Triumph Over Trauma!
Triumph Over Trauma!
Why you need a Nervous System Reset now!
Your body can’t always tell the difference between a painful memory and a present threat—and that’s why a passing thought can hijack your day. We invited educator and creator Larry Hooks to unpack how trauma shapes the nervous system, why triggers feel so immediate, and how simple daily practices can teach your body a safer pattern. From faith-filled self-talk to practical breathwork and boundaries, we map a path out of the loop of alarm toward a steadier, kinder baseline.
Larry shares decades of experience exploring neuroplasticity and the metaphysical aspects of healing, pairing them with Scripture and lived wisdom. We talk about reframing identity from victim to overcomer, why perspective changes physiology, and how to challenge intrusive narratives by speaking truth out loud. You’ll hear concrete ways to spot whether you need a nap or a reset, why Sabbath is a nervous system skill and not a reward, and how dissociation, anxiety, and anger are protection strategies that can be retrained with patience and consistency.
We also get honest about community. Condemnation keeps people stuck; trauma-informed spaces create room for story, listening, and co-regulation. When calm, safe people share the weight of vigilance, your nervous system doesn’t have to hold everything alone. If you’ve wrestled with triggers, doom-thinking, or the guilt of rest, this conversation offers tools that are both spiritual and practical: breath you can count, words you can say, and a lens that helps your body expect good again.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find it. And if you want Larry’s free “Love Story” ebook on learning to love yourself again, check his TikTok (the self-care shoppe) for the email signup.
2 Corinthians 2:14 Now thanks be unto God, who always causes us to Triumph!
Hey y'all, welcome to Triumph Over Trauma, the podcast. Listen, y'all, I created this podcast because, like so many other people, I've had a traumatic past. I didn't always realize how those things affected me negatively and how I even carried them into my adult life. And so I wanted to create a space where other people could come and we could have candid conversations on how you identify trauma, how do you navigate it, and how you recover from traumatic experiences. If this resonates with you, then join me. I am your host and trauma survivor, Miss Eve McNair. Let's get into it. Alright, guys, welcome back to Triumph Over Trauma. Thank you so much for joining me again. Today we have a special guest on the show, uh Larry Hooks. I came across Larry's uh videos on TikTok and he was talking about a nervous system reset, the importance of a nervous system reset, and it was so engaging to me because as a trauma survivor, I'm always looking for ways that I can obviously emotionally regulate and also master my own nervous system, especially when I'm triggered. And so the information he shared on his platform, I thought was very beneficial when I was like, I gotta have him on the show because I think that there's so many people who need nervous system resets and aren't even aware of it. So, Larry, before we go into it, tell us who you are and a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Alright, first of all, thank you for having me on. Um, like you said, my name is Larry Hooks.
unknown:Um, I've been studying neuroplasticity, um, metaphysical um sciences. Probably for the last 34, 35 years.
SPEAKER_00:Um, just going through life, going through a lot of um my own trauma, you know, like when things would trigger me, like everything was spiral out of control. And so as I began to kind of study how the human body works and how our mentality has a lot to do with how we handle situations and the fact that, and we'll get into this when we get into some of the questions, but the fact of how even when you're thinking about what you went through, your body, your subconscious can't tell the difference. It's thinking about it and you actually going through it. That's why, like, if you think about something that made you mad, you get mad all over. Subconscious can't tell the difference.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that's deep.
SPEAKER_00:And it it it's kind of how I got where I am is kind of just trying to just try to figure out myself for real. And I was like, well, I can't just keep this to myself. I gotta let other people know what I've been discovering, because hey, we're on this journey together for real.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. And I'm so glad that you did you have begun um sharing that, and of course, that I came across that information because, like I said, it spoke to me. You know, speaking of that video, you talked about the importance again of the nervous system being reset, especially after trauma. Can you tell me how you think it's crucial to the advancement spiritually, mentally, and naturally, how important it is it to have a nervous system reset?
SPEAKER_00:The thing about it, if if you don't have it, you may get to move and forward and think you're past it. But if if you never sit down with it and dealt with it so that when something happens that doesn't trigger you, you'll be drawn right back into it. So spiritually, you you want to you want your spirit to grow, but it's like it's not able to, it's like it's stunning. Because you think, uh, oh yeah, I got it now, I gotta, I've got it, I gotta be something happens. And because you trigger your nervous system, it's trying to protect you, because it remembers what you went through.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. So it's trying to protect you from going through that again.
SPEAKER_00:So anything that that resembles what you went through, you know, it's trying to protect against it. And so what that does is if you try to start about and do anything new, you get a check in your spirit. This may hurt you.
unknown:Don't try that because this may hurt you. You get back in the back of your mind where you remember what happened last time. Your subconscious don't mean it, huh? It's just trying to protect you. But what we have to do is we have to reset that to let our subconscious know that yes, it's okay this time, though. Sometimes you just you have to talk to yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Like for real. Like, you know, people say, well, you need to. Man, look, you better talk to yourself.
SPEAKER_01:You better talk to yourself, get yourself together.
SPEAKER_00:Because you have to hear, you have to hear you say it. You have to hear your voice saying that it's okay.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. You know what? I can certainly agree with that because I noticed that there's times when I'm in prayer. There's something about when you pray an audible prayer and you hear your spirit communicating with God's spirit, and you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth, and it strengthens you and it transforms you, and it uplifts you to the point where you you feel like, you know what, I can overcome this, I can beat this thing. But it's something about hearing, like you said, hearing your own voice, and it does make a difference. And I thought it was interesting what you said about how your body, or which houses the nervous system, still remembers what you've gone through. I remember reading this book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Vanderkirk, and he talks about how that very thing, how our bodies remember, you know, things that even though, you know, they may have happened years ago, we may have, you know, physically grown, but our bodies and our spiritual and even sometimes our emotions and like you said, our mentalities are kind of trapped in the in that experience, and we don't really we don't really know that's it.
SPEAKER_00:That's where the reset comes in. It's not uh downplaying what happened to you, not downplaying the hurt that happened to you, but you begin to view it differently. Yeah, this happened to you. Yeah, it hurt you, but guess what? You made it through it. So this that happened to you actually made you a stronger person. So now when I look at it, I'm not looking at it as a victim, but I'm looking at it as someone who overcame that. So now I can help somebody else overcome this because this thing that I overcame, it made me stronger as a person. See, a lot of times when it comes to faith, a faith is not really a change in our circumstances as much as it a change in our perspective. Thanks in uh 2 Kings, I think, chapter 6, where Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the king's armor.
unknown:And the servant came in, like, look, Elisha, we surrounded, we surrounded. And Elisha, he wasn't in trouble. Elijah said, open his eyes that he may see. He opened his eyes, he saw all the hosts of heaven and camps around him. The host of heaven was always there.
SPEAKER_00:Father was on the problem and not on the solution. I think that's what happens to us with our nervous system, is that when we go through trauma or something happens to us, our nervous system stamps that, and when something similar like this happens, it's trouble.
unknown:But you made it through that trouble, though.
SPEAKER_00:So since you made it through the trouble, I mean you are in trouble overcome. When trouble comes now, you and it triggers you, you can say, Oh, I've overcome this. Oh, it's about to happen, oh, oh, here we go again.
unknown:It's oh, I've overcome this before. So I can do it again. Okay. And it takes it takes consistency. It's not something that's gonna happen like I'm gonna do it one or two times and then I'm gonna be over. No, it takes consistency.
SPEAKER_01:It takes consistency day in and day out, consistency.
SPEAKER_00:And I find that the more I the more I speak God's word over me, the more I claim to be what he claims that I am, it helps me to see myself as he sees me and not as what's happened to me, not as what I've gone through. Because your your trauma doesn't define who you are.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Did it happen to you? Yes. Did it hurt? Absolutely. Did it destroy you? No, because you still here.
SPEAKER_01:Because you're still here.
SPEAKER_00:So it can't define you. If it would have defined you, it would have been able to destroy you, but it couldn't.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that's good. You said in your video, you said that uh you talked about the children of Israel, how they had been delivered out of Egypt, out of slavery, and you said they had miracle-level access, but they had trauma-level thinking. They weren't able to obtain all that God in that particular time, all that God really had for them. And we know that, you know, the the Bible goes on to say that it took them 40 years, you know, um, to finally reach their promised land. Why do you think the trauma that they had that they had experienced controlled their mindset? Why do you think it controlled their mindset to the point where they couldn't even believe for greater?
SPEAKER_00:I think that they have been in it for so long and had been for generations and generations. It's kind of like with us with generational trauma, generational curse. You know what I'm saying? They've been in it for generations. My family's always gone through this. No, but it ain't got to be that way.
unknown:Because when God wants to deliver, he wants to deliver like immediately. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00:Like when they left Egypt, like they were thrust out of Egypt. Like, y'all better go now. And so they leave out and they get they get delivered. They get to the Red Sea, and the first thing they say is not, God, you delivered us. First thing they say, oh, you brought us out here to doctors want to raise in Egypt.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, that's hilarious though, because when you have gone through certain traumas, your mind does have like a doom level thinking. And the first thing they thought was like, we finna die, we finna die, it's over. You always make the work.
SPEAKER_00:But that that's what trauma does, though.
unknown:It clouds how you think and how you see. And that and your nervous system, it stores that.
SPEAKER_00:That's why I say for me, it's been so important to talk to myself, to speak to myself, to let my mind hear me say the words.
SPEAKER_01:And so, and so when you're talking to yourself, you're are you talking to yourself, you know, get giving yourself affirmations through the word of God? Practically, are you speaking to yourself? Boom.
SPEAKER_00:I I'm doing affirmations according to scripture. Okay. Sometimes I can't think of no scriptural affirmation, but I need to tell myself to get my act together and quit acting like this, because you're better than this. And I'm gonna tell you this, and I'm gonna say I hope people don't look at me strange when I say this. But what really taught me to really look into doing things like that was my daughter. She'll be eight and I told. She was born with Down syndrome.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:But if we tell her to do something that she doesn't want to do, she'll call her own name and tell herself to do it until she doesn't.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:And I've tell people all the time Zion got more sense than everybody in the world. And she will talk to herself until she does.
unknown:But she's speaking to herself and making herself do what needs to be done.
SPEAKER_00:And sometimes those are what we have to do when it don't feel good. Even if, like, especially when it comes to facing those triggers from our trauma. We especially have to talk to ourselves and we got to face it even when it doesn't feel good, because it ain't gonna always feel good.
SPEAKER_01:Right. You know, there's so many things that we tell ourselves, so many things that play in our minds, so many voices that we hear, often negative, often debilitating. But I hear you saying that words are powerful and that you can literally reset your nervous system by speaking to yourself, speaking over yourself, encouraging your own self, resetting your nervous system is as easy as opening your own mouth. That's what it sounds like you're saying.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, because what happens is a lot of times when we hear those thoughts and hear those words that's playing over and over in our head, we let them keep playing. We don't we never challenge them.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:We let them keep playing.
unknown:But we got to challenge them. And you challenge them with the opposite of what they're saying.
SPEAKER_00:If they're saying that you were no good and you deserve what happened to them, you you do not let that stay. I don't care how you feel about it. Right, you don't let that stain. You know you don't deserve what happened to them. You know that. But your mind will tell you, in order to protect you, in order to, you know, make you not vulnerable, they say, well, I brought it on myself. No, you do that. You didn't deserve that. Because a lot of times what happens is we'll get stuck in that same trauma loop, right, and we'll end up getting in the same situation that hurt us in the same way because we'll feel like that's all we deserve, because that's all we heard ourselves say that we deserve it. And so that's what we'll set up for. You have to, you have to challenge that. If you don't challenge it, you stay stuck in that same loop.
SPEAKER_01:Now, do you think that the ability to regulate your emotions is tied to your nervous system?
SPEAKER_00:Because of what happens when you remember those incidents that happen. And your nervous system remembers it. It remembers it in such vivid details that it affects your emotions. That's why, like I was saying earlier, you get angry all over again or you get sad all over again and get hurt all over again. And it's so it's kind of tied to the fact of when those memories come, how does my nervous system respond to it? Because how it responds to it is gonna determine how how I feel about it emotionally.
SPEAKER_01:So if your nervous system has been reset or is being reset in regards to trauma, you won't respond the same way?
SPEAKER_00:Right, you won't respond the same way. Now, I'm not gonna say that it won't hurt.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:That you won't get angry, but you won't, it won't be that same intensity that it was.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. I can identify with experiencing a trigger, not really realizing this that this trigger is related to something I've experienced. And then because of that trigger being dissociated, you know, all day or missing gaps of time where I'm like, you know, I was just off, I was just out of it, you know what I mean, on autopilot because I was triggered by something and my nervous system responded to it, and I did not know how to regulate, you know. I didn't know, like you said, didn't know how to reset it. I didn't even have the information. Sometimes we're so unaware of how our bodies and minds work and how they're connected, especially as as it relates to trauma. So I think it's very important that we do kind of like do that introspective work where we're scanning our bodies, scanning our minds, scanning our spirits as a how do we feel when we are faced with this type of memory, you know, because a lot of times it's the memory, you know, that's where that PTSD comes in. Where it's it's you remembering those traumatic experiences. And like you said, if your nervous system isn't regulated or isn't re- isn't reset, then your body is literally experiencing that trauma all over again. I hope that gives simplicity to someone who may be wondering how come I feel this certain way when I think about you know what they did or what they said, is you're literally reliving, re-experiencing.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Wow, that's just like it's having fresh all over again.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right. Now, why do you think that most people avoid seasons where that reset is needed? What what do you think the hesitancy is where you know one could be God could be making a way for them to come into rest and to reset or to just a time where they kind of, you know, they're facing the things that they've they've been through and it's a time for confrontation. Why do you think people avoid those seasons?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we make it sound simple, but it's hard work.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:It's hard work. And it's something that you're not gonna see the results of immediately.
unknown:And we're so used in a society where you know everything happens so quick, so fast.
SPEAKER_00:Technology has information at our fingertips in a matter of nanoseconds. And this is something that it it takes walking with it. You you gotta you gotta sit, you gotta sit there with it and and and and you gotta go through the process. Ain't no shortcuts. And that's hard for people.
SPEAKER_01:It is, because let me tell you something about the about the way my patients are set up. The way my patients are set up, I want this thing out and over with today, you know, immediately.
unknown:Yesterday.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And it and I think it's just it's just the the fact of that at work that takes time, and it's gonna be good for you in the end, but in the beginning, it's rough.
unknown:It's hard because we know we gotta face it, right? We know we gotta face it.
SPEAKER_02:And I think sometimes it's that fear of facing it, not knowing how we're gonna react when we actually face it.
SPEAKER_00:When we face it head on and not let it just be a trigger that triggers us and when we face it intentionally. And we go in and we we sit with it and say, Yeah, this happened to me. But what happened as a result of this? What type of person did it make me as a result of this? You know, and and that that that takes it's gonna take some patience. And it's gonna take a lot of praying, a lot of self-talk. Like it even sometimes I just check in with myself every now and then and be like, all right now, you know, what's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_02:How you feeling? What you got going on?
SPEAKER_00:You know what I'm saying? Like, right, I'm another person, but I'm talking to me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
unknown:To force myself to to face what I'm thinking about if I'm not living in the moment.
SPEAKER_00:Because a lot of times we miss out on the things that God has for us because we're living in the past, we're not living in the moment, and not living in the moment. The Bible talks about now faith.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
unknown:Faith.
SPEAKER_00:That's right now the gospel of Mark. Because the gospel of Mark, hey, if you if you read it straight through, it's like he's in the area. Everything is suddenly, immediately, right? It's like, slow down, Mark.
SPEAKER_01:Let me catch my breath. Mark got somewhere to go, okay? He had time to play with Joe. He won't have time to play, he don't have time to play. He got somewhere to be.
SPEAKER_00:And so we have to find ourselves thinking, you know, in the moment, not to be, you know, so caught up in our past that we miss out on what God has for us.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, you know, I'm I'm I'm still in this trauma healing journey of my own, obviously. And I share a lot of that um on the podcast and on my platforms. And um for me, when I first began to tell my story about, you know, the years of abuse, mental, vip, verbal, even sexual abuse that I endured, I was like, okay, I'm gonna tell my story, you know, it's gonna help a couple people, then I'm gonna be done. You know, I had no idea that that was just the beginning as far as the pro as far as the process is concerned, because then it's like, oh, you gotta then you gotta identify your triggers, and then after that, you have to learn how to emotionally regulate, and then after that, you have to learn, you know, CBT and DBT skills. How do you deal with, you know, this thinking thinking that we sometimes have, or the negative thinking, I should say, or the self-loathing, the depression, the anxiety, you know, sometimes think, okay, this this process is just one, two, three, I'm done. But I'm realizing that healing is not linear.
unknown:But as a bar right there.
SPEAKER_01:It's not, it's you, it ain't, you know, you're gonna be up, you're gonna be down, you're gonna be over here, you're gonna be, you know, detoured sometimes. Sometimes you're just not gonna feel like it. You'll be like, you know what, I'm done, God. Pack this up. But I'm realizing that in order to really see the light of day or to move from being a trauma survivor to a thriver, I've realized that I have to be all in for this process. I've realized that there's times where I can see where God is like, I gotta reset that area of your mind. I gotta transform the way you think. Um, I'm learning, you know, learning to allow him to do that. What do you think some ways that we can lean into allowing God to change our mindset and and and then what ways can unresolved trauma affect the mind?
SPEAKER_00:I think one of the ways to kind of lean into it is to be, first of all, just to be open to it in any way that it comes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes we want it to come in the way we want it to come.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We want to deal with it how we want to deal with it. And that ain't the best way to deal with it sometimes.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:No, we have to be open to how he wants us to deal with this trauma that we're going through or this situation that happened, or that situation that happened. Because you you're not gonna be able to deal with everything that happened to you in the same way. You have to be open to him showing up in ways that maybe that he hasn't shown us up before. You know, in in ways that that are new to you. Right. So I think the main thing is to be open to how.
SPEAKER_02:Now, most of that negative thinking that you just talked about comes from our unresolved trauma.
SPEAKER_00:Because when that trauma's not resolved, like I said, your subconscious is always trying to protect you. So everything that you see, you're viewing it in a way that, okay, this can hurt me, this can harm me. And so you're gonna tell you whatever you got to tell you to protect me. That's self-reservation. That's a bad voice. We're gonna tell you whatever you got to tell you in order to protect you.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And so that your mentality, because of the unreserved trauma, what it does is it keeps you stuck in that trauma state. You feel stuck, even though it's trying to protect you by you know building a fence, it's building a fence so nothing can come in. But guess what? You can't get out either. And so you stuck. And so those negative thoughts, that negative mentality keeps playing over and over and over again, because you can't release it because it keeps hitting that fence. It's your subconscious build.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. I I just want to say that first of all, when I when I dive into the way that trauma affects us and these coping mechanisms that our body actually makes up. I'd be like, God, well, why you create us like this? Because the fact that, you know, one of the issues I had struggled with uh for a long time was dissociation, right? And you know, it would be an automatic thing. My body would sense that there was a stressful or painful thing happening or recovering, especially because it was chronic abuse. It was years and years and years, right? And so my body just figured out a way to shut down. We're not here, we're physically here, but mentally and emotionally we checked out. And I said to myself, like, God, how did this happen? How did I become someone who dissociates? But I just think it's just it's awesome, and it's all also in the same time can be alarming because it's like this is something that you said, a self-preservation that my body did in order to protect me, but now I have to learn that I'm no longer in those uh places of threat. You know, I'm safe, I'm safe in God now, and I'm no longer in those traumatic experiences. So now I have to retrain myself, you know, stay on task, we don't have to flip out, and look, we're gonna gotta crash out, we don't gotta dissociate, we don't gotta be delusional because you're gonna be okay because God got you. But it's just so amazing to me, like how the body um works in that way. And uh I think about the scripture that talks about presenting your presenting your body to God, you know, as a sacrifice, and somebody might think, okay, that well, that doesn't correlate. But to me, it's it's bringing it's bringing your body under subjection because what I would do, what I do want to do right now is scratch out, okay? What I do want to do is be checked out right now, but I cannot allow, especially everyday life, to trigger me to the point where I'm you know I'm out of my mind or I'm disconnected or I'm deregulated. So I just think that that's that's so important and it's so beneficial to realizing even what goes on in your body when you are deregulated? What happens in your body when you are in need of a reset? Sometimes people don't even know, like, oh, this means I need a reset. You know what I mean? So it's it's it's really amazing to think about. How how do you think that somebody can discern whether they need that nervous system reset versus like needing just some rest or self-care? What would be the difference uh where you can say, you know what? No, I need a reset. You know, I don't need a nap. I need a total reset.
unknown:I'm gonna say for me, the easy way to figure that out.
SPEAKER_01:Say, look, if you take a nap and you still waking up trying to crash out, it's more than a nap. It's more than a nap.
SPEAKER_00:Honestly, because the something's really present the same. Like they honestly do, because you say, Well, I'm just like taking a time for myself. I need to get some rest while I'm like this.
unknown:Go get you some rest.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Take some time for yourself. And then when you come back, if you feel like that, then it was more than just rest and time to myself that I need.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
unknown:Rest and time and time for yourself is important too.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
unknown:That's that's part of the nervous system regulation.
SPEAKER_00:Is when our nervous system is dysregulated, we look at rest as a stuff being unproductive.
SPEAKER_01:Wait a minute, I need you to say that again. You said when our nervous system is disregulated, we look at risk how?
SPEAKER_00:We look we look at it like we've been unproductive, like like, oh no, I got to be doing something. No, you don't.
unknown:Sit down.
SPEAKER_00:Sit down.
unknown:Read your book, enjoy your cup of coffee if you like coffee.
SPEAKER_00:You know? You don't always have to be going, going, going. I tell them all the time in Sunday school, we are human beings, not human doing.
SPEAKER_01:See, now you're stepping on my toes because I grew up with I grew up in a household that that believed that if you weren't busy, if you you weren't productive, you was lazy. So you were lazy. So I never saw my caregivers, I never saw them rest. Like they didn't rest until it was like I'm drop dead tired. You know what I mean? Now I'm exhausted. And even now, sometimes I talk to my therapist about this and I say, there are times where I will have checked all my boxes, I've done all the tasks, and I'm like, let me sit down for a second. But then even when I'm sitting down, I'm like, I feel like there's something I'm supposed to be doing. Like, you know, I'm looking for stuff to do. But I hear you saying that that is that in itself is a symptom of a nervous system deep being deregulated. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Cause you know, because you know what it is, know what you're doing? You avoided sitting down with yourself. That's what you're avoiding. You avoiding sitting down with yourself with nothing to occupy your mind.
SPEAKER_01:Sir, leave me alone. Please leave me, please leave me alone. Please get out my business. Hey, look, I'm just I'm just talking one traveler to another.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just telling you when I when I figured out about me. Because like it's a man, look, what probably wasn't the past eight months or a year, I've learned how to really just to rest. Like some days I get home from work and I just go to sleep. I mean, I don't know. I'm grown, you can't whoop me.
SPEAKER_01:Right. The rest was so important that God gave him a command on the room. Right. It was not a suggestion. No, it was a suggestion. It was a command. It was one of the big 10.
unknown:It was right up there with don't be making no idols.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. And so you need to rest.
unknown:And Jesus said it like that.
SPEAKER_00:He said, look, he said, man was not made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath was made for man. God knew we were gonna need it. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Because he knew if he left us out on the vices, we're gonna work ourselves into the ground. That's true. And you know what? I tell people, even when I'm, you know, talking to people about rest, I always say, Rust is not something that you have to earn. It's a birthright. And another thing I don't want to forget about is self-care. Is what? Self-care. Self-care.
SPEAKER_00:You gotta love you. The Bible says this, it says to love your neighbor as yourself. You can't love your neighbor as yourself if you don't love yourself first.
SPEAKER_02:It takes it for granted that you're gonna love you.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
unknown:But you got to love you first.
SPEAKER_01:You know, that's so deep because in church spaces, we use certain scriptures without really kind of like going into context and really digging, you know, digging through those. Like you said, it does say love your neighbor as yourself. The origin is you loving yourself first. And from you first. Right. And from loving you first, then you can pour love into someone else, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you can't you cannot pour water from an empty kitchen. Okay, how hard you try it, ain't gonna work. I got to love you.
SPEAKER_01:Because we talked about, you know, how sometimes in certain communities, especially in our church, trauma is is now becoming something that we are maybe becoming a little bit more comfortable with talking about and sharing. Um I know in times past it was something that was swept under the rug. You know, we I grew up in one of those households that subscribe to the model, what happens in this house stays in this house, right? And then you grow up learning to suppress. And then when you come to the church, especially depending on the type of church you go to, maybe you might go to a deliverance church or whatever have you, but you you come to church and now you've learned from all those years to wear a mask, right? And you're suffering in silence, you're going through the motions, you're trying to worship God, you're trying to be free, all the while your heart is broken, your mind is disre-regulated, and then sometimes the church, depending on how open-minded, you know, that they are, they can um also uh further further wound individuals because they're not trauma-informed, right? They don't they're not informed on how to deal with trauma, how to talk about it, to how to even give space to it. I've even been in certain churches where I've heard them demonize trauma, you know, and to a to ascribe a demon to everything. And don't get me wrong.
unknown:Everything's a demon. Everything is a spirit. Oh, they got the spirit. No, they don't.
SPEAKER_01:That is not a spirit. Right. Perhaps they've been traumatized, they might have been abused, and maybe they're maybe they're struggling with a mental health issue.
SPEAKER_00:We need to figure out why they act the way they act. When Jesus talks about not judging, I said, the reason why he says for us not to judge, because there's always at least one more factor about a person's life that you have no idea about. You might think you know everything about this person, why they the way they are, because of this, this, and this. But there is one thing that person ain't never told you that they're going through, that they're dealing with, that determines why they act the way they act. We're not to judge, but we don't know everything about.
SPEAKER_01:Right. That makes me think of um the lady who was caught in adultery, right? The Bible says that, you know, the the they they came to Jesus like, yo, we call her an act, right? She was in, she was doing the do, right? Um and first of all, like if you call her an act, that means she was with somebody else. What about old dude? But uh when they when they come to Jesus and he bends down in the dirt and he's like, Yeah, I don't really can I don't condemn you, you know, go and sin no more. I always think about what has happened or what possibly what happened in her life to get her to that point where she was in that adulterous affair or whatever the case may be. Um I always think I I I like to think that perhaps maybe one of the reasons that Jesus didn't judge her and gave her an opportunity to repent and to restore and restored her was because he knew what happened in her past, right? He knew what she had been through, he knew what she had experienced, he knew how she got where she was, right? Uh and so I love that about God because he'll, you know, he he'll see that you know, you you might you have um have these behaviors or even these tendencies or propensities to sin. Like we all do. We have these propensities to sin because it's in our nature. Um, but sometimes it is because of things that we have experienced, right? Like you think about people who are uh who suffer with addiction, you know, sometimes they're just looking for a way to numb that pain, you know, to deal with the voids that they have. And and I think that's like you said, sometimes it's important for us even in the church to be careful, you know, of how we're dealing with those people. And and speaking of which, what do you think that the what what role um does communities or spiritual mentorship, what role does it play in supporting this process of healing and and um uh nervous system regulation? Like what what role do we play in that as a church?
SPEAKER_00:Well, like I said earlier, none of us is in this by ourselves. We're all in this together. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up the woman that was caught in the in adultery. Because notice what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:He said, Neither do I condemn you.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Don't go and sin no more.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You know what that did? That freed her. That freed her because yeah, they done said they done caught me in the very act.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And I know I'm supposed to get stoned.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You know what? I don't condemn you. I'm not gonna judge you by the act that you do. And I think for us as a church, the biggest thing we could do is first of all, is stop condemning folks. Wow. Their behaviors is different than your behavior, you got a behavior too. But since your behavior is acceptable and their behavior in society ain't acceptable, or just in your group ain't acceptable. Right. You want to condemn them, but yours is like, no, that ain't how that works. First, don't condemn.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Then have space for them to share if they want to share.
unknown:You know what I'm saying? Some people don't want to talk about what they've been doing.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:But the space needs to be there for them to do. And some need to talk about it. They feel like they have to get it out. There'd be space for them to do without judgment.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:Because our whole point as a church is to build up the body. And if one part is hurting, everybody hurts.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So if if my toe hurts, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna see about it. I'm gonna see what's wrong with it, I'm gonna see how to fix it.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:I ain't finna tip and holler at my toe.
SPEAKER_01:Talking about some why is you hurting? Right. Let's figure out what the problem is. I'm gonna figure out what the problem is.
SPEAKER_00:See how we can alleviate this problem, and then I'm gonna help protect you from this problem in the future.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:And I think having a community that's open like that, it helps with that regulation of your nervous system. What it does is it allows your nervous system to know that I don't have to protect me by myself. The job ain't totally mine. There are other people that love me and care about me that are gonna share in the job of protecting me. So I don't have to do it on my own. So every time something comes, I gotta automatically jump so I'm gonna build this wall up.
SPEAKER_03:Because there are people in my community who already looking out for me.
SPEAKER_00:That's what the Bible tells us that the strong should bear the infirmity of the weak. I mean, I don't know what we think that means.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:But that means when my brother or sister is going through some things that they just can't make it and they having problems or issues from some past trauma or whatever they're going through, guess what? I'm there to hold up the standard.
SPEAKER_01:See, I think that um God is really trying to do something um with people who have gone through traumatic experiences. He really wants to heal people, and I think that we often negate the trauma is all throughout the Bible. You know, I mean, there's trauma all throughout the Bible, and I think sometimes we have a tendency to only like check out the highlight reels, check out the victories, check out the you know, the breakthroughs and the deliver the the deliverances. But we read stories all in the Bible, like when Tamar was raped, and when, you know, when Job lost his kid. But it just goes to show that we we experience things in life that sometimes, you know, we really don't have an understanding as to why on this side of heaven, and that even in those experiences that are traumatic or that are devastating, where we are experiencing such loss and such grief, God is able to deliver and to be with us in it. Sometimes it don't make sense, right? Sometimes it doesn't. And you know what? I think about I think another thing that makes me, you know, want to pray and intercede is because I think in our efforts to kind of like provide an answer instead of saying, you know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know why, I don't understand, I'm just gonna continue to pray and be here for you. I think even sometimes we mistakenly misuse scriptures, you know, for that. I've heard people say, you know, you know, he works all things out for the good, you know, and which he does. But in this particular situation, I don't know if this is good yet. I don't know how this is gonna work out. I don't even know how I'm gonna see my way out of, you know what I mean? I ain't got to the good part. Right. I ain't to the good part, yeah. He's still working that part.
SPEAKER_03:We still we still in the all things part.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we still know all things, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right. We know all things. I think we do. We'll we take scripture and try because a lot of times, not only are we trying to get a person that's going through answers, we're trying to figure out answers for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Larry, it has been so beneficial. These types of messages are certainly needed in the body of Christ. I mean, in the world at large, but people need to need to hear, you know, how uh trauma affects our nervous system, how we can be deregulated. And I think we we have to have these conversations about the things we have experienced and the things that God is still bringing us through. I think we we have to have these conversations about the things we have experienced and the things that God is still bringing us through so that we can understand that we're still being delivered, right? And perhaps if you give me this time and space to talk about the things I've been through and how they have affected me, we can we can come to that point where you know you know what we need to pray for, what we need to go for, how you can be of service to me and me to you. Um, and I think I feel like that's what God wants to do right now. I think He's awakening people who have had traumatic experiences, who are being delivered, who are coming coming out of certain things, and he's giving allowing them to have voice to speak to those things that we've gone through. I feel like God is like, you know, now's the time where I got if I'm gonna heal my people, I gotta start with the root. You know what I mean? I gotta start not just with the symptoms. Because I think sometimes we want to deal with the symptoms, you know, but we gotta deal with the root of the issue. Well, again, like I said, it's been a pleasure. I so appreciate your voice. I so appreciate the content that you shared when I came across it that day. I was like, now wait a minute. I I love it. I'm so attracted to when I hear people say, talk about it in that way, especially when you have those the biblical base and you have scripture to back it up, that uh that does something for me because as a Christian, obviously who've been through certain traumas, I'm looking for the word of God. How can the word of God see me out of this situation? How can I relate my traumatic experiences back to the word of God? You know what I mean? Because when I first realized that there was such a deep need to heal from the trauma I had been through, I was like in the Bible, like, well, I wanted to find myself in the Bible. Where is the person that has been through what I've been through and has been affected by it the way that I have, you know, and so I'm constantly on a search for scripture and stories that I can identify and relate to. So thank you again so much for sharing what you shared on your platform. Tell us where we can find you if we, you know, want to look into your content or even you know speak with to you about some of the things you shared with me today. Where can we find you?
SPEAKER_00:My TikTok is uh the self-care shop. Um shop is s-h-o-p-p-e. Uh let's see, I am on YouTube.
unknown:I don't post a lot on YouTube, but I'm on YouTube.
SPEAKER_00:They people don't start making me post on that. I'm on YouTube. Uh, my handle is Larry Hooks888.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Email address Larryhooks04 at gmail.com. If you want to just reach out, like you have questions or anything. I got a uh I got a free ebook that I'm giving out to people that's uh subscribe by email. It's called uh Love Story. It's kind of uh uh just a short little guide about you know loving your starting to love yourself again. Sign up like through my TikTok through the um email subscription I'm sending. I was sending that out to them.
SPEAKER_01:So awesome, awesome. Well, keep doing what you're doing. Like I said, it caught my attention and I was like, now wait a minute. So we got to talk about this thing. So keep doing what you're doing, um, being a uh definitely a service to the body of Christ and to those who are in no hip in their healing process. We appreciate you.