reconnecting with JOY
My daughter is the most joyful person I have ever met. You can usually find her smiling, dancing, connecting with others, moving her body, exploring the world around her, singing, praying, and trying something new.
These daily actions are not just cute little things children do but are backed by research. They are the actions that help us access JOY (you can find a link below to explore this more).
But for complex trauma survivors, it doesn’t matter how much we sing, pray, explore the world around us, move our bodies, or try connecting with others; when we become estranged from ourselves, we become estranged from joy.
Our inner teen or angry child, or what I call our “protector,” will often even disconnect from joy for survival because joy, although wonderful, doesn’t always seem to keep us safe.
If I am joyful, will that take away this major threat? Will it take away this pain? Will it take away this real worry?
And chances are your protector has learned that joy doesn’t take away the hard, but perhaps living defensively, hyper-vigilantly, being overly busy, people-pleasing, placating, bypassing, intellectualizing everything, etc., does take away the hard (at least temporarily).
Which disconnects us from joy all the more.
Also, joy is often used interchangeably with happiness. When we see joy as synonymous with happiness, we may think we are experiencing “joy” when we temporarily get our needs met through our savvy and learned defense mechanisms.
For example, when we rely on people-pleasing to help us survive, we can actually feel happiness when the person we are pleasing offers us validation or praise. This behavior gets reinforced as helpful for our survival and even reinforces that it is a means for continued happiness.
But this fleeting happiness isn’t joy.
Joy is very different from happiness and much more powerful, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit, more embedded within us than we realize.
Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is God’s love for us written on our hearts. It is a part of our inner light that can never be extinguished and communicates to us that we always have a reason to hope and rejoice!
No matter how wounded we are, how many self-protections we have developed, or how traumatized and joyless our inner child may seem, JOY abounds simply because grace abounds. It is that powerful.
And as we allow the Holy Spirit to come into our bodies, minds, spirits, and the dark corners of our hearts, make space for this child within us, and learn how to reconnect with ourselves, JOY RIPENS. We actually start looking more like my daughter- connected, present, free, and alive. Our inner child is awakened and embodied.
To experience this, we may need to create more internal safety first. We need to show our protective inner child that we can let go of some defense mechanisms that disconnect us from joy and learn healthier ways of navigating the world and relationships.
This may look like practicing self-soothing and regulation practices. Adopting new boundaries and rules for ourselves and then practicing them. It may look like dialoguing with our inner protector or exploring this part in therapy or with a trusted other to make space for their worries, fears, and maybe even protests. It may even look like more prayer and meditation with this specific part of ourselves.
We also need to connect with our wounded inner child. We have to discover what this part of ourselves needs. Is it someone to hear them? Understand them? Is it to not be judged? Is it compassion? Is it a safe relationship? Is it forgiveness? Attunement? As you meet these needs, all the parts of your inner child and body will feel safer, making more space to see and experience the joy within you.
Therefore, joy becomes one of our greatest allies as we grow in internal safety and deep connection with ourselves. It might not take away the hard, but it helps us to carry it. It enlivens our inner child and fills our minds, hearts, spirits, and bodies with hope and strength. It becomes the resting place that gives us the courage to dare to hope and rejoice!
To read more about accessing joy through current scientific research, check out this article here.
If you are looking for more of a theological understanding of joy and how to experience it more, check out this article here.
As we look to experiencing more joy in our lives, let us keep praying and seeking God’s grace. Let us also keep exploring and discovering new ways to see and make space for what is already within us.
God, I am having a hard time accessing joy. Help me tend to my innermost needs to see that joy already within me. Help me to get connected to that child within so I, too, can experience all that you long for me. May the grace and gift of joy abound in me. Amen.