When You Want to Give Up: Why Showing Up Feels So Hard (and Why It Matters So Much)

rooted in truth, transformed by grace

Creative Imaginator

There’s a quiet resistance that rises up right before healing.

You feel it when it’s time to go to a coaching session…or sit down with your journal…or finally let yourself feel what you’ve been pushing away.

It sounds like:“I don’t want to go.”“I don’t even know what I’m feeling.”

“I don’t want to open that door.”

I remember that resistance well.

I remember every session I ever went to when I was doing trauma work.

Every single time, I told myself I didn’t want to go.

I didn’t want to dig around in my mind.

I didn’t want to feel the feelings.

I didn’t want to name the thoughts living quietly beneath the surface.

And sometimes I even told myself…I don’t know what I’m thinking or feeling—and I don’t want to know.

But of course…that was exactly why I was there.

The Resistance Before the Breakthrough

I loved my trauma coach. Truly.

She was brilliant—gifted by God with wisdom, compassion, and insight.

And yet…I still didn’t want to go.

But here’s what I discovered:

I never regretted showing up.

I always felt better after the session.

Until I got home.

Because that’s where the real work began.

Feeling What We’ve Buried

Facing emotions we’ve pressed down for years—sometimes decades—is not light work.

It is sacred work.

But it is also courageous work.

We say we want joy…but we forget that joy lives on the other side of allowing ourselves to feel.

All of it.

Grief.

Shame.

Fear.

Loneliness.

Joy doesn’t replace those things.

It is revealed through them.

It becomes brighter, more vivid, more alive…because we’ve stopped numbing the very places where God wants to meet us.

I Get It—Because I’m Still Doing the Work

It’s been years since my last session with that coach.

I can still picture her—her red hair, her kind eyes, her office overlooking our little Colorado town.

And I can still remember the internal battle just to walk through the door.

So if you’re feeling that resistance right now…

I want you to know:

I get it.

Because I’m still doing this work too.

A New Season of Stillness

Last fall, I felt God gently whisper:

“Be still.”

Not as a suggestion…but as an invitation.

An invitation to stop striving.

To stop avoiding.

To stop running from the feelings that still lingered beneath the surface.

So I sat.

I listened.

And this spring, I’ve been practicing something new:

I’ve been asking Jesus to show me where false identities are still hiding.

The ones that whisper:

You’re not enough.

You’ll never measure up.

You’re too much… or not enough… or somehow wrong.

And instead of pushing those thoughts away…

I’ve been inviting them into the light.

The Truth About Feelings

Here’s something Jesus has been teaching me:

Feelings are not dangerous.

They won’t destroy you.

Avoiding them?

That’s what keeps us stuck.

But feeling them—with Him?

That’s where freedom begins.

He reminds me:

He has already felt it all.

Every ounce of pain.

Every weight of sin.

Every moment of rejection, shame, and suffering.

He took it on…so that I wouldn’t have to carry it as my identity.

When Jesus Enters the Memory

Recently, I revisited an old wound story.

The kind that shaped my identity around not enough-ness.

I invited Jesus into that memory—into the room of my imagination.

And what He showed me changed everything.

He revealed that the lie I believed about myself…was actually a lie my father believed about himself.

A generational false identity.

Passed down… not on purpose…but from pain.

And then Jesus did what only He can do:

He showed me my identity in Him.

And He showed me my father’s identity in Him too.

Not broken.

Not inadequate.

Not “not enough.”

But redeemed.

Restored.

Beloved.

Why This Matters

Because what we believe about ourselves…we will live out.

If I believe I’m not enough—I will feel it.

I will act from it.

I will build a life around it.

But when I allow Christ to speak into that place…

Everything shifts.

The Power of Weakness

Today, He led me here:

“So I’m not defeated by my weakness, but delighted! For when I feel my weakness… I am made stronger. For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s power.” — 2 Corinthians 12:10

A portal.

Not a problem to fix.

Not something to avoid.

A doorway…to His power.

Why You Don’t Want to Go to the Session

That resistance you feel?

It’s not random.

It’s the exact place where truth is waiting.

Where Jesus is waiting.

Where the lie is about to be exposed…and replaced.

You don’t want to go because something in you knows:

This is where change happens. And the part of your false identity that you've been repeating fights against this truth. You are not what you say about yourself.

The Invitation

You don’t have to be fearless to show up.

You just have to be willing.

Willing to sit.

Willing to feel.

Willing to let Jesus meet you in the places you’ve been avoiding.

Because those sessions—the ones that feel the hardest?

They are often the very ones where:

• Lies lose their grip

• Identity is restored

• Freedom begins

  
  

A Gentle Reminder

You are not your past.

You are not your wounds.

You are not the lies you learned in someone else’s pain.

You are His.

And He is inviting you—not forcing you—into healing.

Into truth.

Into life.

A Question to Sit With

What if the session you don’t want to go to…is the very place Jesus is waiting to remind you who you are?

Breathe. Be still. And go anyway.

He’ll meet you there.

Rhythms of Grace Life Coaching

Shel Dammann