Understanding Trauma Through a Lens of Compassion ~ Denisha, Robin & Deborah Ep.159

In our last episode, we celebrated five years of conversations around healing, faith, and what it means to reclaim your story, and today we’re beginning to step into more conversations that really matter.

This episode is all about understanding trauma through a lens of compassion, because when we begin to see what’s really going on beneath the surface, it changes the way we see ourselves, others, and even God.

Before we dive in, I want to thank our sponsor for today’s episode, Tim and Andrea Looney from The Looney Advantage at Realty Executives. They’ve been serving families across the Tucson area for over 24 years, helping people buy and sell homes with care and integrity. Tucson friends, you can find them by searching The Looney Advantage on Facebook.

Here are two FREE Ebooks for you!
1. Shame Off You: 10 steps to shattering shame in your life, HERE.
2. ABC's: CLICK HERE for a FREE E-book to help you combat lies and replace them with God's truth.  For more encouragement, check out some of our offerings at www.reclaimedstory.com

Did you know we have a jewelry line that speaks to your identity in Jesus? CLICK HERE to shop. Every purchase helps support our mission to provide healing and hope to women worldwide.

Would you partner with us to spread the message of hope and healing? You can DONATE HERE.  Living the Reclaimed Life is a Reclaimed Story, Inc. podcast, An Arizona non-profit corporation.

If you would like to connect with a safe group of women doing real-life together, join our private Facebook page, “Living the Reclaimed Life” or on  Facebook  or Instagram 

Transcript

Transcript is auto-generated.

One of the things that Robin you just expanded on is one of the reasons that it's so important for churches to understand trauma informed care and understand when people are presenting with trauma, to create that safe, spiritual environment for people. Welcome back to the living the Reclaim life podcast. In our last episode, we celebrated five years of conversations around healing, faith and what it means to reclaim your story, and today, we're beginning to step into more conversations that really matter. This episode is all about understanding trauma through the lens of compassion, because when we begin to see what's really going on beneath the surface, it changes the way we see ourselves, others and even God, before we dive in, I want to thank our sponsor for today's episode, Tim and Andrea Looney from the looney advantage at Realty executives. They've been serving families across the Tucson area for over 24 years, helping people buy and sell homes with care and integrity. Tucson friends. You can find them by searching the looney advantage on Facebook. All right, let's jump in to today's conversation. You guys. Welcome back to living the reclaimed life. In our last episode, I got to introduce you to Deborah and Robin, which I was so excited about. And today we want to carry on the conversation about hope and healing and compassion. Before we get started. You guys, we just got the schedule, so you're the first to know about this. We have an event coming up on June 27 for our Tucson, Arizona ladies. It is going to be a women's event, live in person here in Tucson, Arizona, and it's called rescued and restored. And the word reclaimed, that's what it means. It means to rescue from an undesirable state and restore to the previous natural state. So that's like the narrative from Genesis to Revelation. Right? Is rescuing God, rescuing and restoring our stories, and sometimes life can have a way of leaving us with pieces of our story that we never expected, but yet he is the one who rescues and restores. He meets us the hardest places of our story, and he transforms our stories into something beautiful and full of purpose. On June 27 we are going to have a powerful, shared experience and meaningful time together, and we're going to be reminded that those broken places are never the end of our story. So we hope you'll join us in the show notes and also on our social media, Facebook and Instagram, you can see registration, and you can go ahead and register and join us on June 27 and as we get this episode kick started, we started a new tradition, and that was when the three of us are together, we are going to share a reclaimed moment. So who wants to go first in sharing some way that God reclaim something in your life or someone else's in the last let's say month.

Speaker 2 2:46

Well this week, I'll go first. This week, I had the incredible privilege of leading worship alongside of my daughter, and she has been facing so much over the past few months, but I got to watch her bodily declare the victory of God and the power of his name this weekend, and it was just so powerful and so great. She just proclaimed the name of Jesus to a couple 100 people, and it was just a beautiful reminder of how healing and faith can shine through the very hardest of seasons. And it was just such an honor to be alongside of her. So that was my reclaimed moment for this week. I love

Speaker 1 3:25

that this last like week and a half has been crazy in my life, to be honest. So there has been lots of opportunity. God has had a very wide landing strip in the last like week and a half in my life. And one of those moments that I think of is so my mom passed away when she was 59 during heart surgery. And my sister is almost a decade older than our mom, and she just went through heart surgery this past week, and she did amazing. And I just think every time she goes in for some sort of a procedure, both of us clinch a little bit. We're like, scared, you know? We kind of freeze up and think, oh no, oh no, because of that, right? It's trauma. It's our bodies telling us this is going to happen, because this happened in the past, but we have to remind ourselves this is new, and God reclaims and praise God. My sister is, like, nine years older than when we lost our mom and she went through the surgery, amazing. So that was the moment that I saw God just reclaim something and renew something and turn it for good, because she's doing great. So that's good.

Speaker 3 4:23

Oh, I love that, you know. And as you were sharing, my husband has been going through a lot of heart issues that came out of the blue, and so, and he's young, he's 60, and so, like your mom, but we're trying to kind of figure that out. And he was dealing with prostate cancer, which is, you know, we kind of were, like, on that journey, and we're like, Well, wait a minute, what is this journey? And I think that, I guess the moment I would say is that I'm not sure I I'm not sure where or how God is reclaiming this from our plans and our thought process of what we thought this season would look like. But I guess to me, a reclaiming moment is that I still have the hope and faith that God will reclaim it, right, that just because I can't see it yet doesn't mean it's not going to be reclaimed. And just because I can't declare what we have learned from it, because we're so much in the midst. But I know that God has us. I don't feel that as a planner. I feel unpeaceful because I'd like to know what the future looks like, right? I'd like to, you know, just tell me what, tell me what road, so I can be on it. And I know that God sometimes in that reclaiming is like, I just need you to wait, just to be here, to know that you're in my arms and there's, you know that that's a reclaiming moment, without the whole moment being reclaimed yet, if that makes sense, and

Unknown 5:25

I think so many people can identify with that,

Speaker 1 5:28

we often sit and not, not yet our breakthrough. Thank you for sharing that

Speaker 3 5:32

like it's nice to be on the other end, but I, but I know that there's still the journey of the thing, and sometimes that can be reclaiming of itself, to know that you're in the journey and he's there, but I tend to be one that, let's just get to the other side And God's like, Yeah, I know, but you're not there yet.

Speaker 1 5:48

Could we just get to the other side a little faster? Or a, like, five year Excel sheet of like, what is coming and what to expect, right? Talked about in the last episode too. I think that's called control. I think I don't know for me, maybe, yes, yes.

Speaker 3 6:01

You know, I'm like, I could do so much more for you. God, if you would just lay it all out. And God's like, Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe you just need to sit in and in this moment and just watch me work, or wait for me, knowing that I will work

Speaker 1 6:15

that matters so much, I bet to a lot of people listening as well. You know, one thing that we talked about in the last last episode was the compassion that comes with understanding trauma informed care, and the differences between fixing things and fixing things, which Deborah labeled control, yes, and being able to walk with people. So we often hear that word trauma, but I think a lot of us aren't really sure what trauma means. So when people hear the word trauma, they often think of like extreme situations, right? Like a hurricane came and took out our city, or they think of really intense situations. But I wanted to ask you guys, how do you find how do you define trauma in a way that helps people understand it?

Speaker 3 6:58

When I think of trauma, I think trauma is, I don't know if this is any kind of a definition you would find on, you know, Google or wherever, but I think trauma is often in the eyes of the beholder. Right? What is traumatic for me? What overwhelms my sense of being able to cope or be present or move forward, can feel traumatic. And I think that it's kind of like defining suffering, right? Like, you know, we think about the things we suffer and you think of like, oh my gosh, is it like, big suffering or small suffering, but? But many times, it's less about that and how I'm perceiving that, right? How am I being affected? How's my body being affected? How are my relationships being affected? And I think that for me, if somebody feels like they it's hard to stay out of judgment. If somebody's sharing about, oh, this was traumatic. And in my head, I might be thinking, Oh, you don't even know what traumatic is. You know what I'm like, but that's not for me to say, because for that person, if that was a traumatic event and and they're suffering because of it, then I want to be able to be present in that like somebody else who might say, Oh, that was nothing, but, you know, for them, it was something, right? So I don't know if that's, I don't know that's, I wouldn't take that definition and write it down anywhere, but that's what helps me to think about it. When I think about

Speaker 2 8:02

trauma, I love that answer, Robin, it's, it's so true. Yeah. Well, whenever I had trauma, kind of explained to me the first time, they kind of used what, what goes on in the medical field, right, as trauma. And trauma is a very interesting word in the medical field because it is used to describe something that's happened to somebody, right? You go into the emergency room that the person has a broken arm, and they're going to say trauma to the left arm or to the right arm, and so you will hear them interchange that with injury and but when we describe emotional trauma or trauma that's happening inside of our brain, it's not something that's able to be really measured, like I had it described To me in this way, a person can be running ball, and two people can be running, you know, down the same flight of stairs and fall down that that that flight of stairs, sustain exactly the same injuries. Both of them break their arm or whatever. But the amount of trauma that one of them sustained could be different than the other one based on what was happening. Maybe the one person just slipped and fell. The other person was running from somebody trying to get away from them or something. And so that trauma is not able to be measured, and that it can vary. And it varies, like Robin said, with the perception of the situation. It can vary in so that one person that was running from someone could have sustained a lot more trauma in their, you know, view, or whatever they are, they sustained more trauma in their perception of the event. And so, yeah, that's, that's kind of how I would define it.

Speaker 1 9:31

It's been interesting, too, that two people can experience the exact same thing and come away with a completely different response to it, or experience of it. I've heard that in her soldiers going to war. I've heard that in siblings living in the same home environment that experience things very differently. I know one of the ways that I heard trauma defined one time, and I loved this, it was just when things are too much, too fast, things are too in our system just sort of gets overloaded. And like you said, Deborah, that's perfectly the person, if they're running from something, it was already too much. And the person who fell that may not have been fun, but they weren't running from something coupling on top of modeling. So too much, too fast, is how I've heard. What do you guys think you know? You see? We see people respond in different ways, as we just talked about, but we also see people respond to regular life situations in ways that seem confusing to others. How does that relate back to trauma?

Speaker 3 10:25

Well, for I'll take this one to start, I would say a lot of it. You know, our brains operate on prediction. So sometimes our brain, based on our past, will predict threat or safety when there may or may not be by outside observers, threat or safety. So the brain, if, for example, Angel, often she would hear a loud noise. And because of the way my adopted daughter, Angel grew up and grew up a lot in foster care, she will hear a noise and say, Oh, that sounds like a gunshot or that. And her brain is predicting threat because of whatever her past experience. And I'll be like, Oh, someone must have that must have been a car backfiring, you know, like, I'm not predicting the same level of threat because my brain doesn't already have that, you know, the neural pathway of loud noises can bring danger. And so I think sometimes it's about how our brains predict from our past. You know, can answer that question for us. You know, I mean, or not, it makes the prediction for us.

Speaker 2 11:12

I think we have to understand as well that a person who is a system that is a regulated system, when we're responding to the normal everyday life. In a regulated system, we're able to use parts of our brain that someone who is in their fight or flight and freeze or fawn are not able to respond in those those same ways. And so I think that a regulated person will always a person who is dysregulated will always respond in a way that's an annoyance to a person who is regulated, because the person who is regulated is always going to be trying, trying to keep from getting drawn into this regulation. And so in that, and it's the, it's the stampede effect, right? Whenever, you know, an ox or something out there, here's the twig, and the twig break, and all of a sudden it's brightened, and it takes off running. Well, all the others didn't hear that, but they're just gonna run because that one is dysregulated, they're gonna run now. And so when in our system, whenever someone is dysregulated, we're able to reason all this. And it's like, what is wrong with you? Why are you acting like this? Right? And our first response is always to be, get this person away from me. Get this get you know. So we'll say things like, go to your bedroom or go, you know, go away because you want to create space so that you're not pulled into dysregulation. So sometimes it's confusing for us when we're regulated, even if we don't know a lot about trauma, like, why are they so frustrating? Why are they so annoying? Those are always going to be our responses towards dysregulation, because they're pulling us, a regulated person into this regulation, and we want to keep from going there. So that's, that's kind of why, in my mind, that's why there's that response that's confusing in some ways for other people.

Speaker 3 12:51

And we get into a judgment sometimes too. Yeah, they're crazy. There's no need for that. They're just freaking out for no reason. And they're like, No, there's, there's a reason. And if we can help them find that reason, right? It changes too.

Speaker 1 13:02

Yeah, so beautiful. That goes back to it. Instead of asking, what's wrong with you, what happened to you? Yeah, that's I love this is such. I love these conversations you guys around this. I love talking about trauma. Well. It helps us to understand other people. It gives us compassion towards what people are going through, and grace for ourselves. Can we just say that when we're like, Why did I do that in public? Next thing you know, you're like, oh, wait, okay, what happened to me? Oh, I was dysregulated in that moment. So what about faith and trauma? How have you guys seen trauma impact people's relationship with God?

Speaker 2 13:37

I think the trauma can impact people's relationship from God, and making them feel very distant from God, and maybe like he's angry or disappointed, because those are some of the automatic things that happen inside of us too. We feel shameful, we feel rejected, we feel all of these things. We become hyper vigilant. Maybe we feel like God is an angry person after us, and because, because of the trauma that we've incurred. And those are the same feelings that we had, and they may struggle to trust Him because of the trust issues that they have. They may, they may feel like maybe he is far off and that they're alone, because that's another part of trauma, is you feel very isolated, or isolation is a byproduct of trauma. We want to isolate, and so there's just, there's a wide variety of ways that people can respond, that I've seen them respond in the faith community towards God, but all of those, again, it goes back to some kind of trauma. Something happened to this person, and that's when curiosity rises.

Speaker 3 14:33

I think it interrupts for a lot of people. Some people can draw more towards God during trauma, but many times people will like you said, they will draw away. But I think the other thing is that it also affects how people around them are responding to them, as they respond. I remember that my I had a younger brother who died when he was 14, and one of our neighbors who was a believer, and we were believers, but my mom, as you can imagine, was still very much struggling with all of that, but still early in that process. And the neighbor said to her, you know, if you because my mom was saying how angry she was at God, and the neighbor in good faith, but not understand what to say. Said, Well, if you don't stop being angry at God, maybe you won't see your son again in heaven, you know, because she's trying to respond in a way that you know, she's trying to make sense of something doesn't make sense, but not in a way that was helpful. If you know, as we can imagine, right? Or people who would say, you know, like, well, you have two other kids you need to and that might so I think sometimes the way we respond to trauma and our relationship with God can also be affected how other people around us speak into that, both for the good and for the bad, you know. And so there's so many, so many nuances to all of that. Right is how we're going through, how the faith community is responding, or how our faith community responds. I think that's why it's important for us to teach people how to respond better, to be powerful presence in there, to draw someone closer to God, not to put another stumbling block or another wall. You know, even if our intentions were great, those were things my mom had to work through, right, right? Because those I don't believe, were from the heart of God, not because this person didn't intent, you know, like it wasn't an evil intent, was still that are the outcome was still difficult.

Unknown 16:05

Oh, that's so true. That is so true.

Unknown 16:07

Just its own podcast, right?

Speaker 1 16:09

It could be its own podcast. We should, we should? I think, yes, we should do that. That would be awesome, Robin, you bring up such a fantastic point there, because how people respond to us often, either we can do a couple of things right. We can get angry with them. We can think that that represents the church as a capital C, church as a whole, which must represent what God thinks. Or we can even turn on ourselves and feel less than because of words that were said to us or experiences that we have had that become diminished. All three of us are pastors. I think that's something interesting, that God's pulled all three of us together so we love the Church. We love the local church, the capital C church worldwide. One of the things that Robin, you just expanded on is one of the reasons that it's so important for churches to understand trauma informed care and understand when people are presenting with trauma, to create that safe, spiritual environment for people. So what are your thoughts, whether it be something you've seen that didn't create a safe environment, or ways that we can create a safe environment? What comes to mind for you guys?

Speaker 3 17:09

I think that it's hard to it's hard to remember that the church is made up of people who are equally walking along a journey, right? And and so. And I think it's so easy to hear, well, that person is from the church or whatever, and so it must represent the heart of God. And i My heart breaks for how many times the heart of God is represented in a way that I'm sure is not the heart of God. And yet it's hard to to manage that loosely, like, how do you help people to see God's heart through a vessel that doesn't always reflect his heart very well, you know, and that's really the question, right? And we have so far to go, each of us, you know, and as individuals and as God's Church, and yet continuing to try to go on that journey,

Speaker 2 17:50

trying to invite churches into understanding the importance of just trauma, informed care, basic, at a basic level, really can open up and create this safe and compassionate environment for people who are, you know, truly walking through all kinds, whatever it is that life is throwing at them, we want to create that space them. Understanding trauma and understanding trauma informed care can open up this place that where compassion and healing can be, that space that they are wanting to create. Because, let's face it, they're wanting to create that they just maybe don't know how, and they don't know enough about what that looks like based on some of the things that they've been taught in the past, from generation to generation, right? This is a lot of new information. I remember whenever I started understanding a little bit about it, it was like a whole nother world, Robin, you talked about that. It's like this whole other world has just now been open to me, and so to invite the church into that world and say, Listen, come and explore with us, and then open up this space where people don't feel judged or pressured or, you know, just creating this safe space for them to actually heal. It's so, so important, and that's why, that's why we do what we do, right? Because we just want to invite people into this however we can do that in church, out of church. Maybe church isn't your thing. Great. That's okay. Let's, let's, you know, just invite you into this healing process.

Speaker 3 19:08

So many times, I think the church is given the impression by capital C church, that you have to be a certain way to come into the church, instead of, there's a book, I think it's called bloodstained views, and it was an old church in a country where World War Two was happening, I don't remember what small village and the soldiers on both sides were taken into the church hospital so that they could face up in years later, they decided to save some of those pews in the church to remind them that the church is where the hurt and the wounded and the bleeding should come. They don't need to be well to come in. But people think that. I remember once a young mom called and said, My kids don't know anything about the Bible. Is it okay? Bible. Is it okay if they come to church? And I thought, oh my gosh, to even ask that question, what was their perception, right? You know, to come. But that's so true with trauma. As you were saying, Deborah,

Speaker 1 19:54

having a place where people can come as they are, you know, people, where people can we don't have to put on that mask or pretend we know. I remember one time being in a Bible says one of my favorite things is this guy whispered over to me, and she said, I can't find that book at the library. And she was looking for a book named Matthew. And that opened my eyes so much, because I thought we take for granted, like, oh, turn to Matthew chapter four. And yet, there are people in our churches, especially, I think post covid too. And so many people come back to church that they're like, tell me where Matthew is. Tell me what Matthew is. I just remember seeing that and thinking, wow, we have a this. We have a very a wide landing strip, you know, for God to just teach us how to love people well, however they're coming in and let alone our life circumstances that we're dealing with as we come into church now, we get to sit with women. And you guys, women are dealing with hard things. I mean, are also but we just happen to sort happen to serve women, but to be able to come to a place and say, as a woman, you know, I am struggling with alcohol, or I am drinking, I remember one lady said I'm drinking in my closet at night, and nobody knows. Nobody even knows that the bottle of tequila is sitting in my closet. And I just thought, good for you for saying that, that you can now say that. Now we've brought it into the light, and we can do something about it. But if we think we have to be perfect, if we think we have to keep our mask on, we're just going to keep doing things in secret, whether it be behaviors, whether it be pain we're carrying, we're just going to keep carrying that. I don't know about you, but like, I'm ready to release things that have weight, that God doesn't want us to carry. So terrible, much of that is learning trauma and learning trauma, and learning trauma informed care. And how do we handle that? If you know somebody says that in a Bible study, they've been together 20 years like and somebody says this happened to me, how do you how do we handle that? How do we show up? How do that power of presence, Robin that you talked about, is so important

Speaker 2 21:34

whenever we start to understand trauma, it really opens us up to understand that we all have our own responses to trauma, and it might not be the tequila bottle for for me, but it is exactly the same response if I reach for a bottle of pills, or it might be it's the same exact trauma response if I try to control everything around me by having everything perfect, the perfectionism. It's not a bottle of tequila, but it's perfectionism, and it is equally a trauma response. We respond differently with different things, but they're all tools to help us cope. And one picks up a hammer, one picks up a screwdriver. We're all bringing tools to the battle to try to live another day because of the trauma that we've incurred. So it might not look like a tequila bottle, but it's all our Tequila bottle, it's all our bottle of pills. It's all our, you know, perfectionism, it's all the same thing. It's just a different type of tool.

Speaker 3 22:29

Yeah, they say. Carl Young is reported to have said that every addiction is a misplaced prayer. So think about that, right? All of the things that we are searching and seeking is a misplaced prayer. It's like where we're taking our brokenness, where we're taking our healing, because there's a need driving the behavior that we're having, whether it's over controlling. I mean, I don't know about you, but the number of families that I work with where the parents are so trying to control the kids out of the goodness of their heart, because they want their kids to make great choices, but they're so controlling them that now it's causing that, and most of it, my guess is, if the parents were to go back and look at their child, they felt out of control, or they feel out of control as a parent, so they're doing that. So like you said, Deborah, whatever it is is that thing that we are using to to feel more in control of our life, or to manage our life, or to to help, you know, feel like that's that misplaced prayer. This is the thing that will help me get through life. This is where I'm hoping my rescue can come from. But it's never that is never the rescue.

Speaker 1 23:19

Well, thank you guys for this, just open conversation and honesty about how trauma affects us. In the coming episodes, we're going to be unpacking these topics even more. And so we just want to invite you today to remember that today is not the end of your story, that healing is possible, and together, we are learning to live the reclaimed life. So we will see you same time, same place in two weeks. Thanks for listening. I pray you found hope in today's conversation, and maybe even feel a little less alone in your story. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram at reclaim story. Want to learn more about living a reclaimed life and how you can be a part of our growing community of Reclaimers. Check out our website at WWW dot reclaim story.com and if you enjoy these inspirational podcasts, be sure to subscribe, rate and review. Thanks for listening.