Julie's Time to Talk: Healing from Trauma - Religious Trauma, Politics, & Recovery Via Different Counseling Modalities

In this powerful episode of Her Time To Talk, Meagan Clark sits down with licensed professional counselor Julie, who practices in Missouri and Colorado, to explore the complexities of trauma healing. Julie shares her insights on trauma treatment and the various therapeutic modalities available to support healing.

The conversation delves into the nuanced experiences of religious trauma, particularly within evangelical settings, and how deeply intertwined politics and religion can create lasting emotional harm. Julie courageously reflects on her personal journey of leaving evangelicalism and how it informed her passion for helping others navigate their own healing.

Listeners will gain valuable knowledge on:

• The most effective trauma treatment modalities, including EMDR and Somatic Experiencing
• How trauma is stored in the body and why traditional talk therapy may not be enough
• Recognizing the signs of trauma in clients who may feel “all talked out” from previous therapy
• Religious trauma as a form of intimate psychological harm
• The challenges of navigating family relationships and differing political beliefs
• How empathy can foster connection, even in the face of ideological divides

Julie also emphasizes the importance of building trust and safety with a therapist before beginning trauma work. Her compassionate approach encourages listeners to explore therapy in a way that honors their agency and healing journey.

If you or someone you know is struggling with trauma, religious trauma, or navigating difficult family dynamics, this episode provides valuable guidance and hope.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen CoEB Dume: Buy here
• The MEND Project (for recognizing and healing from emotional abuse): Learn more
• Power and Control Wheel (for understanding abusive dynamics): View here
• NPR Episode on Conspiracy Theories and Family Relationships: Listen here
• BITE Model of Cult Mind Control (to recognize manipulative religious or political influence): Download here

Stay Connected:

• Website: www.hertimetherapy.com
• Patreon: Support the Podcast

Join us in this heartfelt conversation as we explore the power of healing, self-discovery, and reclaiming autonomy in the face of trauma. Tune in and be inspired by Julie’s story and expertise.

Transcript

Meagan: 0:28

thank you so much, Julie, for being here. I'm really excited for our conversation today. I'm hoping we can start out by just having you introduce yourself and tell our listeners, who you are and what you do.

Julie: 0:40

Thanks Megan. It's good to be here. My name is Julie. No, I'm a licensed professional counselor in Missouri and Colorado. I live in Missouri now, but see clients in both states. I love working with folks who struggle a lot with anxiety. PTSD, I'm trained in EMDR from the Mei Burger Institute, and I really love using that modality with clients to help process trauma.

Meagan: 1:04

Great. It sounds like you have so much to offer and a lot of training as well as I'm sure, a lot of personal experience informing what you do. So the main topic that we are diving into today is trauma. And I'm wondering if you can give our listeners just an overview from your experience of some of the maybe most popular and most effective trauma treatment modalities out there.'cause when you know a client is really realizing they're struggling with traumatic events, they jump onto Google and they start Googling what is it that they should start Googling and what is it that they're probably coming across?

Julie: 1:40

Yeah, that's a great question. I think a lot of people will come across EMDR specifically because it's a modality that's been around for about 40 years. Has a lot of studies behind it, is considered the. Trauma treatment of choice by a lot of organizations like the American Psychological Association, the World Health Organization veterans Associations like EMDR for PTSD. Somatic Experiencing is another one that I think clients will come across and somatic experiencing in EMD are similar in really focusing on where you feel sensations. Your body. And I think that's an important piece for trauma work because one of the things that trauma does is it disconnects us from the felt sense of our emotions and our sensations in our body. Can be very disorienting and scary. So I think that would probably be the two things that come to mind when people start talking about trauma work. Because trauma is stored in our bodies and in our emotions a different way. So these other modalities are different than traditional talk therapy, which, person on the couch sort of thinking about therapy, going to therapy, then I'm just gonna have to talk. And that's not necessarily how it will look.

Meagan: 2:54

I'm sure that comes as a big relief to a lot of people to hear that there are forms of counseling out there where it's not just, I have to go and spill all of the deepest, most painful things that have happened to me. Because that can be really intimidating and can even keep people from seeking therapy in the first place.

Julie: 3:11

Oh yeah, absolutely. And there is another school of thought with trauma work called Prolonged Exposure Therapy. I don't use it. It's a little controversial because it can be very overwhelming to have to detail the traumatic event. What I love about EMDR is that. You can get as deep into detail as you want to. And oftentimes you don't even really have to. I notice when people are hesitant to begin EMDR work, they're afraid that they're going to be right back in that experience. But there is one foot in the present. EMDR therapist and one foot in the past, and you always are holding this dual attention and it's important to have a sense of safety with your therapist too before you even begin trauma work. Like that rapport that you are building with your therapist and you feeling safe is the most important piece to moving forward, I think with any trauma therapy.

Meagan: 4:06

Yeah, I agree with any therapy in general. We wanna have that really great rapport and that trust with your therapist and we don't have to. Expect clients to just dive in and tell us their deepest secrets on day one. It's often many sessions in before we get to that kind of work. And that maybe needs to be normalized a bit more.

Julie: 4:25

Yeah, I think, yeah, exactly.

Meagan: 4:27

Yeah. So before we dive too much into EMDR, since that's one of your main modalities that you practice for trauma and really what that looks like and what clients can expect out of an EMDR session, I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about some of the presenting issues that you see your clients come in with that help you realize, oh, you know what, this person is suffering from trauma. They may benefit from EMDR or, exposure or CPT or one of these other many modalities that are out there. You as a clinician, what do you see that just helps you realize oh, this is what they're experiencing?

Julie: 5:02

A lot of times I notice. Clients who have been in therapy for a while and they've been in talk therapy, feel like they're all talked out about their trauma. What more can I actually say about this that I haven't said already? Those folks I feel are really great candidates for these more specific modalities. I know less about cognitive processing therapy and less a lot about prolonged exposure, but about EMDR and the more somatic experiencing. Modalities. I know more about Getting into the body and the feelings is the missing piece really, because they've been so cognitive for so long of I can't change the past. I can't think differently about the past. How do I feel differently about the past and what has happened to me? And there's some suggestion that when people experience a traumatic memory, their brain. Thinks that it's in the present moment, that it's the posterior cingulate cortex. The PCC is being activated and that's the part of our brain that daydreams or is really introspective. So EMDR can put it where it needs to go. It's like a memory that is sad that I remember and I'm not really overwhelmed by in the hippocampus. So I'm looking for clients who feel like they're at the end of their rope a little bit. With therapy and also. Usually we'll list a lot of traumatic events. And the definition of trauma is. Has it caused you to stress? So some clients might say my childhood was pretty good. It wasn't too bad, except for, and then they'll list things that they don't think were big deals, but were emotionally abusive or they were enmeshed with a parent or any number of things. They were in a family with many children and their older siblings sucked away a lot of their parents' time and attention, and they didn't get their needs met. Now they're very anxious. So I think it's a long. On ramp for getting to where we're gonna start EMDR therapy of really focusing hard on what the clients presenting issues are, and then following that thread back to some earlier woundings that maybe they didn't realize were woundings.

Meagan: 7:12

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I think I see that with a lot of my clients as well. Especially women at her time. We specialize in treating women and I find that women tend to downplay a lot of the trauma that they've experienced.

Julie: 7:26

Absolutely.

Meagan: 7:27

Yeah, unless it's something really overt like a car accident or a rape or something very obviously singularly traumatic like that, they tend to downplay all of the little t traumas as a therapist like to call it, throughout their life. And maybe that's the place that. The more traditional talk therapy has to maybe start in therapy and just explore your life, your beliefs, your childhood, so that we can start naming some things as being traumatic or, the combination of them becoming traumatic so that once you have a better understanding of that, you can then seek out this higher level trauma treatment like EMDR. Because you're right, people tend to get to this place of all of this has happened to me and I'm struggling in these specific ways, but now what? Because I know it happened. I get why I am like this, but now what do I do about it?

Julie: 8:18

Exactly. Exactly. Which is why I love these modalities that really focus on the body and the sensations in the body. Because before a feeling is a feeling that you can even name. It's a sensation in your body. So asking someone that and getting them reconnected to their body, slows them down where they realize, oh, I am in the dentist chair and my hands are sweaty. It's also a way to ground them in the present moment. So we're using a lot of these tools just from mindfulness based stress reduction too, and within these trauma modalities, so that. While we're talking about difficult things, we are teaching lots and lots of coping skills and just skills that are good to have to deal with. The stresses of life right now that are used outside of sessions too.

Meagan: 9:06

Yeah. So it seems like you have a really solid understanding of trauma and you're clearly very passionate about helping women to understand all the different ways that they experience it and it pops up in their life, and ultimately what we can do about it. But I wanted to invite you for a minute to share a little bit about what called you to do this work. What in particular was inspiring from your life or maybe from your academic journey that helped you land on trauma as a specialty?

Julie: 9:35

Thank you for asking that. I was late to graduate school, so I had been a stay-at-home mom for a solid 20 years and had lived in evangelicalism for the bulk of that. And I had always wanted to be a therapist. Back when I graduated from undergrad in 2000, I had hoped to just paused my life a little bit to raise my four beautiful children. And once I got into grad school and started learning more about, I. The effects of trauma and really realizing that the system that I had been raised in and lived in and perpetuated myself for so long was inherently a source of my own trauma of religious trauma, which is an area that I specialize in with folks. Particularly when it comes to the ways that women are expected to be very submissive and gentle and quiet, and gender roles are very strictly. Prescribed very traditional, very 1950s housewife, barefoot and pregnant sorts of situations. And that always I always chafed against that, like internally, there was always this part of me that was just like, oh, I just don't like this. Like this doesn't feel like me. So I had decided one way to cope with that was to professionalize being a homemaker. And I got really good in the kitchen and really good at cleaning, and I really, read all the child development books and tried to really throw myself into it full bore. But there's always that niggling bit, in the back of my mind of this doesn't, it doesn't feel right to be controlling people, which is essentially what. White Evangelicalism is about control and hierarchy and authority, and really is what brought us to this political moment, essentially, of Donald Trump being elected the President. One of my favorite books about this is Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen CoEB Dume. She's a, an evangelical Christian herself, actually at Calvin College. She's a history professor, and she wrote this book in 2020. And it goes all the way back to like late forties, early fifties when Richard Nixon first ran for president. And the ways that white evangelicalism has needed to have a cause. So it hitch its wagon to racism. And then in the sixties when the civil rights movement, destroyed essentially in theory it was supposed to, right? Freeing, marginalized communities needed something else. And then. Decided it would be abortion and the way that religion and politics have been so intertwined and it's really something I didn't understand and realize for a very long time. But it's a very intimate thing to be given a message by someone in authority who's usually a man who says, God told me that you need to live your life this way. And if you don't. Consequences are grave, you will go to hell. That is a very intimate trauma. That in some of my clients is on par with sexual trauma. Like your very sense of self and your safety and the desperation that you feel to live according to the fundamentalist religion and truly Megan, like fundamentalism can look in which way, it can be very left-leaning, it can be very right-leaning. It can be any religion, any guru, anyone who says, I have the right way to prescribe your life and you need to do it my way. So that you're safe and happy and whole is a problem. So I see a lot of overlap between coercive controlling behaviors and intimate relationships and the ways that religion can take that same authority and press that authority in on the lives of women particularly and children within that system. So that's why I love healing. From it myself and helping other people to realize that they have agency and choice.

Meagan: 13:38

That's incredibly profound. And you're right, this is a particularly apt and important time to be having this discussion and for people to understand and even just hear the term religious trauma. I know the first time I heard it, I had never really thought of those two words being put together in the same sentence, let alone as one concept. Religion is supposed to be this, spiritual, intimate, beautiful. Thing that is guided by morality and a sense of rightness, and it can so easily be turned and corrupted into a tool of control. With religion being so inherently patriarchal, it definitely becomes a major oppressive force for women. And we are seeing that across. Every news platform and it's definitely the most extreme situation I've seen in my lifetime of that being weaponized.

Julie: 14:30

Agreed. And so I think as clinicians, we have to be so careful when we're talking with folks about spirituality and religion to not be, my job as a therapist is not to deconvert. Every client who comes to me at all, and there are many congregations, more progressive congregations who are very much, Advocating for marginalized communities and for elevating women to their rightful place. So I don't, I wanna make it really clear that I'm not anti-religion, even though I don't consider myself a person of faith anymore. I can understand that faith and spirituality serves a purpose. It brings meaning, it gives people a story, it gives community that cannot be matched in any other circumstance. In our culture, there is nothing like. Being an LDS person, moving to a new town, getting connected with that local LDS congregation who helps unload your truck, who helps unpack packages and brings you food and your kids have friends and you have mom friends, and all of those things and it's beautiful how a faith community can create such a community. Oftentimes though, it's at a cost. You have to subscribe to this very specific. Specific set of beliefs about sexuality, about gender, about femininity and masculinity, about how you spend your money, what you watch, what you read, all of that stuff. It comes at a really high cost, and that's where I think it's just unfortunate and difficult. there's a lot of grief involved in leaving that behind, and that's been my experience for sure.

Meagan: 16:06

Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Why when those from the outside look in and see, oh, there, these systems seem inherently oppressive, why not just leave? You're leaving a lot of the good parts that are part of it too. It's never so black and white.

Julie: 16:22

Exactly. Just like if a woman is in a domestic violence situation, even one where he doesn't lay a hand on her. There's emotional abuse and financial abuse and all the things in the power and control we would talk about. It's very easy to say, why don't you just leave? She also has some financial stability. She has her kids, she's a buffer for them There's just so many nuances and I think that's one of the reasons I love therapy is that it gives us a chance to explore that and the client really has the floor. They decide where this is going. What they need. And for someone who has been historically disempowered, that's wonderful. It feels so good.

Meagan: 16:58

Yeah. Completely new. We actually gave a talk last week to a group of women in downtown Denver where we focused on healthy relationships, and one of the big things we talked about is all the different types of abuse.

Julie: 17:11

Mm-hmm.

Meagan: 17:11

For some reason, we have gotten to a place in society where. We all know physical abuse is abuse. And we're starting to get the sense of psychological abuse, especially with movies like Gone Girl who have come out that really highlight what gaslighting looks like. We're seeing gaslighting tactics in the news. We're seeing a lot of it become very prominent. So that psychological and that physical abuse, we have our heads wrapped around. But it's really interesting in terms of trauma work with women that we also need to look at these concepts of. Emotional abuse, financial abuse, isolation, all of these other elements that come up so strongly for them that they may have never even themselves labeled as trauma.

Julie: 17:55

Yeah, absolutely. And they're all marked by coercive control, every one of them. So a lot of times what I see with women is I pull up the power and control wheel and I say, listen. These are all things that proceed physical and sexual violence. They don't guarantee that physical and sexual violence are gonna occur, but if it ever does occur, lots of these things have been happening to various degrees, and I'll just, I won't read it to them. I'll just say, look at it. What do you notice inevitably. Multiple categories and people just don't know. A website I love for this when it comes to emotional abuse is the MEND project. They have wonderful resources about what this looks like and the things that controlling people tend to say.

Meagan: 18:38

Once we have gone through that personal exploration of the trauma that you've experienced, a next step may be a higher level type of modality, like EMDR treatment. Can you talk a little bit more about what a client can expect in an EMDR session, then what it's really all about, what the focus of EMDR is versus maybe CBT.

Julie: 18:59

Yeah, that's a great question. And there are aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy within EMDR because we are trying to change negative cognitions, negative beliefs and replace them with positive beliefs. But we're not just doing that. Like, Okay, just think differently. Just do it. Just do it. You know, That feels very invalidating sometimes. And oh, if only it were so easy. I tell people when they wanna do EMDR. As I say, first of all, there is a very long preparation period, at least that's for me, with my clients, of getting you used to feeling good in your body. You know what anxiety feels like, you know what depression feels like. You know what it feels like to ping back and forth between these two things. What does it feel like to feel good? So we're really tapping into a lot of visualization exercises, a lot of breathing things, a lot of body things that doing with a therapist. Who is co-regulating your nervous system even virtually with you can be very effective. I give tons of tools in between sessions. I have recorded voice memos with specific exercises that prompt a client to tap bilaterally. I haven't mentioned that part of EMDR. The big part of it is this bilateral stimulation of your brain where you're crossing the midline either through. Sound tapping or eye movement. Eye movement is traditionally what a lot of the studies are around, but I've had good outcomes with both of these other ways. You can also use buzzers. That's a little harder for those of us who do telehealth to have buzzers, but I've used buzzers as a client before and they're interesting. But you're thinking about this memory while you are doing the bilateral stimulation, and it usually lasts about 30 to 60 seconds. To be trained in EMDR often tell clients is like being taught a flow chart. If the client says this, you do this. If the client says this, you do this. So your most important job as the EMDR client is to give me an accurate read on your internal experience. And we've taken a long time to get you more oriented with your internal experience through all of these, what I call EMDR resourcing tools and voice memos with guided meditations and different things of when to tap so that you don't have to put a lot of effort into, what did she tell me to do? You can just turn on the exercise. So we spend a lot of time doing that, and we're always going at the pace of the client. They are always free to stop at any time. It's following a very specific protocol. So it feels really different than talk therapy. I ask a lot of very specific questions. That lights up the topic that we're working on, which could be a memory an issue. It really, the sky's the limit with what you want to be working on in that moment. And I don't do a whole lot of talking. I'm not giving a whole lot of deep reflection or insight for you. I'm guiding you, but I'm setting up the situation so that your brain can make the connections, and that's so much more powerful. We all know this. We felt this when we're being taught something. Someone can tell us. But if we experience it or if we come up with it on our own, there's just so much more meaning behind that. So that's another thing I think that especially clients who have done a lot of talk therapy are surprised by, they'll be doing the tapping for the 45 seconds. I'll say, take a deep breath. I'll ask them, what are you noticing or what's coming up for you? And then they'll tell me some things and sometimes I think they expect me to say something. And I'll just say, go with that. Sometimes I do say something, but mostly I say, let's go with that. Go with that, see what comes up for you. And then we're just at it again. During that time, a lot of times what will happen is that folks will start to cry. They might feel a little overwhelmed. In that case, as an EMDR trained therapist, I have interventions, to help ground you and bring you back into the present moment and feeling good. We get to that processing point after a very long time. I. Of getting comfortable together.

Meagan: 22:59

That's a really great explanation of, we're not just diving straight into the hard stuff, especially with EMDR, you as a client and also as a therapist. We don't really talk that much during the process. We don't have to say muchs more like creating the environment for the body and the mind to do the work that it's designed to do. I think with a lot of my clients, both those I've done EMDR with and otherwise, I like to remind them that, approximately 70% of people go through these really traumatic events and like collective traumas, like hurricanes and really big things like that too, and get through it just fine without developing PPSD symptoms because we're meant to adapt and be able to handle. Bad things that happen in life, we're meant to ride the waves. So when that process doesn't work right, and we get stuck and we develop, P-T-S-D-E-M-D-R is one of many modalities that can help you slow down and give the body a process to reset and actually heal and move the memories where they need to be. It does not always take telling the whole trauma story to actually do that work.

Julie: 24:05

Absolutely. And it's funny, when I start to teach clients some of these vagus nerve, we, I haven't even mentioned polyvagal theory. That's another modality I pull from a lot. Lot. Did you a pull up your episode? I know you do a whole episode on that, but that this tapping and this humming and this bilateral stimulation, those are often things that people have been doing and they didn't realize that they've been doing it. All this time and I say, look at what your body already knows that you need. And that's very validating for them too.

Meagan: 24:31

That's really powerful. Yeah. So to encapsulate EMDR, which by the way we should have said this, for those who don't know what EMDR stands for, it stands for I Movement desensitization and reprocessing. And even though it's, it literally has it in the name eye movement we reprocess memories through that bilateral stimulation that. Eye movement is just one of many types. Like Julie mentioned, there's the tapping on your shoulders that we call the butterfly tap. You can hold buzzers in your hand. You can even do it through audio where you have one little beep in one ear and then the other any kind of stimulation that crosses the center line of your body can help this system come online and do the processing. But in that whole process of EMDR, we really do start with. Coping skills, coping and regulating and feeling good in your body and developing trust with your therapist for many sessions before we ever have to dive into the actual trauma memory. I'm wondering how long that's what we call resourcing that first phase where we're just learning to feel good before we dive into the hard stuff. How long does that often last for you with the women that you've treated?

Julie: 25:38

Depends. I have some clients I've been seeing for years and we already really comfortable with each other. And so once they're able to start really using the resourcing. Exercises. It doesn't last very long. I would say with a new client who says EMDR protocol, I want it right now. I would probably spend three or four sessions. And with EMDR too. I like to have regular weekly sessions where I've even had good results, doing a session a day over three days. So we get this momentum going. That's really been useful if someone can handle that with their time and their money situation. But starting EMDR around something is like Barb Berger, the person who trained both of us, I think. Says that starting in EMDR. Therapy is like you need to finish your antibiotics. You need to take your 10 days of amoxicillin uhhuh if you don't want the infection to come back. So really, once you're in it it's good to stay in it until you really do get to a suds of zero. SUDS stands for Subjective Unit of Distress. It's a zero to 10 scale that you use to say. This is how much distress this is causing me. 10 is the worst. Zero is no distress or neutral. So there's also, during the resourcing time there's time to learn the lingo. EMDR has a lot of lingo that you learn that I'm just throwing around, Everyone who's listening should know this. So there's a lot of educating, I guess that comes with it. And I think a good, the EMDR therapist is going to educate you. The times that I have had clients who say, I tried it, but it didn't work for me, or I didn't understand it, the therapist really just jumped in and didn't give a whole lot of education around it. And so that's a really important piece for me is that you know exactly what you're doing and why we're doing it, and I think that's when you have better outcomes too.

Meagan: 27:23

Absolutely. I love what you said there about the consistency piece and the antibiotic metaphor is perfect for that. No matter really what type of modality you're using and what type of counseling style you're in, it is good to stay consistent and give it a chance before giving feedback to your therapist that this. Really isn't feeling like it's working and what do we need to shift here? So I know we're getting close to our time here, but I'm wanting to explore a little bit around religious trauma and why EMDR therapy may be particularly good for women who've experienced religious trauma since it's becoming so prevalent. Is there maybe some other counseling that you would recommend first before EMDR? Or can this be something that is helpful for people that are realizing they are in that religious trauma space or struggling with our exposure to it through the media right now?

Julie: 28:13

I think starting with EMDR would be perfectly okay. There are a lot of. Therapists who are specializing in this now besides just me in the world, reclamation Collective has a lot of resources around this. There's a therapist directory on their website where you can find someone who's in your area. I used to be on that directory, I don't think I am anymore. But they also have support groups you can find. A lot of this can be healing done in community, which is helpful. So a quick Google search you can find. Lots of online things. I wish that there were more in person opportunities for people because churches are you're just there in person every week. It's very ritualistic. You're making connections and relationships, and it's very hard to lose those. But E-M-G-R-I think is a great place to start because a lot of times people are raised in these faiths and it's such a part of their family history. How they make sense of their childhood was through this lens of faith. And so when someone comes to me and they're very anxious and they don't know why, because their childhood was fine, and then we're digging into things and realize that I was really scared of hell. Growing up, the preacher would talk about hell and I didn't wanna go there, and so I raised my hand and accepted Jesus into my heart, but I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew I didn't wanna go to hell. That can be something we process in EMDR.

Meagan: 29:34

That's a really powerful example that even through the adult lens of looking back on what you've been conditioned to believe and what you are just naturally participating in, because your whole family unit did now, if we sit and look at it and you're asking questions that maybe family is. Not comfortable with you asking or preachers are not comfortable with you asking. Therapy can be a good space that is actually safe to explore those things through EMDR and multiple different modalities. So from your perspective and the history that you have had getting out of an evangelical church situation, what kind of advice would you give to those of us now who are maybe struggling with our faith or struggling in even our family units because of the way politics and religion is being so intertwined right now and the way it's causing a lot of division, what advice can you put out there?

Julie: 30:24

I think finding people who are willing to hold that space for you to ask those hard questions without being offended. And there are plenty of people who are willing to do that.

Meagan: 30:41

This is something coming up in my sessions, a lot of I can't believe my. Father thinks this way and I don't know how to continue a relationship with a person who's telling me I should, not be able to have access to birth control or a job, or, a lot of these things are being put on the question or on the table now that is really causing a lot of internal turmoil and turmoil in families and as clients. Bring that up to me. None of us have a great answer. Even the therapists are struggling with this too. It's true. No, I think I was listening to NPR one morning and I wish I could remember who they were interviewing, but they were talking about how the only way to bridge this divide between family members who really are in the mega cult, it's a cult. The bite model of cult mind control of how information and expectations are pressed in on someone To stay in the cult is to have empathy. For the person who is in the cult. So you could throw facts at them all day. You could get angry with them all day. But that gentleness and that empathy, which I define empathy as the ability to understand another person's perspective, even if you don't agree with them, that you can say, I can see why you as a white. 50, 60-year-old man would feel the way that you do about this situation, that it would feel like the government is too big and it's bloated and it's wasteful, and we need to cut things. Like I can understand why you would feel that way. That makes sense to me. That is not me saying, and I agree with you. And you're right. It is that's not empathy. So that I think is probably the challenge for us. And it feels like a big ask because the other side is antipathy. In fact, there are people within Evangelicalism. I. Namely this comes out of Moscow, Idaho, with Doug Wilson specifically, and another guy who wrote this book, I can't remember, but it was called The Sin of Empathy. Like empathy is a sin Wow. To these people that we are cre they think that men are being soft and women need to be put back in their place. And it's like handmade tale stuff. To the max. So we have to be the, when it always feels like we are the bigger people. And it's really exhausting. It really is, and I think especially in the therapy space, it's important that clients know they can come into that space and express This is so hard. Yeah. I wanna be the quote unquote bigger person and show empathy towards the 60, 70-year-old white male who is voting in favor of what he thinks is gonna be the best for the economy because he's facing retirement. And that makes sense, and I get that. And it's really damaging and hurtful that they also voted against my reproductive autonomy in healthcare. Both things can be true at once, and that is another thing we teach a lot in therapy. Yes. Is two things can be true at once. So just knowing that we can say therapy is a space to come and grapple with these seemingly opposing ideals and recognize just the toughness of how to navigate all of this and that we're all in it together right now.

Julie: 33:54

And that's another thing I think is finding your community of people. Who feel the same way and people who can let you vent, Because venting to your dad who is a Trump supporter is not really an option. So how do you continue to build that community and even hold those boundaries too? If there are people that you cannot discuss this with, then say, so I just don't, that's not where I want our relationship to go, which is another thing I love about therapy is we have lots and lots of ideas about keeping and setting good boundaries.

Meagan: 34:22

And being able to maintain relationships, even though there's gonna be an area that's maybe off limits, right? Yeah. But it seems like a lot of this kind of comes down to, with our main topic and focus here being trauma, that trauma tends to push us to isolate. And one of the best things we can do to heal and combat it is to find community, whether that's in therapy. And spiritual organizations and friendships, colleagues. And the list goes on. Thank you so much for coming and sharing a bit of your story and your wisdom with us today, Julie. I think this topic was absolutely so timely and so needed, and I just wanted to invite you to share any final reflections or things that you would like women to know out there that are struggling with trauma and looking to maybe seek help through therapy.

Julie: 35:08

Yeah, I think the hardest part sometimes is trying to find it, having the courage to make the call, send the email, try different therapists, have consultation calls, see who's a good fit for you across all the modalities, no matter what you choose, you feeling connected and heard and seen by your therapist is the number one predictor of success in therapy. So you can be choosy with who you spend time with and who you wanna talk to. And that's a really wonderful thing because women so often just feel so disempowered.

Meagan: 35:37

Yeah. Oh, I love that so much. Be choosy. Get all kinds of consultations before making your choice on who you're gonna spend your time with and your heart with, and your vulnerable side.

Julie: 35:48

Absolutely. And if it's not working, change, and that's okay. You have more choices than you realize right now.

Meagan: 35:54

Yeah, and what a good cornerstone of especially feminist therapy where we're so focused on women's empowerment and choice, even in the therapy space is a key part.