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Noah was six years old when he came down with a severe case of influenza. His fever spiked at 105 degrees. During his delirium, he saw a colorful clown on the wall of his bedroom that danced and laughed at him. He also had a nightmare that a witch was living under his bed.

In the bad dream, Noah saw himself sleeping with his fingers interlaced behind his head, leaving his armpits exposed. While he was sleeping in this vulnerable position in his nightmare, the witch reached out from under his bed and dragged the long, curved fingernail of her index finger over his exposed armpit. For some reason, the frightened little boy never told his parents about the bad dream. It sank like a waterlogged leaf in a river to the bottom of his consciousness.

For thirty years after that childhood nightmare, however, Noah never felt comfortable sleeping with his armpits exposed. Even as an adult, he pictured the witch reaching out from under his bed and scratching him with that terrible fingernail. His head knew that there was no witch, but something in a younger stratum deep in his memory warned him of danger.

What can be said about this true story? What happens to us in childhood is often magnified ten times more than in adulthood. Bad dreams, trauma, and abuse are branded onto our developing frontal lobes. Parental absence, neglect, rage, and anxiety are chiseled into the child’s vulnerable psyche. This recording of vivid events when young is further magnified if the child possesses a sensitive temperament or is an only child.

Sarah grew up in a home where her mother was depressed and anxious. She had no emotional supplies for her two children. So, whenever her two girls needed affection, a listening ear, or even someone to fairly arbitrate disputes between them, their mother would find the quickest resolution to things so her limited resources would not be overwhelmed.

If her daughters wanted something from her, she would tell them they were too needy and should “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”—whatever that meant. When the girls shared emotions with their mother—sadness, fear, loneliness—she reacted by saying things like, “Don’t be a baby!” or “You’re so selfish.” If the two sisters fought and needed a referee, the mother would always side with the younger child and tell the older one to stop bothering her little, defenseless sister. In mom’s mind, the older girl, Sarah, was the problem child while her younger sister was an angel.

Sarah, like Noah, experienced something as a younger child that altered her schema of the world. Unlike Noah, it was not a dream–a manifestation from her unconscious world–but a series of ongoing interactions with her mother in the real world.

Instead of needing, feeling, and expecting a big person to protect her from the injustices of life, Sarah developed compensatory coping skills to deal with the world. One of these skills entailed her intellect eclipsing her emotions and needs. She translated everything into a problem to be solved cognitively. She distanced from her heart and lived in her head. Intellectualization became the filter through which she navigated reality.

When Sarah grew into an adult, she took with her the interpretations/beliefs, and coping skills from childhood. They were like so much baggage she had packed for her trip through life. She transferred her mother’s behaviors and attitudes to everyone around her and believed that that they saw her the same way her mother did. Accordingly, she applied the same coping skills to her adult world that she had learned in her childhood.

Some of her core beliefs—her mother had taught her some directly while some she had perceived and constructed with her childish mind–were that all people (not just her mother) were not interested in meeting her needs, that her emotions were selfish, that she could not trust anyone to defend her heart, and that others were not truly interested in her but only in how she could take care of them.

Her coping skills (intellectualization was already mentioned above) that naturally flowed out of her childhood beliefs were self-sufficiency, letting others know her head but not her heart, and an intense reactive defensiveness whenever she sensed negative feedback from others. She believed that if she did not defend herself, no one would.

Not too surprisingly, Sarah became an electrical engineer. She excelled at her job because she was already by nature (nurture) a fixer of things and adept at thinking about abstract entities. She also excelled at keeping distracting things at bay like relationships, emotions, and needs. She was a quick thinker and an amazing problem solver. She advanced in her career at record pace.

Her intellect was giantesque, but her heart was stuck at the girlish age of six, the point she had first learned to snuff herself out so she would not tax the meager resources of others around her.

The main point in this blogpost is to: 1) challenge you to consider if you have any beliefs about yourself and the world around you that might impact your relationships today, and 2) to take an internal inventory to see if these beliefs have led to the development of coping skills that are more of a liability than an asset in your adult life.

What are a few examples of interpretations/beliefs from childhood? Many of these beliefs may have been accurately perceived, but others were created in the child’s mind based on immature perceptive abilities or young reasoning.

• I am behind everyone else
• In fact, I am an alien in this world—I don’t fit in anywhere. I have never fit in, and I never will
• I’m not physically beautiful/handsome
• I’m not enough, somehow
• I am a bad person because I always trigger anger and hurt in my parent
• Eventually, everyone will leave me
• My parents never disciplined me so I can do whatever I please and take whatever I want
• I must be good to be loved
• No one truly loves me. Even if they do, their love is conditional
• I have to give people something besides me because by myself I am not enough to be valued
• No one will ever be strong enough to contain my anger and overwhelming sadness
• Whenever I make a mistake and feel guilt, I mushroom it into shame that tells me I am a mistake
• No one ever really sees me
• Don’t let anyone see you because you’re worthless
• My desire to do self-harm means that I am dangerous or deranged (and must hide myself deeper in the dungeon)
• Since my emotional needs will never be recognized, turn to physical pleasures instead
• I experience that I am a nobody. Therefore, everyone else is a nobody, too
• Develop OCD that manifests in obsessive beliefs such as you are not saved but going to hell
• Believe that God sees you the same way an unhealthy parent did or how you see yourself
• When I am bad or have sinned yet again, I must self-atone for God to forgive me

What are some coping skills learned in childhood that often accompany these beliefs? Most of these are unhealthy.

• Numb emotions by escaping to movies, YouTube, reading, weed, food, Adderall, pornography, alcohol
• Lose more weight or lift more weights so I will feel like I am as good as others. Fix the outside but never deal with the inside.
• Be the best at something to the point of perfectionism whether it be academics, sports, or work so I will be loved at least for what I do since I will not be loved for who I am
• Put on armor to hide the young self that has emotions, needs, and a deep desire to depend on someone. Do just the opposite of what I need. Never cry; be self-sufficient; be prickly and uninviting; use people as they use you instead of loving them
• Leave people before they leave you
• Emotionally take care of others so that you don’t hurt them and so that they might take care of you in return
• Don’t set any boundaries because they are selfish and mean
• Ignore guilt because its voice always sounds the same as shame
• I must change something about my physical appearance if I feel that something is wrong inside of me
• Men are users so never let any man get too close. Use them.
• Women are controlling and critical, so always have a wall up to defend yourself. Control them
• Practice confirmation bias to only see what you already believe about God, yourself and others. If you look hard enough, you will find evidence that confirms your childhood beliefs
• Every time someone noticed me when I was a child, they criticized me, shamed me, or bullied me. Therefore, lock that weak self away and beat up anybody who so much as looks at you wrong
• Get rid of your badness by seeing it in your spouse, your neighbor, your child, or any person who votes differently than you
• Ultimately believe that I and other humans are worthless beings so human life is disposable and animals have equal or higher protection than humans
• Practice defense mechanisms such as denial, suppression, regression, displacement, and rationalization
• When I sin, focus on my badness as a form of penance (self-flagellate) so that God will eventually let me approach him again. If I feel bad enough and marinate in shame long enough, I will partly atone for my sin.
• Similarly, do not meditate on God’s love and grace when I sin, but meditate on my guilt and shame. Look at me instead of at him.

Once again, the two application points today are, first, to sit down and identify beliefs forged in childhood that are inaccurate and even lies planted in your mind by the enemy that serve to separate you from God and others as an adult. The second point is to discern how these young beliefs have been translated into unhealthy coping skills today that need to be dismantled so they do not interfere with intimacy.

Yes, identify and dismantle. I see these two tasks as part of the message in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 where we are called to destroy strongholds, arguments, and every proud obstacle that interfere with our knowledge (experience) of God. We must identify and remove any belief, lie, or accusation that causes us to see God in a distorted fashion or that prompts us to hide from him.

We must dismantle old coping skills learned in childhood because they will not go away on their own. Believing in Christ does not always lead to their automatic undoing. Part of the sanctification journey is to intentionally take captive for Christ any practices or defenses within us that keep us from knowing, trusting, and obeying him.

Also, there may be some truth in the statement that you won’t be able to give up an unhealthy acquired coping skill until you find something to take its place. Jesus is the one who will perfectly take the place of all your unhealthy childhood beliefs and defenses.

He is the one who will rescue you from false beliefs and isolating defenses with his truth. He is the one who tells you that you are loved, that he pursues you, that he will make you good (righteous), that in him there is no more condemnation, that he is your defender against Satan and also intercedes for you before God the Father, and that you do not have to somehow reinvent yourself to be lovable or good enough because he is the one who makes you a new creation.

In Mark 10, it says, And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

Could it be that one of the reasons Jesus insisted that the children come to him was because he wanted to speak truth to them–even as young children (or especially as young children)–so that he might challenge wrong beliefs that were already corrupting their young minds and destroy lies that inhibited them from loving the Father?

Maybe Jesus even told them a story they could grasp with their youthful intellects about not hiding from God; or encouraged them that just as he invited the children to come to him so they should never forget to run to the welcoming Father who would never condemn them and turn them away but love them unconditionally.

In summary, the interpretations and beliefs you lug out of childhood and into adult relationships may be faulty, distorted, or outright lies, so examine them and reject the false arguments. If any voices inside your mind tell you to erect defenses that lead you to turn your back on God, hide from others, and divorce your own heart, don’t believe them. Not for a second. The voice of God always says, “Come to me.”

Any voice that tells you otherwise—even if it’s your own heart—is not to be trusted.

You can release every false belief and every deeply ingrained coping skill because his love transcends them all. The only thing that will matter is that he has you in the palm of his hand—forever. Seek him first and he will take care of the rest (Matthew 6:33).

Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live . . . Isaiah 55:1ff