Christian symptoms of abuse

  It's not uncommon for Christians that are survivors of Complex Trauma from child abuse or domestic violence to display certain symptoms and behaviors before and even after they have been saved. A child, who lives in an abusive home, lives in constant distress, they are victims of profound relational betrayal and profound deception, which is usually repeated and chronic. It's the result of exposure to an inescapably stressful event that overwhelms a persons coping mechanism. Intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation. Frequent, lasting trauma. Differing from one traumatic event, but rather repeated danger, that continues. 

  So as a result of chronic and interpersonal trauma, this individual will be extremely vigilant, very watchful for danger all the time, constantly expecting it. This is caused because Brain Development is "use-dependent". What we use gets stronger, and the areas of the brain focused on survival act first and faster than our thinking brain. So our stress response, which is involuntary and automatic, can be based on a learned emotional association, referred to as "fear conditioning." So this fight, flight or freeze response in trauma survivors is hyper-vigilant, scanning for danger, sensing threat, real or imagined, and reacting to threat or danger. So in the Christian survivor they will often have a heightened concern for the dark side, for the satanic, the demonic and all principalities and powers. They have a pessimistic outlook on life because they were victims of profound relational betrayal and profound deception, so if you can't trust your caregivers, who should be devoted to your well-being and should love and nurture you, how then will you ever trust anyone? So every person, party, denomination, political movement different from them is seen as a threat and a danger, they are the enemy. Like the saying, "There's a devil behind every door."  

 So, if this is so, is there no up side? Is there nothing positive? Oh yes! Survivors of abuse have great advantage! A person that had all the benefits of a loving family will see the love of Jesus as an extension of their parents love. It's kind of like watching movies in regular color and then getting H.D., it is a vast improvement and wonderful. But to the trauma survivor, finding the love of Jesus is like going from black-and-white to Blue Ray!!!!!!  The contrast is so great that the hunger and thirst for more of Christ is bursting out of them! They have never felt this love and it changes everything! They have more zeal, more ambition, more willingness to sacrifice, more love and more hope, in Christ. God will not be a debtor, and if His child has suffered greatly, He will bless even more greatly! Of course I'm speaking in generalizations now, for some, they find it a long and slow process to put their trust in God, whom they can't see, when those that they could see betrayed them, but for others, it is literally a death to life experience.