Episode 361 - "Faith, Trauma, and Intensive Therapy: Meet Rachel Moses"

Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. Today, Michael sits down with Rachel Moses, the newest therapist to join the Restoring the Soul team. In this heartfelt conversation, Rachel shares her fascinating journey—from growing up with dreams of being a missionary, to living in Munich, Germany with Young Life, and ultimately becoming a seasoned therapist with nearly two decades of experience. Together, Michael and Rachel delve into her background working with individuals abroad, her deep experience with trauma and intensive therapy, and how challenges like depression shaped her life and faith. Rachel opens up about her passion for helping motivated clients do the deeper work of healing, as well as the importance of community and compassion in her counseling approach.

Transcript

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Rachel Moses, welcome to the Restoring the Soul podcast. Thank you. It's great to talk with you because you are Restoring the Soul's newest therapist. And you and I literally about an hour ago, just got done with a two week intensive with an individual and I had the gift and the joy of having you sit in with me for all of that as part of your training. We'll talk about in a moment about how you have previous intensive counseling experience, about how you've been a licensed therapist for many, many years. But it was really cool to sit in with you. Thank you. I loved it. Tell us and tell our listeners a little bit about your background and specifically before you became a therapist, you lived abroad and that was part of what led to you becoming a therapist. So tell us, tell us that story. Yes. So when I was, well, I should, I guess it starts probably back when I was 8 or 9, I had, I believe she was a great aunt or some, I don't know the connection to my family, but she was a missionary in Papua New guinea and she came to our church one time and spoke. And I think, I don't even remember her speaking. I just remember saying, I want to be a missionary when I grow up. And that was a very fleeting moment. And then I lived lots of life in between my 8 year old self and my 20 something year old self. That would have not led me into that direction. But when I was in college, I did a summer at Fellowship of Christian Athletes. And that summer was a summer where, having grown up in the church, I believed in God. But it was a summer where I would say that I really had this relationship where it started to come from the inside out. What sport were you an athlete in to be part of fca. I was a cheerleader and a dancer, so I wasn't a part of FCA really. The draw was, is I was a registrar. So I would go to the camps and help sign people up. Okay, so I got to travel. It was actually my first time I ever came to Colorado was that summer. Okay. So the draw was travel. But through that experience, I would say that's where my faith really took off as an individual and as a relationship and knew that I wanted to go into missions. And again, the draw was travel. And I talked with a guy named Dean Troon with Impact Ministries International and he said, we want to set up a team to go to Australia. And I said, sign me up, but we don't have a team to go to Australia. We have two women in Munich. So I said, okay, I'll go there. So I went to Munich, Germany, which was supposed to be for a month. And during that month, the two women, they did not get along very well. And I came in as a naive 20 year old who was trying to be peacekeeper or peacemaker. But I really valued these women. I love them both individually and learned so much from them. But in that month I started, I was asked, I was offered a job as an au pair so I could do an au pair job and the ministry at the same time. So I did that for nine months. But during that nine months, I began volunteering for the youth at my church. And they came to me and said, hey, we're bringing Young Life to Munich area. There's two international schools there at the time. So I was asked to go on staff with Young Life. I went home for three months to raise support and moved back. So my one month in Munich turned into five years. Wow. Yeah. I forget. Do you speak German? Yeah, yeah, I know enough to get around. My name is Michael. Yes, I saw Rachel. Exactly. Yeah. Ganal. So during that time of being in Young Life Saf, I would say that I really learned what true community was. There were some other Young Life people that I. We did trainings together. We were all in our young 20s, trying to figure out life, working through our own stories, working through our own family of origin stuff. And it was through that experience of my own. I would say, looking back at the time, I don't know if I would have said this, but looking back, I was definitely struggling with some depression and trying to figure out who I was. And then also seeing other people in ministry, other leaders, pastors, expats, just in general struggling, marriage issues, their own anxiety, their own addiction stuff coming out. And then also working with the kids that I was working with Young Life and really wanted to figure out and get trained in. How do I help these individuals and be able to name what's happening without them actually even saying to me with words what they're they're feeling. So through that experience and my own depression, and I also went through a heartbreak during that time that I decided I wanted to go get my master's in counseling. So I made the very spiritual decision of do I move to Seattle, where it rains all the time, it rains all the time in Munich, or do I move to Colorado where it's sunny? So I chose Colorado. Right. And went to Colorado Christian University and got my master's in counseling. Were you going to go to the Seattle school? Was that the other option? I think it was Mars Hill at the time. Yeah. Marsh Hill Graduate School now Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Yes. So very cool. And so you've stayed in Colorado since then. What year was that that you got your degree? I graduated at the end of 2007. Okay, so you've been practicing almost 20 years. Yes, 18 years. 18 years, yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty good at math. No, not really. And during that time, you've done a lot of different kinds of work. But when we first started talking about you coming to Restoring the Soul, one of the things that was so appealing was you have a pretty broad base of experience. Talk to me about when you first got out of your degree. That's kind of paying our dues. And you're trying to get your hours to become licensed. You are a licensed professional counselor in Colorado. What was the kind of work that you did right away? Well, I did my internship while I was still in Colorado University, Colorado Christian University. I did an internship with the Joy House, which works with women who are coming out of domestic violence relationships. And then I also did an internship at, I forget what it's called right now. Missionary down in Monument. Mission Training International. Yes, thank you. Mission Training International. We know those folks well. We've done a lot of work with them. So I did a little bit of training for. At the time, it was for the teenagers and the kids getting ready to go abroad and help them kind of cross cultural. So already at that time, fresh out of grad school and in that first two years being drawn to wanting to work with folks that are serving abroad overseas. Yes. So I originally move or came to Colorado Christian University with the hopes of moving back to Europe to work with people in ministry. But I met my husband, had three kids, and I'm still here. So in the process of that, after university, I began working with Knippenberg Patterson Langley and Associates, which is a practice that specializes in neurodiverse population, social anxieties, adhd, autism. And I led social skills groups for the pre K and also the high school groups there. And then I did a lot of individual and parent work. Yeah, we know that group well because our kids went through a number of the programs there with their neurodiversity and learning issues. And then I did some work with them before I was diagnosed with asd, which I've talked about on other podcasts. And so Craig Knippenberg in particular, he's a Master of Divinity, also a therapist, and has made a big impact on the Denver community. What was it like to work there and to do that work. Because neurodiversity then wasn't as understood or even talked about as much as it is now. I would say the thing that I took away from that really was the people I worked with because it felt like family and such again had such a great community and being a new therapist, I had great minds to pick. Lots of things to learn working with that population. I loved working with kids. They say out of the mouth of babes. I mean, they say such truthful things and it's unfiltered and it's beautiful and hilarious and I wish I would have done a better job of writing down some of those things that they said. It also taught me a ton about my own self regulation and appreciation for teachers. Having eight kids that have sensory issues or ADHD or just trouble regulating themselves and trying to regulate that room and not get overwhelmed myself taught me a lot about my own, my own sensory stuff. I say anyone that does therapy with children and in particular neurodiverse, I imagine bouncing off the walls or complete silence because that's kind of what I saw in the groups that I witnessed. So God bless you for that. So then how did you go from that training stage and working there forward to the kind of work that before coming to Restoring the Soul, you were in a private practice? I started a private practice as soon as I finished grad school as well. Working with teens all the way up to adults. That's shifted as I've gotten older, so now I'm mostly working with adults. I did a lot of coming to me for depression, anxiety, sexual abuse as a child, now as an adult, so lots of different issues. And through that work I realized that I loved being able to sit and be present with people in their trauma and give them space to begin to process that and heal from it. And that became just really, really rewarding to me for them to make sense of their own stories. And that felt more aligned to my heart and why I went into counseling in the first place. And along the way there somewhere you got involved with Quiet Waters, which is a local ministry in Denver that started out working exclusively with pastors. I know they've opened up a little bit beyond that. It's a little bit different intensive model than we have. But what drew you to start to do intensive counseling there? I think that desire to work with people in ministry and move overseas never left me. That was a thing that I was bringing up every couple years to my family and something that I was pursuing but didn't know what that would look like, and so I had another colleague that was also a therapist for Quiet Waters. And she invited me into interview there because they were looking for someone. So that's how that started. And I interviewed with them right before COVID and then Covid happened for a year and then I started with them after. After Covid, when, you know, the world got busy. Right, right. And so there you. You maintained your private practice and then would intermittently do intensives. And what you're doing at Restoring the Soul, the goal is to bring you on full time and work up to that. Yes. What do you like about intensive counseling? Because it's obviously very different from the weekly hour long session where you might not see people every week. That's rare. It's my experience and it's hard to get traction. So what's different for you about intensive counseling? I would say it feels like we do six months of counseling within a week or two week period of time. So it allows people to go a lot deeper, a lot quicker, but also without the fear. When I see someone once a week or every other week, I have to call it the bathtub effect. You have to take them all the way down to the bottom and you have to bring them back up. Otherwise they're dysregulated and their life is not going to feel. It's going to feel out of balance. And that doesn't feel a very kind thing to do. Right. Re traumatizing sometimes. Absolutely. So in an intensive, there's not as much space for them to be dysregulated. There's a sense of safety, of like, I get to check in with them the next day and see how they're doing. And we get to keep doing that work continually. Tell me about your work with trauma. Because you talked about sexual abuse and I know you've worked with other kinds of folks with trauma. What's your approach? And you don't have to go into detail naming theorists and things like that, but you have studied internal family systems very, very deeply. You're trauma informed. You do emdr. Tell me how that all blends together as you sit with people. Yeah, I think people are aware of what's not working in their lives and the parts of themselves that they don't like. And that's usually what brings them into the counseling office. So I like to kind of call out who they were actually created to be and the giftings that they have that they might not even be aware of themselves. And so when individuals begin to really realize. I caught their core true self when we can point that out. There's a sense of safety, that they can start looking at their wounded selves and we look at these different parts of them that maybe they're struggling with or don't like. And when we can build compassion towards those parts, there's an opening and an understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. And parts begin to just heal from the inside out. Yeah, I've witnessed that in my work and even in the work that we've done recently and conversations that we've had that we have to show up and we have to be willing to do the hard work. But there's something very organic that healing, I think our soul, we would all say, you know, God is deeply involved with and the source of healing, but that when we show up, something organic happens within where the those defensive, self protective survivor parts of us just start to fall away, almost like scales that begin to fall off and then what's true about us emerges. Yeah, I think there's something powerful too of being witnessed. We can experience our own pain and we get flooded by it and then we get lost, as they say, lost in the sauce. Yes, yes. And so when there's someone with you present in that moment that is witnessing your pain, but they can actually help lead you out of it, that's where healing happens and it feels a little bit safer and not as overwhelming. Yeah. This is always a strange question to ask because. Well, I'll just ask the question, how does your faith and your spirituality play into your work? Because again, watching you work and hearing from other therapists that you've sat in with, you know, you're not a person that prescribes Bible verses and just says, well, let me pray away your pain, or something like that. You're a person with a deep spirituality. And what does that mean for you when you sit down with someone? I guess I would say I believe God is good. I believe he's sovereign and that he is there and he is present. But he's not just. And he doesn't dismiss our pain, he actually validates our pain. He's lived it, he knows it. And I want to bring that to the counseling office of their pain is seen and there is God. It does bring comfort to that pain. And even as you talked about earlier, and thank you for sharing this, that you struggled with depression, I'm guessing back in the post college and when you were in Germany, my guess is that that was all interwoven in your spiritual journey as well as a mental health and emotional Issue. Yeah. Because depression, almost more than anything else, raises questions about God's presence and that gap that I write about in Sacred Attachment. You know, you believe these things about God, then why don't you have joy? Why are you struggling those kinds of things. Can you say more about that, what that was like? Like spiritually, how. How God brought you through or how you experienced him or not in the midst of that? Yeah. I remember at the time, I described it like I was going through the desert with my entrails hanging out is what it felt like. Wow. But looking back, it was probably the best four years of my life. I learned so much about myself, who I was, who I was, my identity in him. I felt very blessed at the time of learning what community really was and what it was to receive people just loving me. For me during that time, too, I was also doing a lot of my own work around my relationship with my mom. And I was going through a Bible study at the time called Breaking Free. Beth Moore. Yes. Yeah. So looking at my own sin, but looking at some of that generational stuff, and this was actually a key moment. It was Christmas time, and I wasn't gonna get to go home for Christmas. And it was my first Christmas never going home. And my mom, she surprised me and showed up for four days. Wow. I don't know why this is ringing of emotion. That's okay. Thanks for being real. It was during that time, as I was going through that, just asking her questions about her own life. And I learned so much about her, and it gave me so much compassion of why she was the way she was and the way she parented me and the way she showed up. And there was a breaking free in that for me, of forgiveness for her and understanding and an understanding for my own self. So that was. That was really powerful. That is powerful. Come completely unexpected. And not through, you know, five or 20 therapy sessions. No. But through reading a book, letting that material get inside of you. And then both the sadness of it's the holidays and you're going to be alone and then her coming like that. It takes a lot of courage for us as adults to engage our parents. That's been my experience and as I've worked with so many others, because on the one hand, we want them to share their story and what's inside of them. And on the other hand, I know I've been afraid of that at times. So. That was amazing that you did that. Yeah, it was really powerful. I think it helped my teenage anger part to simmer down and Just have a lot of compassion for her and a lot of compassion for myself and understand my own struggles a little bit more. When you were describing that time in Germany, I don't think that all four years were like going through a desert with your entrails out. Maybe it was, but. But certainly a time of. Of becoming, and that it included that struggle. And yet you said that it was the best four years. Looking back, and I think that's important for listeners to hear that there can be seasons, that there's things like depression or other really, really difficult struggles. Then there can be just things of wanting to be at a different season in your life. Like, I want to be able to do more or go get my degree. But when we look back, we can see that what might not have felt like the best thing actually was the best thing because something was happening behind the scenes. And things that don't seem spectacular, they're kind of ordinary, but they're very formative. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm guessing that you bring that into the counseling room, that perspective. To give people patience for what feels awful in the moment and hope. And there is hope on the other side. Yeah, absolutely. And back to the idea. We were praying earlier, and I happen to just feel led to pray. That verse from Genesis when Joseph says that what was intended for evil, that God will use for good, that even depression and things like that can be part of looking back, a very healing, integrative experience that actually made you who you are today. Yeah. Yes. That's powerful. When you're here at restoring the soul, what's your hope for the kinds of clients that you work with? I mean, we have some ideas about that with your background, but who's the ideal client that you'd like to sit down with for an intensive? My first response is, I love working with motivated people, people that they want to change. They may not know how it's going to happen or what that looks like, but they're. But they're motivated. They might be scared, but they really do know that there is hope and there is change. Yeah. And willingness to do a little bit of the deeper work and to dig in. It doesn't matter. The trauma, the story. I think there's beauty in all stories. So I think anybody really that just. Wants to do the work, it strikes me that you have a really strong sense that when someone sits down before you and they start to open up their story and their pain, that no matter how, quote, bad it is or how deep the trauma is, that there's not a Cockiness or an arrogance in you, but there's a confidence that's there that I kind of know what to do. I can handle this situation and more than anything, I can and will journey with this person and I can be a source of hope. Yeah, I hope so. I don't necessarily always feel that. Right, right. I think at the end of the day it comes back to my own beliefs that God is. He has the authority and he's in charge and he's using me. And I want to be an open vessel and if I don't know the answers, I'm going to ask for help from people that might have wisdom that I don't have. Yeah, well, that's one of the things I love about our team is I try to be open and learn from others. But our team of six therapists, now there's lots of educating back and forth, even to the point. I think you heard about this. No, you were actually here, you started your training in the summer where we took off an entire week and we paid all of our staff to be here for the week as if they were doing an intensive. Our support staff and everybody and all the therapists. There were five of us at the time. We each presented a different topic every day for three hours. And that was. Everybody reported that that was one of the best highlights of what they've experienced as a team. So we looking forward to learning from you as you bring your heart and your gifts and hopefully we can all grow together. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. So, Rachel, as we wrap up, first of all, thank you for taking the time today. I know that you've had a busy couple of weeks with family and back to school commitments and things like that. We've also just done a two week intensive. So we are so looking forward to Restoring the Soul for you to continue to. To work with clients and onboard, which is going to be a several month process. You're going to be working with individuals who come for intensives. You're going to be working with couples who are coming to do intensive work. You've already been involved in some of the consults, so people who are calling here may encounter you kind of as that not the first point of contact, but the first therapeutic level of contact to kind of hear a person's story. So I'm so excited you're here. Proud to have you on our team. Thank you much. So thank you for this conversation and welcome to Restoring the Soul. Thank you very much.