
Yup I can see that I have control issues rooted in my past and they are yet unresolved. Why is it that I have to be in control to be or feel safe! Acknowledging this problem is one thing but getting over it and free of it is another! Please pray for me.
Author
David, I’d be happy to speak with you about those issues at a coaching appointment. Email me if you’re interested.
Yes i have control issues. God has shown me that when I’m not in control of certain situations, I get very anxious and annoyed. Then I think well ‘why don’t you just pray about it and let God sort it out, but my response is yes BUT! so I also have trust issues. When I was very young and had just had my first child, my husband whom I loved very much died in a road accident. This event made an ‘imprint’ on my ‘mind’ somewhere, So now if I cannot make regular phone/internet contact with any of my adult children, the youngest being 19, I tend to ‘panic’ and have vague feelings that something ‘dreadful’ has happened. Sorry God, but even when I pray to you about my children, I still experience this. Especially if it is weeks or months since I have been able to make contact with my children. So yeah, I understand how humans can develop ‘control issues’, in response to life events. I just keep saying “well Lord you’re the only one who can heal that in me”, and I know He wants to otherwise these types of situations wouldn’t keep happening.
That was a very good illustration to show how stressful situations can reveal unresolved baggage. I would like to add that sometimes we can be in a relationship (such as marriage or parent/child) where one person is controlling and overreacts regularly and the other person is more submissive and gets blamed for problems. These types of relationships can be destructive and can hinder us from dealing with our baggage.
God has helped me unload my baggage by taking me on a long journey of leaving home and acknowledging the truth. Looking back I realize my parents did what they thought was right. My parents often used God to put fear into us. They often reminded us that children are commanded to honor and obey their parents. They focused on our behavior and how we should treat them. There was a lot of violence and abuse, inappropriate behavior, insults and put-downs, name-calling and cursing, threats and bullying which seemed to escalate as the years passed. I was sometimes told not to say anything because “Nobody will ever believe you” and “Nobody will ever find out what we did to you”. I wanted to please my parents and God so I did what I was told. I was very obedient, quiet and complacent. I had a lot of self-hatred, shame and self-loathing. In my late teens it got so bad that if I said or did something wrong or made my parents mad, I would go and punish myself. I was so deceived that I believed that by punishing myself I was pleasing God and my parents. I would burn myself with a hot iron, cut myself, hit myself with a heavy object, etc. I also struggled with an eating disorder, depression and suicidal tendencies. I felt like a prisoner within myself and in my family.
I think back on life with my family as like being in a war zone. Soldiers go off to war, they fight to survive and when they return home they often have to deal with the effects of war – post-traumatic stress disorder, anger, fear, flashbacks, nightmares, addictions, depression.
God has helped me unload baggage in many ways. I was hospitalized as a teen and placed in a psychiatric program for troubled youth. This helped me realize that I was not alone, other teens were hurting too. Over the years I have been to several counsellors, 1 Christian counsellor, and a support group for people dealing with the effects of abuse. I’ve attended a 1-week Christian retreat for inner healing – confessing my sins and the sins of my family, repenting, forgiving, breaking ungodly vows and beliefs, severing soul ties. I’ve gone for a lot of deliverance. I’ve read books about these topics. I’ve received a lot of prayer for inner healing and comfort from the Holy Spirit. I continue to read, learn and receive teachings.
God has helped me separate myself from my parents spiritually, emotionally and physically and also forgive them. My parents are likely not Christians and have never taken any responsibility for their actions and behaviors. Instead, they have a lot of anger and bitterness towards me and blame me. They don’t want to hear about Jesus, the Holy Spirit or inner healing. They say I’m just trying to blame them for my problems and that I’m just trying to get sympathy from other people. They have often said I belong to a cult and that the Christians there are extreme and are deceiving me.
God has taught me that we’re each responsible for our own words and actions and we will each have to give an account (thankfully Jesus has paid the price for our sins if we receive Him as Lord and Saviour and if we confess our sins). When I think about my parents I sometimes feel a sense of guilt and responsibility. In the past I would minimize their behavior and actions and take the blame/responsibility, apologize and try to make things right. God has taught me not to minimize their behavior and actions. God has taught me to establish boundaries with them and to detach myself emotionally from them – no longer looking to them for love or acceptance. God has taught me the importance of standing up for myself, speaking out and telling the truth, regardless of how my parents or others respond. God has taught me that abuse is wrong and needs to be called abuse. God loves all people and doesn’t want anyone to be abused, mistreated or hurt. God is not the author of these things and we’re not to receive them.
I still struggle with bad memories that trigger pain and sadness. I often feel badly for my children (who are in their teens and early adulthood) because they have very few role models in their family. I find holidays especially painful. My children sometimes find it hard to deal with me because sometimes during a regular conversation if the name of a certain person or event comes up I suddenly feel upset and go and cry. I turn to prayer and concentrate on the mercy, forgiveness, grace and love of God in Jesus. I’m continuing to trust God to help me be free from my baggage not only for myself but for the sake of my children. Even though I don’t see my parents and rarely have phone contact, every day I choose to forgive them, bless them, and ask God to give me a love for them. Then I release them to God, believing that through Jesus He can move in their lives bringing them forgiveness, love and healing.
Hello Dr. Mullen
Love your blog. I am reading your book as well.
Thanks
Janice
Author
Leslie, thanks for sharing such a personal story. Dysfunctional families breed shame in the children. I discuss those issues that you mentioned in my DVD called Shame. You can see it here:https://drgrantmullen.com/resources/shame-our-hidden-torment/
I’d be happy to help you with it.
I just had a similar experience… I have been at this memory healing and dealing with baggage for about 5 years now first with my counsellor and then I attended one of Grant’s seminars two years ago and bought weveral CD’s.
I have had over 10 very significant memory healings during these 5 years, but there was still something major I had not uncovered yet as I was still experiencing significant co-dependant patterns in my relationships. My previous healings made it impossible for me to behave needy or controlling. However, the emotions were still there and I had not yet developed new behaviours so I felt stuck in the emotions with no way to outlet them.
In a previous session with my counsellor she sensed that I was “carrying a trailer behind me, that there was no baggage in the trailer but that there was still a hitch which was a complicated mechanism”.
Since working with her and working with Grant’s material, these healings have become like second nature to me. It used to be really difficult for me to let God into those dark places to show me His truth, but now when I have very uncomfortable emotions I know how to let him in easily.
On a particular day a few weeks ago I was driving to my dad’s farm for a family BBQ and I had just ended the relationship that was significantly triggering my co-dependant baggage. Most of my previous memory healings had to do with being an ill child and spending alot of time in the first 5 years of my life in the hospital, undergoing many tests, spending nights without my parents, and finally having major abdominal surgery at the age of 5 to correct a deformity with my kidneys.
There was still something at the root of these experiences that I had not yet been ready for God to show me. As I was driving down to the farm I started to cry, and realized for the first time that my heart was “sick” at the core and there was nothing in my own power that I could do to change my tendancies.
I cried for an hour and allowed myself to fully experience my pain. Finally I realized that I could not believe or identify with the verses “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” or “I knit you together in your mother’s womb” because I literally came out of the womb with this deformity. In fact I almost died when I was two months old from infections targeting my kidneys, bladder, and lungs.
God healed me from my emotional memory of that experience, but He showed me that I believed that HE made me WRONG. I believed that God despised me when he was creating me. I had stopped crying by the time God showed me this lie.
A total peace and quiet came over me as God asked very gently, “did you ever consider there were other forces at work when I was creating you?”….This revelation blew me away. As a Christian we understand that anything that causes pain and hardship is a work of the devil, but the lie was entrenched so deep that in this situation I had not been able to see what was common sense.
God showed me that because of generational sin, while he was creating that part of my body His HAND was literally stopped for a brief moment. Long enough for my ureters to be connected to the wrong place on my bladder. In a developing baby that is the difference of millimetres.
I thanked God for setting me free from the lie and broke off what He showed me to be generational curses of fear and rejection from my father’s line.
After a healing like this there is always some settling in my spirit….every experience I had that hurt me and reinforced that lie was also healed like a domino effect.
I have finally come out of that and feel more balanced than ever. It as so amazing how everytime I think my healing is complete there is always more, always these layers that God so patiently and willingly works in me to heal and make me more whole in Him.
God is so good. If I can say anything to anyone who has experienced significant trauma or wounding…be brave enough to be vunerable with God. It is the hardest and best thing you will ever do, and you will know him in such a deep way that you will be able to say with conviction that He is the lover of your soul, your counsellor, your Father, and your best friend.
Things won’t always be so difficult. It gets better, honest.
I also want to add something I just learned about control issues.
Obviously control issues result from having experienced being out of control or being at the mercy of someone else’s or life’s apparent whims.
People with control issues also can suffer from self-blame…if you are on the more passive-agressive side of control that is a sure-fire way to know…you think everything is your fault. How is this a control issue?
Well if you think everything is your fault, then you take personal responsibility for situations. If we are able to allow others to “own their own stuff” and let it go, that means we can’t change them or the situation. But if we blame ourselves, that means that somehow if we are good enough, love someone enough, put up with things long enough, suffer hard enough, that it will somehow change things. If it’s our fault, then we can also fix the problem.
It is hard as a child to accept that parents who are supposed to love you act this way, that a world that is supposed to be safe isn’t…so what is easier? To think it’s your fault or to accept that parents don’t love the way they are supposed to or accept that the world really isn’t a safe place? It’s much easier to control. I can change me, and the small things that effect MY everyday life. So control is also rooted in denial of reality. Only God can help us to surrender and fully let go.