Over the course of my life I feel I have developed the fear of being around other Christians and going to Church. I know all the right answers and scripture. I did go to bible school! But the fear is so real it seems to be hindering me from going to church or even fellowshipping with others. I have been abused in my up bringing! The fear is controlling my life and keeps me living in survival mode. I stay isolated and do not hang out with others....which I would love to fellowship and do activities I love!
There appears to be two stories here.
1. I used to function well around christians, and people in general
2. I now I cannot go near christians etc
Something has changed between these two positions.
One way of dealing with this is remembering the attitudes and emotions
you used to have in the situations, and learning to expect the same
interactions again.
Some reactions can be emotional changes in our makeup which have no
obvious foundation or cause in our lives, but we can re-establish behaviour
and reactions that we used to benefit from by just putting things into effect.
In essence this is CBT, or Cognative Behavioural Therapy.
It is saying our bodies can change our behaviour which we can then reverse
by positive reinforcement of experience. But key to all of this is using ones
positive memories of past experiences, and putting past behaviour into effect.
This lays down a new positive experience which puts to rest all the fears and
negative expectations now dominant in the current time. It is like an express
train, once you let the negative feelings dominate, they then cut off any positive
experiences which would start the road to recovery.
In many ways this is the same as following Christ. By learning to love, to see need
and meet it, we learn the positive reactions we get, and not the rejection or hurt we
expected that drive us further into great acts of love and enthusiasm. It is ofcourse
empowered by the love of Christ working in us.
