So ask yourself: what needs of mine have gone unmet since a child? This is what you talk to God about. This is the purpose of counseling. Because this is where you will sin. This is the place of every transgression.

Where your relationships fail.

Where you most often fall.

Where you always find temptation.

Where you must crucify your flesh.

Where you acknowledge your transgressions.

Where you will need to be transformed in how you think.

Where you ask Jesus to heal your sight.

Where you ask God to heal your broken heart.

Where you become most empathetic, compassionate, merciful once you are healed.

Where you will be most anointed in the Holy Ghost.

See, all sin starts out like every promise: a seed. The condition in which it finds itself determines the next phase. See the parable of the sower. Most people, when they read that, they are thinking—fairly so, I believe—of blessings and good things. But God is nothing if not just. And principles work in all things. In Galatians we are told that God will not be mocked; the principle is the principle: what you sow is what you reap. And then James explains to us that when temptations are conceived (there’s that sowing), they give birth to sin (and that’s the reaping) (James 1:13-16).

No seed survives without something for it to be planted in, though. Seeds don’t sprout in thin air. Or thick air, as it were. Nope. They need a medium. An incubator. A womb. Some soil. For your baby? It’s your uterus and that entails. For plants? It’s the dirt and all that entails. For sin? It’s your heart and the condition that it’s in. And every experience that you experience is written there. Those are the memories you hold as a child.

If traumatic enough, your mind is designed to protect itself at all costs, but the brain and body never forget trauma, and how you respond will well up and spill over all the time, and you will have forgotten why or won’t know why you keep experiencing the same cycle of sorrow and pain and breaking. Not unless you deal with it head on.

So. What next?

Start here. In the places where your needs have gone unmet. Spend time there understanding what triggers the worst you, the weak you, the wrong choosing you. That’s what Paul is saying to you in Romans 12:1-2. The presentation of your body precedes the renewal of your mind because the mind as long as your body is seeking to be fulfilled? You won’t sit long enough for the mind to be engaged—and make no mistake! Endless loops of TikTok and phone games and Netflix and Ramen and always going out and got to be in a relationship and needing somebody to have to talk to you and sex and drugs and food and shopping and work and money all these things are your body… your flesh trying to compensate for an unmet need and drown out the weeping in your mind. The constant loop of emotional damage singing songs of sorrow and agony in your soul not giving the sounds of liberty that Holy Spirit is singing to you a change to get turned up for you to hear it good.

This is the part where you take the time to write what God says on the tablets of your heart. You’re literally rewriting the code of the space in which the seeds of your life are planted. You’re doing what farmers do all the time—aerating your soul, making it rich and nourishing again so that it can produce the right crops. On farms, there are some crops that will literally drain the earth of all its nutrients. Think CORN. Take everything. And so in between corn seasons, other crops are planted so that the soil might rest.

Sin is like never ending corn, fam. Just sucks you dry. The word of God written on your heart: His love for you, His character, His principles, His promises…these things aerate your heart so you can dream again. Be purposeful again. Love and enjoy relationship and fellowship again. Sin stops finding a place to grow. And even when it pops up, you can spot it and dig it up because it doesn’t do well in the soil of God’s word.

Start there. In your unmet need. And begin turning over your heart in the word of God.

---

A word.

Now. Here’s where I will veer from conventional therapies and even the alternative ones.

Understand that you will never find satisfaction in confronting your parents or the person who harmed you when you were powerless to defend yourself. You’ll maybe find some temporary relief or surge of a false sense of control and power for a little while. But those are temporary—and sometimes detrimental. What if that face to face doesn’t yield the remorse you’re secretly yearning for? What if they apologize but lack the capacity to form a real attachment? What if they just don’t care? What if they enjoyed harming you? What if they are incapacitated or dead? What good does reliving the trauma to feel a temporary shift in power do for you? It becomes the epitome of chasing a new high. Even when reenacting a confrontation without the person there, let me ask you: what good does it do? How does that help you move on from your past pain? What is it about that method that is better in acknowledging what happened than just telling your story? The desire and heart for revenge—even the ability to tell the other person how you feel—is a false win.

Neither do I find this idea of holding onto or guiding or taking care of “the little kid” within you the best idea either. No doubt folks mean well when they say it, but consider this: that splintering of self may not always be yourself. You may be entertaining a demonic presence—a familiar spirit I’m using your trauma as a mask to inhabit your past pain and take up residence within you. You will be nursing a presence that is using your past against you, building a stronghold around something you were meant to overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of your testimony—not love to death. Cuz make no mistake. Holding that stuff will kill you. Everything in your life will eventually die.

Nor am I of the chakra/meditation/ancestors and crystal crowd. No human has the ability or capacity to handle the fullness of the human spirit—the sheer power implanted into it when God breathed the breath of life into His crowning creation. The presence of iniquity, the stain of sin, the compulsion to transgress—these things coupled with access to that kind of power is what corrupts. People assume that they understand that which they know not, and open up doors that they can never close of their own accord. What you unlock will be far worse than the short burst of peace you achieve in the beginning.

If you attach yourself to The Source, The Father of All Light, in whom there is no shadow of turning, you will always be secure even when you don’t look it or feel it. The Creator of All Things is never far from you, is always looking for His prodigals to come running back repentant, with a hug and a ring and the fatted calf.

Going to a therapist is quite all right; going to the right one, the proper one is imperative. Take care to not be caught up in the culture of mystics and devil worshippers, scoffers and unbelievers who deny the power of God but look to access power from other portals. People who understand the realm of the spirit—even those who understand the realm of the natural world—understand that there is power to be had and will attempt to get at it by any means necessary. Even at the cost of your well-being and your life.

Watch. Pray. Ask the Lord to guide your healing process so that it is well with you. That is shalom.

Blessings.