God gave us survival mode for a reason. It is the place we need to be when everything is chaos, but we don't want to live there forever. Ideally, we get to a place of safety so our body can relax and function the way it is meant to. Triggers are the body's way of alerting us to something that hurt or scared us before, but we don't want to be triggered forever. The trick is to learn to cope, to give your body and mind what it needs to feel safe.

People say forgive and forget. That isn't possible. It's so much better to take the situations we've been through, forgive those who have hurt us, and learn to avoid similar situations in the future. Forgiving is not impossible. In fact, it's a key component of healing.

No one likes a sour attitude. It can poison the people around you. One of the best things you can do to make sure bitterness doesn't creep in is to pray for the people who persecuted you. After all, you becoming bitter doesn't help anything. In fact, it makes the situation worse.

You weren't meant to go through the hurt alone. Our friends can get us through the worst. They can encourage and support us and pray for us. Their faith can bring prayers to the Father that we aren't strong enough to pray. If you don't have godly Christian friends, start praying God brings them into your life.

It's normal and totally OK to grieve what you lost or the illusion of what you had. But you can't stay there. Once you've grieved, you have to look forward and appreciate what's ahead.

You need to identify what is broken before you begin to put it back together. You need to identify the hurt so you can combat it and work to eliminate it.

There's a tendency to focus on what they did to hurt us. Trust me, we'll get to that. But Jesus told us to first take the plank out of our own eye before worrying about the speck in the other person's eye. Let's start by dealing with our shame and the things we could have done better. Once we embrace a posture of repentance then we'll be ready to face the hurt they inflicted without it poisoning us.

My story isn't all that interesting, but it does reveal patterns. If you want to get past the past, you have to learn from the past. That's the only way to make sure you do something different next time. Break the patterns. Make different choices so you have a different outcome.