The Battle between Our Ears!

When I first started blogging, my daughter gave me a book called “Ditch the Act.” The premise of it is be honest with your readers. Don’t try to make yourself look like some all wise, all knowing guru.

Instead, relate to them.

So, I’m going to have to lean on that book now. What I’m about to talk about here is painful. Do I want to talk about it? Not only no, but hell no! It’s a battle I fight almost everyday. Sadly, I’m not alone in fighting it. Almost everyone suffers from it to a degree.

And when you talk about it, you can make yourself sound a little crazy. That’s okay. It’s part of ditching the act. If I have to sound a little crazy to get the point across, then so be it.

But first, let me quote one of my favorite scriptures. The Apostle Paul wrote:

Ephesian 6:10-17

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

All fine and dandy, but a lot of people make the mistake of thinking this is an external attack. It isn’t. What I’m about to tell you about is something a lot of people don’t realize.

The enemy is standing in your boots. You’re at war against something that whispers in your ear and tells you this and that. And the sad part is, the devil doesn’t need any help to make it happen.

I’m reminded of an old Pogo cartoon where he says, “We have met the enemy, and he’s us.” We’ll do it all ourselves. Why. Well life has beat us up. Plans have failed. We’ve seen happiness evaporate like a morning fog. We’ve had our security yanked away.

And we’ve become a lot gun shy.

If that isn’t bad enough, people have spoken things into our lives. I know there’s an old adage that goes “Sticks and stones may break my bones. But words will never hurt me.”

I think we all know that’s nonsense. Words are more powerful than all the armies that have ever marched. They can build up or tear down. For me, those were words I heard during my entire childhood. Many of you have heard those words, too.

And what’s happened to us and the words can toss us into something called Cognitive Distortions.

This is a twenty-cent definition of what it is. “A cognitive distortion is a thought that causes a person to perceive reality inaccurately due to being exaggerated or irrational. Cognitive distortions are involved in the onset or perpetuation of psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety.“^]

Here’s an example.

You’re setting in a meeting. You interject something, And it’s like everyone at the table is deaf. You could have said the most profound thing ever and yet you feel it was ignored. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. But then that starts a chain of thought that can easily lead to you being depressed. It might even make you anxious about your job. You might find yourself thinking, I’m wasting my time here. Or I’m being set up to be let go.

That’s a pedestrian example, but it’s one I experience often. It’s not that they dismissed me. For all I know, they’re agreeing with me. I work remote and I don’t always see people nodding or see their body language. But I interpret the silence as dismissal. But then that starts a chain of thought that can easily lead to being depressed. It might even make me anxious about my job. I might find yourself thinking, I’m wasting my time here. Or, I’m being set up to be let go.

See, I end up drawing conclusions from the sparsest of evidence. I end up making a mountain of of a molehill. And if there were no molehill, I’ll invent it.

I recently went through a rather severe bout of this. Sadly, it was kind of self-inflicted. If you’re a writer, you tend to tap into your own emotions and experiences to create a character. In the course of writing Broken People, I found me falling into just such a pit.

I became convinced that no matter what I did, it just wasn’t good enough.

It got so bad that I went to the VA for counseling. I didn’t know what was going on.

But I learned some very interesting things about me.

First, this is something I’ve fought with all my life. Looking back, I can see a pattern. And it was inflicted on me by people who suffered from it themselves. It was a learned behavior.

The little chart below tends to show the cycle someone like me might run themselves through. Try to find yourself in it. If you’re not, you’re blessed indeed.

So, knowing all that, what can I do about?

Let’s go back to What Paul wrote.

Versus 11: Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

Paul is trying to tell us that you’re in a battlefield everyday and every second. And by knowing this, we’re employing a basic tactic called situational awareness. You know it could happen and you’re ready to meet it.  

Step 1: Know your triggers.

Verse 12: For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Just like an alcoholic has to learn what can trigger their behavior, I’ve had to learn the same. And yours might be different from mine. Here’s some of the places my triggers live.

• Meetings – left up to me, I’d avoid them. I think they’re a waste of time. Since there’s no way out of them, it can be a trigger.
• Unexpected emails.
• An off hand comment.
• I forgot something important.
• I get a letter from some government agency
• Something didn’t work out.

What I start looking for is a two handed punch. One, I get a physiological feeling, a nervousness if you will. Two: Panic and it doesn’t even have to be that much of a panic. Something like, what do I do now. Trouble is, this is a little like a snowball rolling down hill. If I let it go, I’ll have a full-fledged avalanche on my hand.

It’s important to recognize the triggers and what they’re doing to you. If you don’t see it and let it continue to do its damage, you might find yourself completely incapacitated.

Paul is also reminding me that it’s not the people around me who are the problem. It’s how I’m allowing things to whisper to me.

When I see those triggers, this is what I do.

Step 2: Walk away.

Verse 13: Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Literally. Walking away might not sound like much of tactic to fight this thing but it’s really very simple. You’re not going to give it an inch. You’re going to take a walk around the neighborhood. Breath deep. Go downstairs and play with the dog or talk with your spouse.

And since we’re attacking this thing from a Christian Perspective, Pray about it. You know what this is. Don’t give in to it.

Step 3: Let it go.

Verses 14 and 15: ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹

Now, we’re going to go back to Paul. There’s a couple of key things here. One is the belt of truth. You know what’s going on and you’re not going to let it rule you. The other thing that jumps out at me is the gospel of peace. That’s what you want to get back to. Anger, depression, and anxiety aren’t of God. Peace is.

Step 4: Know it will be back.

 Verse 16 and 17: ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Monsters always come back. But with God’s help, you beat them before and will again.

But there’s something very important that I’ve found in these last two versus. It’s Who I belong to. God loves me (don’t ask me why). As long as I remember he’s in my corner, there’s nothing that can hurt me.

See one of the big problems with Cognitive Distortions is that it throws you into depression and anxiety. It does this by telling you that you aren’t good enough. That you don’t matter. And maybe, even, the world would be better off without you.

It’s whispering a lie to you.

As long as you keep the truth that you’re made in the image of God. That you’re an heir to creation because of Jesus. Then the whisper means nothing.

With that in front of you, let it whisper. You know better.

And at the end of it all, that whisper will be tossed into a lake of fire.

And we win!