CHURCH HURT BLOG 05/17/2017

All hurt feelings on a personal level falls in the category of personal rejection. Whenever someone hurts your feelings it’s because you have opened yourself to them and their words or actions affect the way you feel about yourself. You have made yourself transparent; you are emotionally open and vulnerable. In other words they matter to you. People that don’t matter cannot hurt you! When the people you affiliate (church family) with, hurt you, it is interpreted by the brain as rejection.

Historically, rejection served a vital function in our evolutionary past. In our hunter/gatherer past, being ostracized from our tribes was a death sentence, as we were unlikely to survive for long alone. Being part of the tribe was a need (need for security).

We know that rejection really hurts, but it can also inflict damage to our psychological well-being that goes well beyond mere emotional pain. Rejection uses the physical pain pathways in the brain. Studies show that the same areas of the brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. In fact our brains respond so similarly to rejection and physical pain that. Rejection destabilizes our "Need to Belong." We all have a fundamental need to belong to a group. When we get rejected, this need becomes destabilized and the disconnection.

Emotionally, pain peruses pleasure, so a person will often remove themselves from the source of the pain by leaving the church. Rejection creates surges of anger and aggression. It is well known and reported by, the Surgeon General of the U.S. issued a report stating that rejection was a greater risk for adolescent violence than drugs, poverty, or gang membership. This is similar to abandonment syndrome. Rejection is often the cause of; School shootings, violence against women, and fired workers going "postal". And sometimes Pastors or other church members are attacked.

The solution to “Church Hurt” is true forgiveness and reassurance. Forgiveness in humans takes time to mature into “True or Complete Forgiveness”. Reassurance of God’s love and encouraging the victim to love others is "key" in recovering from the injuries the church inflicts.