Safe to Hope

Season 6: Episode 12 - Expert Contributor Dr Heather Gingrich

• Ann Maree Goudzwaard

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This week on Safe to Hope, Dr. Heather Davediuk Gingrich joins us for a conversation that blends deep clinical insight with years of walking alongside survivors of extreme abuse. From dissociative identity disorder (DID) to ritual abuse, she helps us understand how evil distorts, how the church can cause further harm—even unintentionally—and how to become truly safe people for those who are healing. This is a sobering yet hope-filled episode, equipping us to listen well, care wisely, and respond with both truth and compassion.

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Safe To Hope is one of the resources offered through the ministry of Help[H]er, a 501C3 that provides training and resources for those ministering in one-another care, and advocacy for women in crisis in Christian organizations. Your donations make it possible for Help[H]er to serve as they navigate crises. All donations are tax-deductible.

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well, guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

The podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.


Ann Maree
This particular season of the Safe to Hope podcast is extremely difficult to hear. The 2025 season is for mature audiences only.  While this story is hard to listen to, living it was unbelievably hard and horrific, we bear witness as we listen.

These stories are disturbing and may even be confusing. One of our goals throughout this series is to help the audience understand specifically, knowing good from evil, but also to have compassion, exhibit empathy and acquire the ability to minister to those in need. While this type of abuse is less common than others, we listen for two good reasons.

First, it is a reality that we need to be prepared to understand and respond to this kind of abuse.

Second, even if we never encounter a similar situation of this Storyteller’s experience, it teaches us, in a concentrated way about dynamics that are at work whenever people commit harm against others.

Last time on the Safe to Hope podcast, this season’s storyteller Carya shared the segment of her story that included training, how the perpetrators in her life were able to control her, and the subsequent DID developed, both in her training and in the horrible and harmful acts committed against her mind, body and soul.

We introduced what is likely a new concept for lay counselors to understand, and that being did today, one of the most prolific counselors and educators speaking on this topic and other relational and complex trauma, Dr Heather Davediuk Gingrich, is going to help us understand more fully. Carya explained a perspective on this topic from her own real time experiences. Dr Gingrich will share from her years of experience and clinical practice, while also having developed studies extensively for a variety of learning opportunities.

I was first introduced to Dr Gingrich’s rich resources in the training I did with the Global Trauma Recovery Institute, a course developed by Dr Diane Langberg and Dr Phil Monroe and facilitated by Dr Monroe and Dr Heather Evans. Her work in treating trauma in Christian counseling was significant for my understanding of multiple topics, and most importantly, the central nervous system and the impact of its dysfunction on the body and the mind and soul. I quoted her extensively in my own DMin dissertation. Dr Gingrich, as I just mentioned, developed and coordinates the Graduate Certificate in Trauma Therapy at the Chapman School of Graduate Studies at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia. She has filled positions in full time clinical practice, teaching both in MA and doctoral programs in the Philippines, and as a professor of counseling at Denver seminary. Dr Gingrich has consistently maintained a clinical practice which focuses on trauma survivors. She’s written or contributed to multiple incredibly helpful works, including Restoring the Shattered Self, and as mentioned, Treating Trauma and Christian Counseling. Most recently, she published Shattered No More: Healing for Survivors of Abuse, Interpersonal Violence and Complex Trauma.

Dr Gingrich, both the storyteller and myself have been waiting eagerly for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Gingrich
Thank you so much. It’s an honor to be invited.

Ann Maree
And as always, it’s an honor for us to be able to hear from you.

Is there anything else that you can share about yourself in order for the audience to get to know you better?

Dr. Gingrich
Sure. Well, I’m Canadian. I live in the US, but I’m still here on a green card. And we have three adopted sons. Two are in their early 30s, and then we adopted our grandson, who is 10. And we are also a multicultural family. Our our big sons are half Black, Jamaican and half Caucasian, and our little guy is a quarter White, a quarter Black and half Mexican American. So we’re kind of an interesting family.

Ann Maree
Yes, that is interesting. Glad that you shared a little bit more about your personal anything else about we were talking earlier, before we started the podcast. And I just found it interesting that it took a good deal of effort to get your last publication published. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Dr. Gingrich
Yeah, Shattered No More is, as you mentioned, a book for survivors, and it actually took me over nine years to get the proposal accepted, which was really amazing to me, because I, I really sensed the Holy Spirit telling me I needed to write this book, and I knew survivors who were asking for it. But what would happen is acquisition editors for publishers would get excited about it, then they would take it to their teams, and their teams would say, “It’s too narrow an audience.” “No, there aren’t enough people who’ve experienced these kinds of extreme abuses.” And I would, you know, kind of be appalled at that, thought, because the statistics, of course, paint a very different picture. And I would tell them the statistics, but their minds were already made up. And this happened over and over and over again. Then the ME TOO movement came along, and I thought, “okay, surely now, you know, the denial will be gone.” But no, it was no different. And then the church too movement that didn’t that didn’t help either. Finally, covid seemed to start to open people’s eyes a little bit more, but in kind of a miraculous way, the American Association of Christian Counselors just began a publishing arm, and I was talking to the acquisition editor without even knowing that that the publication arm existed, and within a couple of months, I had a contract signed with them. So I think this was God’s timing. It just surprised me that it took that long. But I’m very, very excited that this book has come out.

Ann Maree
Us as well. And yeah, I really wanted you to say the say that part of the journey with that book, because we are still fighting an uphill battle to get the church to recognize that trauma isn’t just the diagnosis du jour, that it’s real, that it that it happens in a person’s body and even, and so you’re going to hear this over and over — in what I say, but also what the storyteller has been saying throughout—and that is hers is a concentrated version of traumatic experiences, for sure, but they have so many things in common with just the ‘typical’, typical, if you will, abuses that many people endure or even right, typical traumas and suffering that many people endure. There’s a lot of same similar patterns, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later as we ask some questions.

Dr. Gingrich
You know, I think the good news is that PTSD, I think, is being more commonly recognized. And, you know, there’s less denial about war vets, perhaps struggling with PTSD or victims of natural disasters. You know, there are so many that are happening these days. So that’s the good news. It’s kind of more like crisis, kinds of situations. But I think it’s still the relational trauma, the chronic relational trauma and child abuse, that there’s something about that that people just don’t want to recognize. They don’t want to believe that there is such evil in the world. And that’s apart from even the extreme kind of organized, ritualized abuse that, you know, our storyteller talked about just ‘regular’ as you said, not that there’s really such a thing, but, but incest, you know, child abuse that’s just there. I think people just don’t want to acknowledge that we live in a world where other people— adults that are supposed to keep kids safe— actually commit atrocities harming these children and adults too, in so many horrible ways. We just even as Christians who know that sin has invaded our human condition, I think we still don’t want to really recognize aspects of sin.

Ann Maree
Yes, I agree. I have heard it over and over. We’ve heard it over and over in this season as well. And I come from historical, historically, from a denomination that talks about total depravity often, and yet they’d probably the be the first denomination to resist this level of evil.

Dr. Gingrich
It’s so ironic.

Ann Maree
It is ironic. Oh, and also, you know, advances in science, I mean the ability to see what the brain’s doing, brain science that’s becoming much, much more popular-level talked about, as with our expert contributor, Dr Wilder, in his book, The Other Half of Church, and then even the fact that he has, you know, both things in mind. He’s talking about satanic ritualistic abuse in one on one level in a different book. And now he’s talking about brain science, but he’s drawing those things together in talking about gratitude and talking about joy. So and if you want, if you want to understand what I just said, you have to go listen to go listen to that episode.

But anyway, so as our congregate, as our conversation gets started, I just want to be as transparent as possible. You probably already know this, but I just keep repeating it for our audience. I have a doctorate in biblical lay counseling, and yet I never learned a single thing about trauma, trauma responses, DID, anything like that in my seminary studies, nor even any other way to help someone suffering from chronic or extreme trauma, such as our storyteller. And ironically, again, nothing about how to help someone who has been ritualistically satanic abused, and this is so weird in the church, like we don’t think this doesn’t like this exists, and I know you’ve witnessed damages done by even well-meaning church goers like me, who might inflict more harm on victims and survivors. So how does our well-meaning ignorance not only prevent us from helping them, but even harm them further?

Dr. Gingrich
Unfortunately, there can be a lot of well-intentioned harm, you know people— I think it comes from minimizing someone’s experience, not really understanding the depths to which, you know abuse impacts a person— that it isn’t as simple as having a prayer meeting and saying, if you have enough faith, you’ll no longer struggle with the issues you have. And so that’s one way I think that I mean, we are taught to pray, and we do need to pray for people who are survivors of abuse and trauma. But there needs to be a recognition that God brings healing in many different ways and often, that healing takes time, and we don’t like we like instant things in our culture, right fast food. We want things to change quickly, and someone like our storyteller or even others that have not experienced that level of organized kind of abuse but have been abused as a child— whether that’s at home or, you know, by a coach or a youth pastor, or whatever damage that’s done in childhood in particular impacts the whole developmental process. So it isn’t just a matter of dealing with the trauma symptoms. It’s a matter of changing the way a person perceives the world, how their whole emotional makeup, you mentioned the brain, changing the way the brain responds to different cues, learning appropriate ways to relate with people. You know there is just so much that’s part of the healing process. And I think, of course, the general person out there in our churches has no idea, and so when they quote Scripture at someone and say, “if you have enough faith, you’ll be healed”, that is just like sending an arrow into their hearts, because that not only is discouraging, but it also sometimes gets them thinking, “Well, is there something wrong with my faith?” You know, “if I if I believed more, am I sinning by still struggling with these things?” And that’s not even dealing with the demonic, where so many of my clients have had deliverance prayer that has been really damaging, because with people praying have had no idea about dissociation or DID, and so they’re praying for demons to be gone that are actually parts of the person. And I’ve had some clients tell me that that was more traumatic than the worst of the ritual abuse they suffered. And that’s saying a lot like I was horrified to hear that. And when I asked why you know? You know, because I knew they that, that some of these people had suffered terrible, terrible atrocities, just like our storyteller. It’s like, how can deliverance prayer?... And it was deliverance prayer done fairly quietly, like that. You know, I’ve heard of situations or been in them where people are yelling and screaming for demons to leave and that kind it wasn’t that kind of situation. It was just kind of very quiet prayer. But it was because when they were asking actual parts of her to leave, she said, “It’s like they wanted me to die.” You know, was it was like a psychological death that they wanted. “They were trying to murder me.” You know, and so it’s like again. I’m sure the people in that prayer team would be horrified to hear that, but usually they don’t. You know, the survivors when there’s such harm, end up just kind of leaving those churches or leaving those groups, and so those groups never really hear the end of the story. They don’t understand. They don’t kind of learn from the mistakes, and often the survivor is just blamed, “Well, you know, again, they responded this way because they just don’t have enough faith.”

Ann Maree
Yeah, that stuck out at me as you started talking about our narrow doctrines of faith, of prayer, even... definitely of Satan and evil. And so I’m, you know, just checking off boxes in my head of how the church could get better at or even just learning so they can get better at serving these people.

And you we have, again, this is something in common with other abuses, people who have, women who have lived through domestic abuse will tell us that the church hurt was worse afterwards. Yeah, so same thing here, the church hurt felt worse, and you share my shock, like, How could it be worse than what you’ve endured?

Dr. Gingrich
Yes, but it, but it is experienced that way often.

Ann Maree
And that’s something we need to dig into, some a little bit better, I think, or even at all, as the church is, why is that? What is it about churches, church leaders, or even just fellow members, that causes such harm?

Dr. Gingrich
So I do have a chapter in my book for counselors, Restoring the Shattered Self that’s specifically for churches, and how churches can be better trauma informed. What are some practical ways that they can prevent those kinds of abuses and provide safe environments for survivors. Because even churches that attempt to do some things again don’t necessarily have enough knowledge to do it really well, and so that might be helpful for some people to take to their pastoral staff, say, “Hey, how can we... How can we implement some of this so that anyone that comes into our midst can be helped and certainly not harmed?” 

One of the things I just thought of now is that, you know, I coordinate and teach four to the five courses in the Graduate Certificate in Trauma Therapy, but you don’t have to have a psychology background or counseling background to take those courses. So anyone with a bachelor’s degree can take those courses. And I have had, you know, people who are professionals, like I had this one woman who was a high end financial advisor, but who was getting trained and in her healing prayer ministry in terms of her kind of church ministry, and she took a couple of the courses in the trauma certificate because she realized that she didn’t know enough to maybe not do damage. And then she ended up not continuing, because God really had led her into more of a spiritual direction area. But it was wonderful having her there. So, so some of your listeners might actually be interested in that certificate. I have professionals, you know, that are taking it that need more trauma training. I have grad students taking it that are where they need trauma training. And I have lay people taking it that are involved in supporting people or lay counselors, so they might be interested in that. It’s all it’s all asynchronous online so it’s really accessible that way.

Ann Maree
And we will definitely repeat that in our show notes, because that was one of the things that I appreciated the most about. Well, I shouldn’t say that it was, it was one of the things about that book, because you have. Have done something that we don’t hear as lay counselors very often, you have encouraged us that there is something you can do as a lay counselor. You have a value, yes. So I appreciated that, and we will, like I said, we will highlight that chapter. But similarly, and you’ve said this somewhere I read it. You also were a little surprised about the evil when you started out. So what...? How did you navigate that kind of knowledge as a new counseling professional?

Dr. Gingrich
Well, I was fortunate. I think God really helped prepare me, because when I was doing my Masters, my ma at at Wheaton College, one of my professors, Dr David Benner, who really hasn’t written in the area of trauma, he’s written more in the areas of kind of spiritual formation and, you know, that kind of thing. But at the time, he was one of my professors there, and he ended up having a DID client come to him for treatment. And this was back in 1981 so this was before much had been written at all about DID. No, there were novels written, or like The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil were out there, but they were considered, you know, very unusual. And what he did is basically week by week, let us know how he was navigating working with this individual, and how he was trying to find he’s trying to consult with people and the difficulty he was having. And not only did she have DID, but she had also been richly abused. And so I heard from him before I encountered someone like this myself. Now, at the time, you know, everyone thought this was so rare that I remember thinking, “Well, did is such an interesting condition to have because it’s such a creative way for someone to protect themselves from such severe abuse.” I really thought that was remarkable, that our minds are actually capable of fragmenting in that way, in ways that really helped protect, you know, this child that is going through this horror. And so as a counselor in training, I was kind of fascinated by that, but I remember thinking, “Oh, but it’s so rare, you know, I will never have an opportunity to work with someone who has DID,” well, you know, I think God has a sense of humor sometimes because, you know, I graduated and I started working for a Christian counseling organization. And several years after I started, women begin to tell me their stories of abuse. And a few more years in, one client started to talk about hearing voices. And I think I would have just assumed that she was psychotic, that she was schizophrenic, if I hadn’t heard about Dr Banners client. So right away I thought of DID back then, it was called Multiple Personality Disorder, rather than Dissociative Identity Disorder. I at least knew that dissociation was a possibility, and that’s when I began seeing my first known DID client. When I look back, I think I’m pretty sure. I’m 98% sure I had another client that I just didn’t recognize the clues who used to come in, sometimes talking in a little girl voice. And I just, you know, that didn’t really last long, and she still looked the same, you know, I didn’t really see any switches. It didn’t even occur to me that she could be dissociative. I just thought she was regressing, you know. And she only came to see me for three months because I think she figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t know what was going on. I don’t think she knew what was going on, but the parts of her figured that they were going to get help from me. I wasn’t getting it, unfortunately, but I did get it with this other client, and that really began my journey. And she wasn’t the only one, I think once you, once you start to recognize some of the signs of someone dissociating, or some of the indicators that someone might have an abuse background, even a ritual abuse background. Then, then, of course, I was, I was recognizing it when it came in. So it was very difficult. What was most difficult, though was trying to get any supervision, trying to figure out, know what to do. There are so many more supports available now, so much more education now that I would have loved to have availed of that just wasn’t available to me back then.

Ann Maree
I love, I love how you’re talking about your clients educating you, and I hear that as a common theme in Christian counseling, whereas I don’t know that we realized that in our lay counseling training, that our theological training was going to be the end of it, you know, we thought, and that was just the beginning, at least for me, in learning now, how do I take care of people? It was the people who continued to train me in their care. And I just love to hear that humility in the in the counseling profession, when we actually do the show notes too. I’d like to get more information from you on where some of those supports are. I do actually hear of biblical counselors and counting, encountering DID and being clueless. They just don’t know what happened, and you said that, and it’s not one of the questions that we were going to talk about, would you be willing to share some of the cues or clues that you said could lead you to believe that maybe there was ritualistic abuse?

Dr. Gingrich
Sometimes, often it’s someone may talk, if they feel safe enough with you about having some nightmares of kind of bizarre things that don’t make much sense. So if someone talks about nightmares of, you know, masked figures or circles of candles. Or sometimes my clients would come in saying, “I found this among my things.” And at that point they maybe knew they had DID, and they’re like, “Maybe some parts of me wrote this, but this is freaking me out.” And there’d be, like, satanic symbols, you know, like a ram’s head, or a 666, or, you know, Satan spelled backwards, or, you know, things Prince of Darkness, things like that, with, you know, kind of drawings that they didn’t remember doing, but they couldn’t figure out where they came from. But those can be indicators that there’s some kind of occult activity that had happened, or, you know, just something there. So it’s often just, can also be, you know, some fears of, some things that many people would fear. Like, a lot of people don’t like snakes. I certainly don’t like snakes, but I don’t have full blown panic attacks, you know, kind of thinking about them. Or, you know, I don’t like spiders. But, you know, for people who’ve been put into pits with snakes or spiders that they can’t get away from. Or, you know who wake up from sleep because they’re feeling as though they’re being buried alive. Well, those are the kinds of things, often ritual abuse survivors have been buried alive that they haven’t died, but they don’t know they’re not going to die. So just often, you know kind of images, or kind of pictures or nightmares or fears that just seem a little bizarre, those are often some of the first cues.

Ann Maree
Very interesting, very Thank you, Hannah, for taking that off topic too. Of course, it’s very helpful just to have something to start with. Kind of on that note, why is the existence of ritual abuse, cultish practices, SRA, which is satanic ritual abuse. Why is it talked about so little, publicly or in a mainstream setting? Yeah, if we know it’s out there, counselors are hearing it. I’m sure law enforcement and legal professionals are hearing it. Why isn’t it talked about?

Dr. Gingrich
It freaks people out. You know, I say people are scared. You know, if, if there’s denial of trauma in general, then how much more denial is going to be of this kind of organized abuse that is so horrific the thought of— at times, multi generational abuse or so, I think that’s one thing that people just really don’t want to believe that these kinds of things exist, because they have trouble even believing abuse exists. But then these groups cover their tracks well too, you know, they have, usually perpetrator groups have plants and, you know, amongst all levels of societies. So whether it’s police officers, coroners, lawyers, doctors, you know that are willing to falsify records, or are willing to, you know— someone who works, you know, in cremates bodies, well, that’s a good way to get rid of a body that’s killed, you know, through a ritual, for example. So, so often, if some, if you know, apparent crimes are investigated, they don’t find enough evidence, or the evidence disappears. And so I think that’s another reason. So then it gets called, just kind of a hoax, or it’s just people wanting you know, it’s kind of another conspiracy theory. But unfortunately, that isn’t true.

They also part of the kind of programming or the training that you, the script storyteller talked about that some of that training, some people remember bizarre things that didn’t happen because they were through torture, trained to remember so you have a victim, you know, who is trying to say these terrible things have happened to me, but that they may also say I was taken up into a spaceship by aliens and tortured. Well, then that just really sounds crazy, but that child was trained with something like a model of a spaceship with people dressed up like aliens might be, and told, and then have sound effects and told that they are actually taking off and that probably that child is drugged what they see kind of fits what they’re being told, plus they’re being tortured at the same time. But then when they tell this story, trying to be, you know, to, you know, the police or whatever, then they’re just going to be dismissed. So often, perpetrator groups use those kinds of tricks to make sure that survivors aren’t believable.

Ann Maree

Well, well, on that note, what kind of questions or how can we be better curiosity to get at truth, I guess, if you will, or just more information to fill in so that we can, I don’t know, understand better what their experience was.

Dr. Gingrich
I think the key is just to being a safe person, just being willing to listen, not trying to fix anything. I think a lot of people, when they hear such atrocities, kind of go into detective mode, you know, trying to figure out, Could this really happen? And and try to follow up on, you know, people or places that generally isn’t very helpful in any counseling, whether you know exactly what happened or not, or whether you’re wondering what’s healing for the person is to deal with their perception of what happened. You know, so that child who, who was, who believes that she was in a spaceship with aliens. Well, that didn’t happen. But over time, a therapist who’s trained and, you know, doing this work, will be able to help the help that part of the person say, “Well, what else do you see?” and they’ll be able to say, “Well, you know, something I hadn’t really thought about before. But the one alien had a voice that was just like my Uncle John’s, and, oh, and this other alien had shoes that were just like my dad’s.” you know. And so then that’s the way that truth starts to come through. And then they, then they can recognize that, “oh,” you know, and the adults can kind of look at those images and go, “Oh, this was all faked.” And so in time, truth is revealed, but you have to be careful. You don’t want to be suggestible. That can be very dangerous. I think it’s just being open to hearing and not being challenged. The survivor not being challenged initially, just empathy. Usually someone is not going to talk about ritual abuse until they feel really safe with you.

So, so even for me as a trauma therapist, what will come out first is incest or kind of the regular child abuse that can still be horrific. It can often be years before ritual abuse comes up. So it’s not something someone is going to talk about right away. It’s too dangerous for them to do that, and they’ve spent a lifetime, you know, being trained to not remember, or if they do remember, not to talk. So. So I think it really begins with just being safe in general for people who are hurting, and being safe for survivors in general. And then if you become good at listening and empathic, and you know safe, that you keep appropriate boundaries, you don’t try to take over and heal someone yourself, but you let the Holy Spirit lead and guide in that process. Then in time, if there is ritual abuse there, that will be revealed, or if someone has DID that will be, you know, revealed over time. So it requires a lot of patience, I think, and just willingness to be with people and not try to rush anything. 

Ann Maree
Yeah, just having a conversation with a church that’s trying to handle abuse well, and the lack of just sitting and suffering, making that suffering place sacred, and not trying to ‘fix’ like you’re saying. So I think even if it is unusual to hear a ritualistic abuse, we’re still hearing themes that are helpful for our other caregiving. And actually, I want to play something that Carya has said, and I’d like to ask a question afterwards to kind of bring it back up to that place of, how does this even impact other types of traumatic experiences. So let me just play this and then I’ll ask the question.

Carya Recording
I’d like to suggest that training is a part of any form of abuse that’s repeated. In my case, grooming wasn’t needed to get access to me, but in other cases where it is, once a perpetrator has successfully groomed a victim, they can move on to training the behaviors and obedience they want. The training that I received was extreme, to be sure, but it was just an extreme end of the spectrum on which all abuse exists. I hope that when listeners hear my story, it gives them eyes to see how evil abusive control always is.

Ann Maree
So what could we learn about training, meaning ‘mind control’ training, and how it relates to not just this concentrated story of abuse, but also to any of the other abuses, I suggest, maybe like clergy sexual abuse, but if you have other answers, I’d like to hear those too.

Dr. Gingrich
Well. You know, children are trained in appropriate ways by parents, so not even talking about abuse. I mean, I’ve taught my children to respect their teachers and to, you know, if you’re in school, you know you may not want to do this certain task, but you’re expected to do that because they’re the teacher and you’re the student. And that’s training that’s a positive. You know, in that we teach children how to be in the world and what the expectations are, but if that teacher ends up being abusive, and I as a parent don’t know it, then kind of the message that may be there for them is, well, even if this teacher is touching me inappropriately, you know. Oh, I’m supposed to do what the teacher says, so I guess I need to do it right, and so inadvertently, good training can end up kind of going sideways if a child misinterprets what that means, but especially anytime where there is a power differential, and that happens anytime there’s, you know, an older child or an adult that’s dealing with a child. This kind of regular training comes into play, because where there’s a power differential, we are told that we need to respect that. So again, that gets used and misused by perpetrators. And certainly you mentioned clergy sexual abuse, certainly in the case of clergy, that power differential can be very big because, you know, depending on the church or the denomination, sometimes pastors are almost seen as next to God. So to disobey the pastor or the youth leader, you know, is almost tantamount to not obeying God. So, so again, where good appropriate training is there to kind of respect the pastor, you do what adults tell you, it can go awry if there’s a perpetrator that tries to twist that.

Ann Maree
Yeah, and the storyteller talked a lot about that twisting, what God calls good. And so in my mind, it opens up a whole nother level of responsibility in our training. As you were talking, I just jotted down a note, and how often as a child did I hear to respect my elders? Of course, I’m from a generation where that was, ‘children were seen and not heard,’ kind of thing. Which, that in itself, right? I mean, don’t speak up. Don’t talk about what happened, kind of thing. I just want to kind of throw this broader question out there, and I’ll let you pick and choose what kind of things you want to speak to, but what is important at the most basic level for us to know, and I’ll name a few, what to know about trauma, complex trauma, differences between Complex PTSD and PTSD, especially DID, I think that’s just gonna blow people’s minds of what in the world is that? Anything that you could just give us a basic level understanding on any of those topics?

Dr. Gingrich
Well, I think one thing that’s really important is to recognize that trauma is in the eye of the beholder. It is really based on subjective experience of the person that’s on the other end of it. So our diagnostic and statistics manual, which is the diagnostic manual that professional counselors and psychiatrists and so on use, has very specific indicators of what is included in trauma, and it’s things like something where there’s a near death experience, or someone’s life is threatened, and a few other things. But unfortunately, that just is the tip of the iceberg, because there can be many lesser things that feel traumatic to the person. So no matter how big a trauma looks, it’s not necessarily experienced as traumatic by everyone and so we have to be careful of not assuming pathology where there is none at the same time, we also need to be careful not to minimize something kind of going well. “That’s not... that doesn’t sound as though it’s very traumatic.” 

So an example, well, example in my own life is when I have done presentations for those that are working with missionaries, because I was a missionary myself for eight years. I give a list of you know, five different things that happened to me on the mission field, and say which one do you think was most traumatic for me? And for example, one of them was only being in the country for having been in the country for a few weeks, and the streets flooding in Manila and being forced out of a taxi because they said the water was too deep for the taxi to go on with me begging and screaming not to have him force me out because I didn’t know where I was. I mean, I knew I was within a few miles of my house, but I didn’t know how to get there. And I’d heard stories of when the water, you know, the water was up past my knees, of people, you know, there often weren’t caps to the sewers, and so people falling down a sewer and never being seen again. So I had all this going through my mind. That’s one example. It was pretty traumatic. I did end up getting home safely. But actually what was more traumatic was a urinary tract infection I got that came on really quickly when my husband wasn’t home, he was teaching, and I couldn’t get hold of him, and when our best friends on the mission field were on home assignment and everyone else was too far away to get to me, that was the most traumatic, because I didn’t know how to get to the hospital and I was in severe pain, but people normally wouldn’t think that a urinary tract infection is going to be traumatic.

So similarly, one of my clients talked about the only abuse memory she had...now there might have been more that didn’t come up in the time that I was seeing her... was when she said that as a kid, you know, she and her dad were tussling in bed having fun, which often parents and kids do, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But she said that one day, it just felt different. He touched her thigh in a way that felt different, and that, she said really impacted the rest of her life. You know, at the time, “I’m like, seriously, like a touch on the thigh?” Now, again, there might have been more there, but I also do believe that when someone’s intention is sexual, for example, that a child picks that up, you know. So she’d been touched on the thigh probably hundreds of times similarly, but there was no sexual intent, and this time, I’m guessing there was, and she felt the difference. So that’s just really important to listen to, what’s the impact on this person. And don’t emphasize, don’t minimize or exaggerate, what that impact is. Let them be the judge of that. 

Then we’ve already talked a little bit about the difference between PTSD, you know, such as for a natural disaster and a war, war experience, which often can be one event, it can be a horrible event. You know, as we’re recording this, the fires in California are raging, being lots of people experiencing lots of trauma and loss. You know that will take some of them a long time to heal from. But that’s still different than trauma that happens that’s complex trauma— that happens chronically in childhood at the hands of someone who’s supposed to protect them, whether that’s you know, a pastor or a coach, a parent, a grandparent, a babysitter— that has a whole that’s a whole different experience. And usually doesn’t just happen once, but happens over and over and over again, throughout many years, even decades, sometimes and impacts someone’s development. Even trauma counselors who have training in trauma don’t know the difference. Often, people who say they’re trauma counselors treat PTSD, but if they don’t know what Complex PTSD is, or they don’t understand dissociative disorders, then they’re not going to be a good counselor for someone who’s experienced ritual abuse, or has DID or even is a survivor of kind of more regular sexual abuse. So that’s something that even lay counselors need to recognize that even professional counselors don’t have, often don’t have enough training and trauma, and especially in complex trauma and dissociative disorders. So so if you are referring someone to a professional you need to ask them some questions, and those are some of the things in Shattered No More, my book for survivors, I give lists of questions that survivors should ask a potential therapist and tell them, you know, if they respond in certain ways, you know, go find someone else and keep going to find someone who responds differently. But if they respond in these ways, then they might be a good counselor for you.

DID...did you have anything more specific you wanted to ask about the DID?

Ann Maree
Yeah. Dr Wilder touched on some of the...hmm, he didn’t really like give us a :this is what you do if you are introduced to a new part.” But he was talking about having Jesus kind of meet each part. You know, having and that not being unusual for a Christian, like a lot of us, just as non traumatized people, don’t allow Jesus into every part of our existence, if you will, right? And so if there’s anything you could add to like that, the beneficial type either postures, behaviors of counselors in the church that could be helpful for DID. I know you said, you know, taking it seriously, not minimizing or exaggerating. I don’t want to get into, I guess, healing ministries or things like that, because that’s, yeah, different topic, right.

Dr. Gingrich
I think you know, especially if someone you know, like a lay counselor is, is meeting some of the DID for the first time, or maybe the person they’re ministering to, or counseling doesn’t even know they have DID, but all of a sudden, you know, another part appears just, I suggest you just approach it as you would anyone you find out, find out about them. One of the first things that I may ask so that I know how to appropriately interact is, “how old are you,” or “what is what’s your name?” And if the person, if you’re making mistake, and someone goes, “What are you talking about? You know, my name, my name is Betty.” then you’re like, okay, maybe I, maybe I made a mistake here, and you can just laugh about it and go on, but if there, but usually, you will sense that something is different, especially if there’s a child, you know, alter that comes out and is, you know, we talking in a little girl voice, and maybe is kind of hunched over or whatever, then to kind of say, as you would a young child, “um, oh, what’s your name? Am I not sure I’ve met you before,” or, um, or “how old are you?” And then, you know, if the if it’s a two year old, then you’re going to interact with them as you would a two year old. Now, you know, you have to kind of pretend that this isn’t an adult body, but, but, you know, try to cut a picture of a two year old and interact with them that way, if they’re eight years old or 10 years old or 15 years old in their perception of themselves, then that’s how you want to interact with them, you know. Then over time, you know, as part of the healing process, people will learn that, okay, the body isn’t actually 15 or two, and we’re all parts of the same person, like, you know, there’s a whole process there, which you mentioned as part of the healing but at least in terms of initially interacting, some people will would say that are hesitant to do that because they’re like, “Oh, aren’t we just increasing the dissociation?” Then if, you know, just want to ask to get, you know, the adult back, or just ignore what’s happened. Well, these parts have been part of them, if they’re an adult now, since early childhood, at least the initial parts. Um, I don’t know if Dr Wilder mentioned this, but basically abuse needs to have happened before the age of six for someone to develop DID, if they’re older than that, when first abuse kind of happens, then you know, they may develop other symptoms or other disorders, but maybe even a dissociative disorder still, but they would not have the full fledged kind of separate personalities. And so that’s something to keep in mind, too. If someone is switching, then you know that they were traumatized when they were really little.

Ann Maree
That’s incredibly helpful. No, he did not mention it, so thank you. Thanks for giving some more shining, some more light on these things.

Dr. Gingrich
And can I just say one more thing that comes to mind because I know when you mentioned that, Dr Wilder talked about introducing the parts to Jesus. Certainly, I’ve found that at times that can be very helpful, but there are parts that are going to be terrified of Jesus, especially if someone’s been ritually abused. Because one of the, I think, most horrendous kinds of abuse is when perpetrators, you know, dress themselves up like story book depictions of Jesus, and then rape a child and are being told that this is Jesus that is doing this to you. So you can imagine, if you say to a child-alter, “I’d like to invite Jesus.” You know, “to be here in the room with us,” someone who’s had that kind of experience is going to find you very unsafe and is probably going to run screaming out of the room without you understanding why. So, so sometimes some healing, sometimes a lot of healing has to come, even for Christians, because, you know, someone with DID, some other parts may be Christians, and other parts may not identify as Christians yet, in time. I’ve never had someone who’s had, you know, some parts that have identified as Christians who haven’t, over time had, although their different parts eventually come and make decisions for Christ, but that can take years, and sometimes people aren’t even willing to talk about God at all. So obviously, prayer ministers aren’t going to work with someone like that. If that’s, you know, if that’s what they do, do have kind of inner healing prayer is what they do, then that’s not going to work with someone like that, at least not initially. They’ll have to have maybe go to another lay counselor or professional counselor to almost get to the point of healing where they can even look at God or talk about God or talk about spirituality, especially in the cases of ritual abuse, where religion has been used as part of their trauma, and as you mentioned earlier, where unfortunately, sometimes church basements are where the abuse is done by people that they see in church on Sunday. So that’s a way Satan really has... and these groups have of intentionally messing up children’s spirituality so that they won’t turn to God, that they won’t get help from their relationship with God by making it seem as though God is one of their perpetrators.

Ann Maree
I think you’ve built on what Dr Wilder just briefly mentioned. So thank you for that. Yeah, I hope I didn’t misrepresent him and totally understand the difficulty of spiritual counseling, if you will, for those who have been ritualistically abused. Yeah. So thank you for that, but you’re also emphasizing what you said earlier, and that is getting to know the person and how they experienced what happened is so key, because then you find out, you know, Scripture was used, God was used, Jesus was used, whatever. And that helps inform your inform your counsel to be safer so.

Dr. Gingrich
And I think it also helps, you know any of your listeners to not misunderstand what’s happening. Because again, sometimes, if you know if the survivor reacts in a terrified way, they say to the name of Jesus or talking about God, the assumption is made that it’s demonic and it’s not necessarily demonic. Now, I’m not saying that the demonic can’t be there. That’s a whole other question, but it doesn’t mean that it necessarily is, and that’s where the harm comes is, but I can understand how, how, in many of our church circles, if someone starts to scream at the mention of Jesus, you know, when I was taught growing up in Pentecostal circles, you know God, that well, that would be a pretty good indication that some demons were hanging, hanging around, right? It’s because no one had any idea that’s Jesus, and that’s why they’re screaming.

Ann Maree
So, yeah, ask more questions. Know more people know more about people.

Dr. Gingrich
Yeah, find out. Ask questions someone you know. Another example in our churches would be that someone runs out of the church visibly upset during communion service. Well, you know, if they had been part of a satanic mass where they were forced to drink actual blood and eat actual flesh, you might running out, run out, if you have a flashback of that too. Or or like chorus like, I remember once hearing this chorus, I couldn’t tell you all the words, but I know that one of the lines is, and it’s intended as a worship course, “bind me to the altar with cords of your great love.” Well, ritual abuse survivor who has been bound to an altar, a satanic altar, with cords that are not of love. You know, they’re not hearing the love part. They may be having a flashback of that and again, be visibly upset or. Out of the room, and again, the people around them don’t know what’s going on. Either think they’re crazy or think there’s something demonic happening, when they could just be having a flashback. So, I mean, of course, someone needs to be calmed down first, but I would say the first thing to do is just to help someone regulate. Something happens and you go outand find them in the lobby, wherever they are and orient them to here and now. Say, you know, if you’re, especially if you’re someone they know. Say the person that ran out of church screaming is named Susan. Say, “Hey, Susan, it’s Dr. Gingrich. Can you hear my voice? Remember Dr. Gingrich? You know I’m the one...we had lunch together last week. Okay, can you hear my voice?” And if they don’t seem to, it’s like, “Hey, can you just wave your hand if you can hear me.” and try to make contact that way, don’t touch them, because they could perceive that you’re the perpetrator, you know, trying to harm them. But, but generally, especially if they know you and you persist, they’ll be able to hear your voice and you can say, “Okay, you’re really upset. Can you take a couple of deep breaths? I’ll breathe in with you. Let’s breathe in. Breathe in.” Count to three. You breathe out. Or you get someone to, you know, maybe sit on the carpet and lobby and rub their hands, you know, or their feet on the carpet, say, can you feel the carpet you’re here in the church lobby. So in other words, anything that can use the senses, your voice, hearing, you know, feeling a chair arm or a carpet, to kind of bring them back to here and now, because if they’re that upset, they’re someplace else, and then you can find out what’s going on and have a better idea. You know, do we need to have some deliverance prayer at some point later on, or is this a flashback? What got triggered? And you don’t have to figure it all out then. Once the person’s calmed down, you can say, “Hey, do you want to talk? You know, how about we get together, you know, tomorrow or later on today, and we can take a look at what’s happened.” So does that kind of make sense? Is to take some time get someone grounded before you come to any conclusions as to what’s happening or not.

Ann Maree
Yeah, no. And you drew a beautiful picture of community and care, even on, you know, Sunday morning, not necessarily just in the counseling room, if you will, and being attuned to what’s happening, like you said, you know when, when people get up and walk out, or you see them standing in a circle crying with others? Or, yeah, I have tons of questions, but I know we have to wrap up. So I have one last question that I really wanted to ask, and that is, I came up with most of these questions. The storyteller helped. But what questions do you think we should be asking as it relates to these types of abuse, or DID or any of the other related topics?

Dr. Gingrich
Questions? Sorry, in terms of what should we be asking?

Ann Maree
What should we be asking you as the expert? What should the lay counselor be asking?

Dr. Gingrich
I think you know, just asking how they can be most helpful and we’ve addressed that some with kind of listening, sitting with the pain and the suffering, but also, you know, in terms of asking what else someone needs. So if the lay counselor is attached to a church, for example, that their counselee is also a part of sometimes people just need regular community. You know, like not everyone is able to listen to some of this horror, but a survivor needs time with healthy families. You know that they can experience that not all families are abusive, that they’re invited over to someone’s house for dinner once a week, or someone to sit with them in church so they don’t have to sit alone, or, you know, just kind of maybe they don’t have a car and they need someone to drive them to their appointment with the professional counselor, or, you know, some of these kind of practical supports, you know, things that we think of doing in other situations, but we might not think of doing for survivors. So, so you can have people that know more about trauma, that can actually listen to the stories and help you know someone self regulate, maybe be contacts in emergencies, but then you can have other people that are just become friends, just you know that you know with appropriate boundaries, you know that need to be in place so that you know a particular friend or a particular family or a couple isn’t overwhelmed by the needs of one survivor, but that’s where the load can be shared amongst numbers of people and you know boundaries put in place, such as you know only you know certain number of phone calls at certain times of the day. Can’t just drop over anytime, but, you know, we can make a regular go of it on Tuesday for dinner or, you know, things like that, because one of the dangers is that people can burn out. They may have a really compassionate heart and want to really be there. So something I tell both professional counselors and lay counselors and support people, is okay, whatever you’re thinking about doing in terms of involvement with someone. Think, can I do this for 10 years? And that might change how you engage with someone, or the kinds of boundaries you put on it, because we can do a lot of things for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, you know, phone calls in the middle of the night, 24/7, kind of access, availability, but you will not be able to do that for months and years on end, and that will damage the survivor, because you will burn out. I’ve had these conversations with people, and they’ve told me, “Oh no, no, I just feel God has given me a passion, you know, for these people. And I’m actually thinking about opening my home to even some other people with DID who’ve been ritually abused” or whatever, and I’ve been well, why don’t you kind of stick with this person for a while, but my concern is I don’t want you to burn out, because she really needs you, and that will be damaging to her. “Oh no, no, because God’s giving me this passion.” Three months later, all of a sudden, they have no more contact with this person because they did burn out. And so it’s that’s one of the reasons you really want to be thinking long term. I mean, there may be crisis situations, but there may be many crisis situations. So that’s where you need to...the whole body of Christ needs to be involved at times, and more than just one person to help appropriately support people and not do damage by having to withdraw later on.

Ann Maree
Very important, that is, just like I said, I so appreciate about you that you see the vision of the body working together, and you’re able to define for us even what those roles look like, and also just demystify it, because it’s not all scientific. It doesn’t have to all have training involved. It can just, it can just be, be a friend, be a body.

So thank you for that and everything else too. Again, I’m going to try and figure out another way to have you on so I can ask all the rest of the questions I want to know about or take your course, maybe, but I appreciate you. Thank you, and for your years and years of being available to people like this,

Dr. Gingrich
You’re welcome.

Ann Maree
Yeah, so great stuff.