Your "Survival Story" is a ten second testimony. It is not your struggle. Your struggle (or your battle) is part of your survival story but it isn't the whole story. Your survival story is not just for those who are interested or for other people who you think it may help. Your survival story is an affirmation to yourself. It says, this happened to me as a child and as a result I experienced these emotional side effects which lead me to make bad decisions in my life. Those bad decisions manifested in these and sometimes they continue to effect how I think and the decisions I make. A survival story is not a snapshot at your life at a time that was your lowest point. "Hello, I'm JD and I'm an alcoholic" is a snapshot in my life from my lowest point. It says nothing about how I got there. And, it says nothing about how far God has brought me from that low point.
Our Survival Story speaks truth to those who are listening and to ourselves. "Hello, I am JD. My recovery work has taught me that my core traumas are abandonment and rejection. As a result I grew to believe I was not worth staying for, what I needed did not matter and that I had to take care of myself. That developed into major issues with trusting others and trusting God. I became a people pleaser believing I could make myself necessary to someone by filling all of their needs. But my inability to control others lead to anxiety and fear issues that pushed me toward alcohol as a coping mechanism that I became dependent on and a deep shame for that dependency."
If we continue to speak words of condemnation instead of survival and victory we will continue to carry the shame of the condemned. A survival story is not an excuse for bad behavior. But it gives context to the decisions we made that ask the listener, "Given these circumstances, can you see how I made these bad decisions?" Shame comes from being exposed. A survival story serves covers the shame of the bad in a more complete truth. True, I was an alcoholic. But my survival story is a much more complete truth.
Discovering our Core Traumas is essential in our Survival Story.
Developing Our Survival Story
