Healing the Battle Within: Unveiling the Biblical Antidote to PTSD
The term PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is relatively new, but people have been experiencing it for a long time. During World War I, it was referred to as “shell shock.” In the 1980s, the corresponding diagnosis was coined.
It goes without saying that PTSD is much older than that. It has been known to humanity since the dawn of time. That’s why the Bible has a lot to say about it. And God offers a surprising cure, knowing full well how our central nervous system functions.
Post-traumatic stress disorder usually develops after a traumatic event or a series of traumatic events. The most common symptoms are:
- Intrusive memories
- Flashbacks
- Nightmares
- Uncontrollable anxiety
- Obsessive thoughts of danger
In this article, we will explore the Biblical view on PTSD and how to reverse it. After all, faith-based recovery programs boast a 70% recovery rate, surpassing conventional medication-based approaches.
What Exactly Causes PTSD?
According to NHS, PTSD can develop after a very stressful, frightening, or distressing event or after a prolonged traumatic experience.
My grandfather fought in the trenches of World War II. As a child, I used to ask him about the war, but he never answered. Over time, I realized that the memories must be too painful for him. He avoided the subject. Instead, he turned to alcohol as a way of coping.
Memories about the war would bring him the same emotions as if he were in the middle of combat. Of course, it wasn’t true. He was at home on his couch. But it still felt very much like a present reality for him.
It has been shown that in PTSD, your brain becomes hardwired to expect danger, and it cannot distinguish between thoughts and reality. The thought of war feels like war. The thought of danger feels as if the danger is already here.
What Is the Mechanism of PTSD?
According to John Bradshaw, the author of the bestseller Healing the Shame That Binds You, a traumatic experience gets imprinted in the brain within 72 hours unless the person has someone to talk to about it. In other words, PTSD is caused by traumatic emotions stuck in the person’s brain and body.
Surprisingly, the brain does not register trauma when the person receives relentless empathy immediately or shortly after the experience. The brain simply lets it go. The experience dissolves in empathy like a lump of sugar in a cup of hot tea.
But if the person who has experienced an overwhelming emotion doesn’t get empathy within the first 72 hours, the brain registers the trauma and develops dense neural circuitry around it. This is the root cause of PTSD, which can persist for decades if left untreated.
So, when you share your traumatic event with someone who can give you empathy within the first three days of the event, your brain remains healthy. It does not form neural pathways that trigger PTSD symptoms.
However, if you suppress, bury, or deny your feelings, the traumatic event gets hardwired in the central nervous system. When this hardwiring happens, the brain becomes chemically conditioned to re-experience the same traumatic event as if it were happening right now. The brain releases the same chemicals as at the time of the event or a series of events).
King David, who saw a lot of war in his life, left us with the Book of Psalms, where he recorded all his feelings without holding anything back. He was brutally honest with himself and God. Why?
He felt he needed to vent before the Lord. He knew it would bring him relief, and he would get empathy and grace from heaven. His Psalms testify to a broad spectrum of emotions and a process of being healed by God’s loving presence.
We read in Psalm 61:1-2:
“Hear my cry, God. Listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth, I will call to you when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
Research shows that when we experience trauma – verbal, emotional, or physical – it always brings up strong emotions. We may feel fear, anger, overwhelmed, and a whole range of other emotions.
Every negative emotion produces certain chemicals in the body—mainly stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. When the body is full of adrenaline and cortisol, it is in the fight-or-flight mode.
Surprisingly, love and acceptance also trigger certain hormones – oxytocin (love hormone), dopamine (happiness hormone), and serotonin (satisfaction hormone).
In other words, when we are under stress, our brain produces hormones of stress, and eventually, the body gets used to them. When we feel loved, understood, and accepted, our brain produces hormones of love, happiness, and satisfaction, and the body gets used to them. The stronger the emotion, the quicker it gets hardwired in our system.
As a man according to God’s heart, David knew how to deal with severe stress. That’s why we see him continually doing three things:
- Talking through his every emotion with God: “These things I remember, and pour out my soul…” (Psalm 42:4)
- Turning all his emotions over to God: “Hear my cry, God. Listen to my prayer.” (Psalm 61:1)
- Turning away from “worthless things” so they do not fill his heart and mind: “Turn my eyes away from looking at worthless things. (Psalm 119:37).
Our emotions and the chemicals they produce form dense connections of neurons in the brain through repetition. The brain becomes hardwired to anticipate the same experience everywhere and interpret every situation through the lens of the initial trauma.
When reminded of the war, my grandfather would feel such emotional pain that he needed a drink to numb it.
How to Reverse PTSD
From the biblical perspective, recovery from PTSD is similar to recovery from any spiritual ailment. All mental, physical, and spiritual disorders in human beings originate in our disconnection from God. Without a vibrant experience of connection with God in the here and now, the soul suffers.
To quote Augustine,
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
Trauma always disrupts our experience of the connection with the Divine. Violence is the language of hell. That’s why the cure is to connect with God. Thankfully, we have an arsenal of tools and resources to shift our focus back to God and be healed. The process may be slow, but it’s cumulative.
The amount of love and empathy we need must eventually outmatch the amount of pain we have accumulated over the years.
Reversing PTSD is a process of slowly rewiring the damaged brain circuits. It involves three parts:
- Naming what you feel
- Sharing what you feel with a SAFE person
- Getting relentless empathy without judgment
All three steps are based on the profound biblical wisdom that the human soul is made for connection with God. All three steps have been intuitively practiced by saints throughout centuries.
The Three Steps of Reversing PTSD
Step 1: Name what you feel.
When we don’t know what we feel, we can’t talk about it. When we can’t talk about it, it remains buried inside. When it remains buried inside, it contributes to the cause of PTSD. In the Psalms, David expressed a wide spectrum of emotions and gave them all to God. He named them all.
In doing so, he did something very important and similar to what Jesus did several centuries later when he cast out demons by asking their names.
He asked him, “What is your name?”
He said to him, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” He begged him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now on the mountainside there was a great herd of pigs feeding. All the demons begged him, saying, “Send us into the pigs, that we may enter into them.”
At once Jesus gave them permission. The unclean spirits came out and entered into the pigs. (Mark 5:9-13)
Naming is a powerful tool of healing. What are you feeling? Fear? Anger? Apathy? Envy? Resentment? Sadness? One tool that can help identify what we feel specifically is a feelings wheel.
Step 2: Share it with a safe person.
The Bible attaches particular importance to sharing your struggles with brothers and sisters. The apostle James insists that it’s a potent way to mend spiritually and physically.
“Confess your offenses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” (James 5:16)
However, the people we share with must be safe. In other words, if we feel judged when we share, we are not with the right people. PTSD, by its very definition, is a disorder caused by stress and disconnection. Judgment from people only adds to the stress and disconnection we already have. Such people simply won’t help your situation.
A good litmus test is asking yourself occasionally, “Do I feel judged or accepted by these people?”
Jesus emphasized that He came to those who were sick, not to those who believed they were healthy. He drew crowds with love and mercy. People felt accepted by Him, and that’s why His presence was so healing to them.
We read in Mark 7:37,
They were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He makes even the deaf hear, and the mute speak!”
People were naturally attracted to Him because He rejected no one.
Step 3: Get relentless empathy without judgment.
When you start naming and sharing your feelings with safe people, it’s important to keep doing it. The process of rewiring the brain is gradual and takes a long time. We frequently need to experience love and acceptance of all our feelings in a non-judgmental context so that our brain and our soul become accustomed to this new experience.
Experiencing empathy must become habitual. Living without the fear of judgment must become the norm. Consider twelve-step programs, such as ACA or other similar support groups, if you struggle to find non-judgmental people.
What Happens in the Brain When We Continually Practice These Steps?
PTSD forms in the brain when we feel an overwhelming emotion (or go through a series of traumatic events) that triggers the release of stress hormones.
PTSD is reversed when we intentionally and continually refocus our minds from negative to positive to get those hormones of love (oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin).
Whenever we name our emotions, share them, and get empathy from non-judgmental people, our brain releases hormones of love, happiness, and satisfaction. The more we repeat the process, the more our brain gets rewired. Eventually, it stops focusing on intrusive thoughts, anxious states, or depression.
However, these negative feelings don’t go away entirely. They still come every once in a while. But instead of dwelling on them, we know what to do with them and choose to ACT differently. Instead of allowing them to bring us down as before, we name them, share them, and enjoy feeling accepted.
Slowly but surely, our inner tension is released. Obsessive thoughts don’t hold so much power over us anymore.
We are free to think about other things. Before, we didn’t have much of a choice on what to think about. We were enslaved by our fears, anger, depression, or apathy. We couldn’t think about anything else. Now, their power has lessened, and we have more of a choice in what to think about. We can turn our thoughts to God’s Kingdom and feel God’s peace all the more.
Here’s how the apostle Paul puts it:
“Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report: if there is any virtue and if there is any praise, think about these things… and the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:8-9)
In other words, whatever you keep in your mind long enough is exactly what you will experience in your life. Whatever we continually focus on will manifest in our experience sooner or later.
If we keep dwelling on the past with all its negativity, these thoughts will produce a negative outward experience. If we continually refocus on the positive, these new thoughts will produce a positive experience of God’s peace.
Preparing for Relapses
Every recovery journey involves relapses, and PTSD is not an exception. If you find yourself caught up in a negative train of thought or suddenly have an influx of overwhelming emotions, it’s normal.
The old brain circuits are still operational and will produce all those states every once in a while. But with time, the PTSD-triggered feelings will lessen in intensity and frequency. Eventually, they will become manageable. What matters is what we do with those intrusive thoughts and obsessive feelings when they come.
What to Do With PTSD-Related Thoughts and Feelings When They Return:
- Don’t resist them. What you resist persists. They get stronger when we give them attention. Instead, act differently. Instead of dwelling on them, open your journal and write down a name for each one.
- Connect with safe people and share how you are feeling. You will feel an almost immediate relief after you have shared. The more often you do it, the easier it gets.
- Every time you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts, shift your focus to something easy for you to focus on. These may include the air conditioner humming, children laughing outside, rain patterning on the windowsill, etc. At first, it won’t be easy. Your thoughts will almost immediately shoot back to the old negative narrative playing in your mind. However, press on and shift your focus from one thing to another every 10 to 15 seconds. After several minutes, you will find their intensity subsiding.
The Bible talks a lot about healing and emphasizes that to heal means to become whole in God. Long ago, in the Garden of Eden, our ancestors separated themselves from God through unbelief, and the earth was cursed on their account. Our connection with God broke, and our souls became fragmented.
Over time, this fragmentation intensified, and violence broke out into the world through Cain, the second generation after Adam and Eve. Since then, trauma and grief have been part of human existence.
Still, God came down in the form of a man and restored in Jesus what was broken in Adam. As we put our trust in Him, we reverse the separation that followed Adam’s sin. We become whole. We find lasting healing.
