Processing Pain

Book excerpt: Processing Pain is a workbook that helps individuals identify past areas of pain and places them on a pathway of forgiveness and healing. This RYH Processing Pain workbook may be your first step in restoring your heart, or one of many steps along the way. This workbook will help you understand your past and the effect it has on your present life, help you become more self-aware, help you become more God-aware, provide a pathway to forgiveness and, ultimately, bring you into a closer relationship with God and others. This workbook is designed for use by a small group that is lead by a trained facilitator. Processing Pain is a 14-week group experience that includes a unique "connecting with God" exercise. The group members will work together on emotional and relational healing issues in the context of a safe community. The suggested method is for the group to cover one lesson per week. During the week before each meeting, group members will read the lesson and complete the answers to the questions at their own individual pace. At the group meetings, there will be opportunities to share answers to many of the questions and, as the group progresses, to bond with the other group members and bring God into their healing process. Processing Pain – what does that mean? The first step in processing your pain is to spend time discovering how your past has affected your present. This is called awareness or discovery. The next step is to actually feel the pain from your past that you have avoided feeling. This is called grieving. While you are feeling your pain, you need to have other people who will validate it and sit with you in it (your fellow group members). Then you can start to make meaning out of your painful experiences and learn from them. Finally, you will be able to forgive those who have hurt you. Processing your pain is part of the maturity process. About The Ministry: Restoring Your Heart (RYH) was developed for anyone who has ever experienced pain, rejection, or disappointment. The Restoring Your Heart ministry is delivered through safe, gender-specific, small groups facilitated by trained leaders. Individuals, congregations, and communities thrive when healing is made available. Learn more and register for groups at restoringyourheart.com. What people are saying about Restoring Your Heart: "I'm a different husband and father because of my Restoring Your Heart group." "RYH helped me find freedom from a lie that I believed about myself for years."