Hard-Wired for Love

By Dorothy Mitchell

Do you ever wonder, “Why don’t people feel safe around me? Why can’t we all just get along?”

Everyone wants to be loved. We are built to respond to and seek out love. Why then, in our desperation to be loved, do we push others away? How do things go wrong before a single word has been exchanged?

It’s because our heart, the largely subconscious parts of our mind, is divided and trying to protect its own integrity. Our heart gets wounded. In response to traumas experienced in relationship or in community, our heart may develop deep insecurities. These insecurities are held in our emotion parts, and they rouse the guardian parts of our heart to step up and protect us. Guardians that are on hyper-alert or easily triggered can create a hostile and unpredictable context for friendship. Insecurities also affect the way the function parts of our heart walk and talk and act.

Your intention of friendship may be pure, but others may perceive that the relational safety they require cannot be guaranteed should they make a mistake. Some people are good at reading into others’ words or body language, and other people may be forewarned in their spirit, and may even subconsciously step carefully around you or avoid provoking you. It takes a mature guardian and a mature heart to be able to approach an insecure person with an immature guardian and relate and minister to them. Even then, some boundaries are needed.

Tensions. Sometimes two people have guardians with mutually incompatible ways of protecting the heart. One person’s penchant for yelling when upset is not compatible with another’s need to process conflict in silence. One guardian’s alarm is fed by seeing alarm in another guardian, and the two guardians’ hackles begin to raise at the same time—like two suspicious animals circling and readying for an imminent fight! When this happens, we could follow HeartSync founder Andrew Miller’s example in admitting, “my guardians don’t like your guardians.”

When I was at my most wounded, I had a habit of saying, “I would hate to meet myself. I don’t think we would get along.” At the time, this was probably true. One of the first people I was assigned to receive HeartSync ministry from was very much like me, and she was very competent at facilitating a HeartSync session while her ‘Original Self’ was in charge. But outside of a session, I could not understand why I was so nervous and tense around her, and I hoped someone else would be assigned to help me. She was a very complex person; I was a very complex person. We respected each other, but we just didn’t get along without accidental ouchies, like two hedgehogs trying to hug. But the more healing we both get through our synchronization to Jesus, the more likely we are to be able to get along on this earthly plane.

Shortcuts. Another reason why instant fear or dislike may take place is because of the patterns that guardians have picked up on over time. Human beings have a natural ability to analyze, categorize, and sort experiences and encounters with people, animals, and objects, and associate “these things” with “those things.” The amygdala in our brain, which is associated with the guardian parts of our heart, is particularly devoted to assessing whether these experiences put you in contact with something good, bad, or scary. Instead of approaching every situation as if it were absolutely new, your brain will try to read into it according to the patterns it has perceived in the past. While undergoing trauma, using shortcuts like these may be vital for survival.

This is easy to see in abused animals, who react with fear or anger to people who match the profile of their old abusive master in their memories. These animals must be re-homed carefully. So too can our fear be easily transferred from one person to the next or from one context to the next. But here’s the good news: so can joy. When you have a memory of someone you trust who has been devoted and good to you, that joy, love, and trust can be transferred to people who remind you of them. Your guardians like their guardians, and you get on like a barn on fire!

Society has a way of instilling stereotypes into us; you may hear us call this “programming.” What you see, read, and hear on the news, or in the paper, in books, in movies, on social media, or from friends and family informs us about the world we live in. But these stories are not necessarily true or retold at a frequency that reflects reality, and they can erode our innocence over time. When feeling threatened or scared, we make a lot of snap judgments based on these stories. At worst, we inflict harm and perpetuate phobias and bigotries through these snap judgments in the forms of sexism, racism, ageism, ableism, paternalism, and so forth.

Although it is good to question stories and pursue education about the diversity of cultures, I believe that the ultimate deliverance from all these -isms can only be found in Christ Jesus, in whom we are enabled to see each other as the Father sees us. We cannot return to dovelike innocence or embrace an unencumbered snakelike canniness by our own strength. But if we repent and submit our biases to the Lord for judgment, he will surely help us.

Interrelated Parts. In a nutshell, we get wounded (heart/identity/original self), and then our insecurities (emotion) fuel our guardians to come out, which can create a hostile or unpredictable context for relationship, affecting how we act and talk (function), and how free or cautious our friends (guardians) feel around us and react to us. And when the world consequently feels unsafe, our hopes and dreams (original self) gets relegated to the backburner so that we survive instead of thrive. But Jesus called us to an abundant life. If you feel stuck, let us help you in a HeartSync appointment: https://www.estuarycourts.com/book.

My Big Break: Surrender

By Susan Mitchell

God looks for every opportunity to break you out of stuckness. We can do a lot of things — therapy, prayer, journaling, talking with a friend — to give God that opportunity, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like much has shifted. If we keep chipping away at it, those small steps will pay off one day when the simplest thing breaks it all open. 

Control. Sometimes we get stuck because we are actually trying too hard without knowing how to unclench, attempting to wrest control over ourselves or our situation. That’s how it was for me, an irritable, self-described control freak.

My heart had already been softened and lightened through a few sozo sessions, in which I was led back to sad memories, saw God in the memories, and got his perspective on the situation. Although I felt more peace about that particular situation, my life in general wasn’t affected. Then a sequence of events built up to my culminating moment: (1) I received my first HeartSync as a demo in front of a “live studio audience.” Amazingly, I was able to release a lot of pain that I had been carrying and began climbing out of a negative mindset of painful irritability, reaching a more neutral zone. (2) I was blessed with a hopeful prophetic word from a friend. (3) I attended a conference of artists learning about human trafficking. I was relaxed, not expecting anything.

Surrender. At the end of the conference, we were invited forward to get a prayer to release us from a pattern of abuse. I seized the moment, and my life changed suddenly and permanently through the minister’s 2-minute prayer:

“Lord, I invite you to tear down the 'abuse me' sign over Susan, so that every word out of her mouth going forward is good and pure and wholesome, and every word directed toward her is truthful, clear, and loving. Sever the ungodly soul ties between her and all abusers, and retrieve all parts of her soul, washed clean in the blood of Jesus. Send back to her abusers all parts of their souls, washed clean in the blood of Jesus.” 

I am normally a pretty stoic person, but as she was speaking, I felt my spirit grieve, and my body reflected that grief with shuddering, crying, and deep exhalation. I could have shut it down, but I went with it — the first surrender. While the minister left me to continue the process on my own, I felt an invitation in my spirit to release and surrender more. Maybe that’s overstating it. It’s actually rather boring to just stand there crying. With my get ‘er done mentality, I decided to cooperate by going through a standard process I'd been taught since childhood: Hear, Believe, Repent, Confess, and Be Baptized.

So I heard the minister express the Lord’s desire to heal me. I believed my spirit wanted to receive his healing, as evidenced by the turmoil in my body. I verbally repented (did a U-turn) by ceding my control to heaven and declaring that I was surrendering each part of my body. I worked my way down from head to toe, pausing between each part to see if I the Holy Spirit wanted me to do anything else before moving on. I confessed all sins I could think of that I had committed related to that part of my body. I forgave people related to those sins and let go of the resulting bitterness I had held. I asked Jesus to sever all attachments to all spirits that were chaining me to sinful behavior patterns (spirits of anger, control, vengeance, grief, etc.). Over the course of about 20 minutes, I slowly yielded each body part (head/brain, eyes, ears, mouth, shoulders, abdomen, hips, knees, feet) and ended up face down and flat on the floor, until I felt the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which was the peace that comes from having nothing left to surrender. This is what it means to be washed clean in the blood of Jesus. 

That was the watershed moment jumping me past zero and into positive numbers. My family noticed positive effects immediately even though I don’t think I was behaving any differently or striving to be a better person. But the reality confirmed by many people’s external observations is that I have not been the same person since that moment, and abusive verbalizations toward me ceased. 

Love. That’s my personal story. Your story may be very different. But the common thread is that God loves you and longs for you to truly experience the “abundant life” that Jesus promised. Don’t wallow in the negative zone of pain. Don’t be satisfied with the neutral zone of meh. Go for it, and work out your “sozo,” your very own salvation path into the positively charged life you were designed for. 

Why Do We Do What We Do?

By Susan Mitchell

We are people like you. 

We have been wounded by life events and people. Our hearts have shattered, and we have responded with all of the human emotions of helplessness, hopelessness, grief, fury, revenge, pride, bitterness, disgust, fear, and self-loathing. We have made vows to avoid this or that person, situation, place, or time. We have looked for ways to escape the pain, seeking comfort in entertainment, food, drink, and other mind-altering substances and processes. Over time, we have borne pain, trauma, negative expectations, crushing responsibilities, and overwhelming fatigue. We have replayed some of our worst experiences over and over obsessively. Our guilt and shame have weighed us down. We’ve made up stories and embraced lies in an effort to make our world make sense. 

But it didn’t come close to making sense until we met people —

• Who understood. 

• Who actively listened to us. 

• Who honored and respected our views. 

• Who help us lay down some of the heavy things we carried.

• Who helped us get additional perspective and release blockages and constraints.

• Who gave us tools that allowed us to feel love and gratitude, which led to peace and joy, which blossomed into patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and faithfulness. 

People now tell us, “I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you’re a lot nicer than you used to be. What happened?”

We will be sharing our personal stories to answer this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! For now, suffice it to say that we have been actively working for 7 years to lean into this healing and absorb the strategies for sharing it safely and effectively with others. Are you ready to let go of the things that used to give you purpose and momentum, but now just seem to keep you stuck? Let us cooperate with you to get unstuck. Unstuck is what we do.