Shock Responses
Physical shock occurs when your blood supply to the body shifts because of trauma. Spiritual shock occurs when spiritual supply changes because of injury to the soul.
Until you resolve the unresolved, trauma, or injury governs your soul. The supplies needed for health are out of balance or prioritization. The “unresolved issues” reset the priorities. Shock controls your condition.
Shock requires resolution of the injury, so the supplies available to the soul return to normal function. Part of the soul necessary to healthy function is starving while something else is feasting. The first stage of physical shock increases the pulse to force more supply to the vitals and resolution of the controlling trauma helps to restore normal function.
The resolution of trauma triggers the restoration of a healthy distribution of supply.
You must get someone else to help you. That is essential when you experience spiritual shock. Your normal coping mechanisms do not function. Someone else needs to intervene. You need to surrender to someone’s strategy.
Often, this process is one of communication. Spiritual shock alters your perceptions and makes something relatively small into something much bigger than it is. It becomes more extensive in terms of influence upon your soul than it should be. And, your entire soul responds with exaggerated defense.
Personal Experience
When I experienced this kind of spiritual shock, I immediately turn to my apostolic council and counselors. Talking about it in a submitted and surrendered way, humble enough to receive their calming words or sharp verbal slaps in the spiritual face, I resolve what sets off the overreaction of the soul.
Having learned to avoid panic and deal with trauma, calm in the storm, I do not require this help as often as I once did. The process of maturing my response came from surrendering and submitting to others, not from increased exposure to trauma.
I’m more experienced now with what resolves trauma because of receiving help. I am not more experienced in resolving trauma because I experienced more trauma.
The pile of the “unresolved” will grow in my soul if I do not submit to leaders who can diagnosis and disassemble the “unresolved.”
I cannot bring every thought captive unto obedience to Christ without outside help. I can mature in this area through submission to authority and require little help with little things. I will find myself facing more significant trauma, however, and remain in need of outside assistance when enormous trauma tests my systems with spiritual shock.
God-Designed Help
Consider Jesus in Gethsamane sweating blood, experiencing the traumatic anticipation of premature death, being strengthened by an angel sent by His Father.
His disciples were asleep when He asked them to watch with Him. He had no one to help Him.
You do have someone to help you, and that is the design of the kingdom culture. You have no right to demand that God respond to you directly when He is training you to respond to His design for kingdom oneness.
Unresolved trauma will enter other stages of increasingly severe disproportion. Stages two overwhelms you, and you become comatose. You are frozen. You welcome escape, even through death, and see little hope from the dark place into which you drop.
Someone must rescue you.
It is good to have help in place if you sink into stage two spiritual shock. That is why God provides support at stage one, or that is part of what you learn when you
Spiritual pride or lack of trust in outside help leaves many believers helpless when struck by trauma. Often, it is something small that starts a chain reaction.
Tiny Stings That Produce Overreaction
Some years ago, my brother was stung by wasps. His brain reacted. It swelled up. Tiny little stings became life-threatening until he sought help from someone who could reverse the processes of exaggerated protection.
Often, tiny stings to the soul awakened the soul to an exaggerated response. The overreaction signals another internal issue: something unresolved.
“Excuse me, your issues are showing,” says your leader.
If you trust your leader enough to allow his weapons, mighty through God, to expose that embedded, protected issue, you will escape shock. If you do not trust someone else to help you, you will continue your struggle with the growing pile of the “unresolved.”
You will cycle. You will lie with the danger of cycling entirely out of control, governed by trauma. You will cycle through the valley of the shadow of death when stung by tiny stingers. Your system cannot handle even tiny traumas because your system cannot judge the effects of anything while overwhelmed with “the unresolved.”
