Below are my Aunt Betty’s words during a spiritual direction session.

Our impatience and judgments can be grounded in our rebellion to being human. We want to be a people who can learn to laugh when we make mistakes and then try again. “Lord Jesus, I trust in You.” Ask Jesus to heal whatever is in our generations that opens us to that kind of behavior. “Lord, please heal that part of us where the feelings of being a loser reside. Heal us from putting those kinds of judgments on ourselves. Help us to see ourselves from your eyes and not put ourselves in a position of trying to bring about the very thing we are judging ourselves for.” People try to bring things about unconsciously. They try to prove the judgment is correct rather than break that negative part. People feel justified. That part is psychologically abusive. It can begin to change if we pray that we are aware of what that part is saying deep down inside and then come against it. Pray for its healing. It’s a gift of the Lord when He helps us be aware of what we’re doing.

Pray to be relieved of that inner criticizing of yourself, the negativity and put-downs. Pray for a miracle to be set free. You can only hide the inner Perfectionist for so long. It keeps getting stronger and stronger, and then tries to take over. Every time you pray for the Perfectionist, you bring it to consciousness where it’ll be less strong in your unconscious and in its ability to take over your life. Some of it is generational that our ancestors shoved down. That’s all part of our unconscious. It influences us, even though we’re not aware of where it’s coming from. It becomes stronger the more you repress it.

The more you expose it to truth, and ask the Lord to set it free, then it loses its power to come out and act out. It’s unconscious. We’re not aware we’re doing it, but people recognize it. The people who haven’t repressed their shadow are the ones we feel are sincere, have integrity and are open. People feel safer around them, because they don’t feel they’re hiding something that’ll come out at them. We don’t trust people who are hiding stuff. They don’t always know they’ve repressed their stuff, but we feel it.

When we don’t have access to that which is in our shadow, then it can embarrass us. Therefore, we need to conscious it, and then it’s more under control, and we don’t have to act it out. We can be patterned to push down the imperfect parts of ourselves. If we follow the Holy Spirit, we have to face the positive and negative parts of ourselves.

The greater our trust in God is, the more we want all our being brought into the light. After Adam and Eve sinned, they hid from God ashamed of what they’d become. They’re hiding made it worse. They needed to bring it to the light to get healed. The enemy, knowing God would help us, encourages us to hide.