Brenda (00:03.59)
Well hey Alex, it's great to be back recording again today.
Alex (00:07.424)
It is.
Brenda (00:08.646)
Yeah, well, since we met the last time, my granddaughter has arrived. Lucy Jane, little Lulu as I'm calling her. It's just been so delightful and just what a joy grandchildren are. Our first granddaughter, our only daughter having our first daughter and so it's 31 years since we've had a baby girl and we're all pretty smitten. So that's been exciting for me and you know one of the things that I like to
Alex (00:14.102)
Yeah!
Alex (00:29.571)
Wow.
Brenda (00:38.853)
that I often say is I play hard to work hard and So I did work really hard with the new baby I took the night shift for several nights and that was great So I really needed to get out and do some serious play before this podcast
Alex (00:42.21)
Yeah.
Alex (00:46.731)
huh.
Alex (00:52.301)
Yep.
Brenda (00:53.231)
And so Paul and I have just been having a big time. I know you just went to a singer songwriter event. Maybe you can share a little bit about that. But we did that with a guy named Charles Esten who actually found out as a believer. And I was kind of relating. was like, he's a believer, drinks a little, curses a little. Okay, might be my kind of guy.
Alex (01:05.432)
Hmm.
Alex (01:11.831)
Hahaha!
Brenda (01:14.056)
And then I know don't send me any hate mail because of that comment. He was just keeping it real. Okay? And then, golly, I got two, I got one stand -up paddleboard and decided I, you know, I can't really play by myself. So now I got two stand -up paddleboards. I might buy a fleet before it's over if I could get five or six people to join me. But I with one of my children. We floated down the Tennessee River for about two hours.
Alex (01:18.839)
Yeah.
Yeah
Alex (01:32.385)
No.
Brenda (01:43.962)
had our other grandson Lulu's little brother Parker spent the night and of course hanging out with a 19 month old just makes you takes you back to a whole different level of play right like baby play baby shark doo doo doo doo doo doo mama shark doo doo have this little toy did you put in the water in it and it's a fish that swims and sings that it was amazing
Alex (01:44.698)
Wow.
Alex (01:52.102)
Mmm.
Alex (02:03.991)
Brenda (02:05.243)
And then on a whim, I was like, if that wasn't enough excitement for the weekend as I was paddle boarding, I'm seeing all these jet skis go up and down the river. And I'm like...
I gotta do it. I just gotta do it. Now I have this bigger plan to eventually want to buy a boat, so I'm also trying to ease my husband into this idea. And so I thought if I can get him on a jet ski, at least it's the first step in getting him on the river, because he's certainly not going to do the paddle boarding with me. That is not his cup of tea. So anyway, we went jet skiing last night and it was just a blast. So anyway, I am all caught up with fun and should be able to be serious about some work today. That's right.
Alex (02:31.213)
Right? Right?
Alex (02:40.401)
Now you're ready to work? Yes.
Brenda (02:44.443)
That's right. What about you? You got anything you want to throw in in terms of?
Alex (02:47.538)
We did do a singer -songwriter event this weekend. Also, we have followed a songwriter named David Wilcox since we were in college, since 1990, I think. We saw him in a little old dry bar in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He's from that area.
and I've been waiting to see him in Eddie's attic in Atlanta for literally decades. And so my best friend from college met us there and we got to hear him. And it's one of the few times we all agreed, it's one of the few times that we enjoyed his new music as much as we did the old stuff that we remember and love. just doesn't happen very often.
Brenda (03:16.606)
Hmm.
Alex (03:36.613)
And I think what's interesting is one of the reasons that we enjoyed it is just being able to see some of like his transformations and growth. And he was talking about some trauma topics and he was weaving some beautiful things together. He has a song about my own worst enemy, about the inner critic. He has some songs about some family dynamics that he's explored and he's got a beautiful song called, it's the beautiful that saves me, which we're gonna
Brenda (03:49.364)
Hmm.
Alex (04:05.587)
be talking about as we talk about this season on trauma. So it just felt like this beautiful time to revisit what it felt like to be 19 and hearing him for the first time. And then also to be 50, almost 53 next week. And he's still singing things that really resonate with me and with all of us and with everyone there. So it was a fun time.
Brenda (04:06.858)
Hmm.
Brenda (04:31.86)
Hmm.
Well, that's great. Well, that is a great setup also to start talking about this episode today and the season that we are in talking about trauma. Today, we really want to focus in on what are some of the different types of trauma and what is the impact of trauma. And we always like to start a little bit with a review of where we've been. And then at the end, we'll tell you where we're going, because I think that's how good podcasting and writing works, right? Where have we been? Where are we going? We got to keep those things in mind.
Alex (04:53.565)
Mm.
Brenda (05:02.843)
One of the things we said last week, Alex, is that trauma is actually on a spectrum.
Alex (05:07.579)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (05:09.101)
And there are quite a few definitions really for trauma out there. It's one of the things that sometimes makes it a little bit confusing, I think. But we just said that trauma is basically your wounds, your suffering story, hurts, and looking at like extreme, even extreme harm that we can have. And the reality is, is because we live in a fallen world, no one's gonna escape traumatic experiences.
Alex (05:27.718)
Mm -hmm
Brenda (05:36.095)
And as Christians, we can't prevent trauma from happening in the lives of those around us, but we can learn to support those who have experienced trauma. And that's really the focus of our podcast is how can we, as everyday Christians in a conversational counseling world that we're talking about, come alongside and support people who have faced trauma.
Alex (05:45.586)
Mm -hmm
Alex (06:01.247)
So one of the ways that we define trauma for this podcast series is that trauma is our response to painful events that cause us to feel powerlessness and abandonment and that result in shame and fragmentation. And so that's going to be our working definition throughout the podcast series.
Brenda (06:20.878)
Hmm.
And one of the things we pointed out last episode that I want to say again is that everyone reacts differently to painful events and our response to that painful event is influenced by a lot of different factors. You could have two people that experience the same event, but their experience of that event and the aftermath of that event could be very different. And so those are some of the things we want to look at. Now, this week as I was going over this definition with my co -counselors, we were talking about this idea of shame that
Alex (06:28.298)
Mm
Alex (06:34.602)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (06:49.417)
Mm.
Brenda (06:51.829)
you've inserted in the definition that you've kind of come up with that is a working definition that you have found this really helpful. And I like it. But we were wrestling with the idea of shame to say, shame makes sense when we look at how somebody has perpetrated us. You know, if we look at abuse or rape or assault. But we were asking the question, what does shame look like when it's just natural disaster or even an accident? Something along those lines.
Alex (06:54.034)
Mm
Alex (06:57.931)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Alex (07:17.652)
Mm -hmm. Well, let's get back to first our own discussion about shame in a previous podcast where we talked about shame is that feeling that something's wrong with me. It's not the guilt. did something wrong, but something is wrong with me or I am wrong. And so I think shame comes into traumas that maybe haven't been perpetrated on us by other people. Like you said, natural disaster in the sense of when we find ourselves not able to just get over it when it still hurts and when we're still experiencing
the pain or other effects, know, other effects that come out of the pain from the trauma, then we begin to ask ourselves this question like, what's wrong with me? And then another tangential question that I think all of us wrestle with when we're hurting in any way is we ask ourselves like, is God punishing me? Have I done something wrong? And then it goes to, am I wrong? Like, am I a failure? Am I not enough?
And so I think shame just, again, I think shame is that default operating system of the human experience. It's like always running in the background. And then when pain comes, we particularly wrestle with shame because we have this sense that maybe other people could handle it better than we do, or other people aren't experiencing this because something's wrong with us.
Brenda (08:38.583)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, and think you make a good point that operating system is what sin the mark sin left on us We see that as early as the garden with Adam and Eve, right?
Alex (08:47.613)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
But my favorite thing about the question is that your group is wrestling with it because even as we've prepared for almost every one of these podcasts on trauma is that we are wrestling. And I think that probably more than any series that we've done, our listeners are going to hear the wrestle that you and I have. And I want them to hear the wrestle that we have because I think it's a good wrestle. think it helps bring out the nuance and complexity of these topics. I think it's a wrestle that the church
Brenda (09:00.111)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (09:04.121)
Mm
Alex (09:19.539)
actually needs to enter into a little bit more and so it might make people a little bit uncomfortable that we're not making like these really clear and defined statements but we're going to bring you into our wrestle and that's intentional.
Brenda (09:36.675)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to start off with our first rest wrestle and that's the terminologies. And, you know, some of the terminology that we hear in the world, so to speak, and some definitions that we want to give in talking about events and patterns of trauma. So why don't you kick us off on that?
Alex (09:42.293)
Mm -hmm
Alex (10:00.611)
So what we hear, probably the first maybe diagnosis that we've heard in relation to trauma many years ago was PTSD and that's post -traumatic stress disorder. And that refers to just this collection of symptoms that develop after either experiencing or even witnessing a traumatic event. And those symptoms tend to affect a person's ability to be able to function day to day.
So we've heard that associated, think probably first maybe for many of us, the first place we heard it was with soldiers and the aftermath of coming back from war. heard the diagnosis of PTSD and then it began to be applied to things like rape or car accidents, assaults, and then like we said, even watching someone, witnessing someone get hurt or someone dying.
Brenda (10:39.299)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (10:56.437)
And it's really been pretty recent history that that diagnosis, if you will, has been given to things outside of war.
it's really a fairly new and a very much needed as there's been more research done to really see what the aftermath is for people who've experienced that one time traumatic event. And then we come to something maybe on the other side of that. If PTSD is the one time event, then we talk about complex post -traumatic stress disorder. And that's gonna refer to a collection of symptoms that can develop
Alex (11:21.359)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (11:29.541)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (11:36.569)
experiencing multiple traumatic events over a long period of time and you know oftentimes this happens in regards to children.
Alex (11:47.142)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (11:47.663)
So complex trauma oftentimes is people who are raised in homes where there's abuse or neglect, where the caregiver has been the perpetrator. But it also could be cumulative or chronic traumatic experiences. We see this when we sit down with a woman who's been married and in an abusive relationship for 20 years.
Alex (11:58.717)
Mm
Alex (12:11.375)
Right.
Brenda (12:12.956)
So, you know, I think the best way maybe to think about this is one is more of an event, one is speaking more to a pattern. But I do want to ask you this, Alex, are these the only two ways that we would describe trauma with these two?
Alex (12:29.328)
Again.
Yeah, so we're really describing the effects of trauma, like the aftermath of trauma on a person. And I think really what's happening is the field of trauma is just exploding. And so we're learning a whole lot of new terminology. And we're also understanding the effects on the body and the spirit more and more every day. So no, but I think they're going to be the most, these aren't the only way we talk about trauma, but they're going to be the most common things that we hear.
Brenda (12:34.158)
Yes.
Alex (13:00.793)
as far as in common vernacular in our world. These are terms that I think we should be familiar with so that we understand what people are saying.
Brenda (13:11.309)
Yeah, I think that's a good point and when we look at, I think it's very helpful to look at these are symptoms. We're looking at symptoms.
Alex (13:18.439)
Mm
Brenda (13:19.723)
your point. We're looking at the aftermath. What's happened in the short -term symptomatically? What's happened in the long -term symptomatically? And I think just with modern research and the way we can bring research together, we're able to take observable information and make sense of it and say this is common to people who have experienced this kind of trauma event or this kind of pattern of trauma. And it's really, and it is really helpful and
Alex (13:35.932)
Mm
Alex (13:44.925)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (13:48.847)
One of the things I wanted to address because some of our listeners may be asking why are we using secular labels and how can they be helpful?
Alex (13:54.856)
Hmm.
Mm -hmm. Well, you do, yeah.
You've already touched on two things right there. Like it gives us a common language so that we're able to speak the same language with other people. And it's also giving us good descriptors. So when we hear PTSD or complex PTSD, we're oriented to a set of symptoms. We're oriented to a set of effects that trauma has produced in someone's life. I think it also helps us understand some of these body -soul connections because complex
PTSD and PTSD are defining what's happening both in the body and soul. And then because we have this common language, we're also able to access some tools and strategies that can be helpful as we walk with people who are experiencing these things.
Brenda (14:47.245)
Mm -hmm. Yes, so.
When we think about the effects of trauma, we want to take a little bit of time to delve into some areas. And I think this is where when we look at those descriptors, it's really helpful because historically, and I would say even currently, like the church, we don't always tend to look at what's going on in the body or in the brain. I think this is where the Lord has given us a lot of ability to do research and to grow and to understand our bodies and to understand
Alex (15:11.091)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (15:19.437)
the beauty of how he's created us with warning signals and what happens when warning signals get stuck and what happens to our brains and our physiological responses. So we're not going to find those things. Well, we will find a lot of symptoms actually in the scriptures and we're going to see that. The scripture will mention a lot of, but I don't know that we've paid a lot of attention to those things as the body of Christ. And this is where I think having some of these labels, having some of the understanding of what psychology has
Alex (15:35.209)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (15:49.397)
together that the descriptive psychology, the kind of psychology that brings all this information together to say, we're doing a lot of research to see how people are really impacted in ways that maybe the church is not, you know, it's not necessarily, we're not scientists or we're not doing a lot of observation in those areas. So the first thing we want to talk about is the immediate effects of trauma and some of the longer term in terms of the physical.
Alex (16:17.248)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (16:18.648)
One of the beautiful ways that God designed us is that our bodies are made to respond to danger.
Alex (16:24.913)
Mm -hmm. Yes. So here's where we're go start deep diving, right?
Brenda (16:30.895)
Right, right. And Alex, you know, we call this hyper arousal or some people call this the fight -flight -freeze. There's also a fawning that can go with it as well. And I think the fight or flight are explanatory, right? We're either running away or we're putting up our dukes. I think the freezing, the fawning responses, the freezing is just we're paralyzed to do anything. The fawning would be, and I think about like possum playing dead, you know, a free
Alex (17:00.64)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm.
Brenda (17:00.913)
up and just play dead just you know and then that fawning though is also where we will do whatever we can to appease the person who represents danger.
Alex (17:09.708)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (17:10.735)
And that's also really, you know, a hard place to be. So sometimes when our bodies can't go into flight or fight, we might go into what we call hypoarousal. And I guess that's the freeze. You know, that's really where we do become immobile, nonverbal. We can't think or act. This is still the body protecting us. It's not like it's not protecting us. But again, thinking of the thinking of the possum. I like talking about possums. I grew up in Alabama. There's a lot of possums.
Alex (17:21.506)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Alex (17:36.834)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Brenda (17:40.188)
A lot of possum jokes. But anyhow, freeze is response to trauma. You know, it's really preparing the body to flight or to flee. And so we just need to be aware when we are talking with people who have long -term trauma or coming out of a traumatic event that these are really physiological things that are going on. And we even can honor the fact that this is God's design.
in order to bring about protection in situations that are dangerous.
Alex (18:14.135)
Yeah, and I think one of the reasons we want to mention it here is because these responses are happening in the midst of the painful traumatic event happening, right? We are outside of our window of tolerance, like you said, either moving up into hyper arousal or down into hypo arousal. And that's happening in the moment of the danger. But what can happen and why we're talking about it in terms of effects is that our bodies can get stuck because we have experienced
Brenda (18:42.072)
That's right.
Alex (18:44.584)
significant trauma or significant trauma over a long period of time, our body can get stuck outside of its window of tolerance, which is the window of tolerance is that place where we feel calm, we feel able to handle what life is, you know, throwing at us. And because of the trauma we've experienced, we can get stuck in either one. We can get stuck in hyper arousal or we can get stuck in hypo arousal. And so instead of just becoming the response in the midst of immediate danger,
it becomes the way we live. It becomes the place where our nervous system operates on a day -to -day basis.
Brenda (19:22.459)
Yeah, and I mean, one of the things we can think about is just if.
You know, we just say, let's say a bear comes walking into my room right now. My natural response is going to be fear. It is the right response, right? Like fear, those distress signals are sent to my body. Like do something about this. Again, God's wiring us to survive. But one thing that happens in that moment, and this gets a lot more technical than we want to get, there's a lot of great YouTube videos out there about fight, flight, freeze and fawn. But basically what happens in that moment, your logical brain goes offline.
Alex (19:41.187)
Mm
Alex (19:51.845)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (19:56.741)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (19:57.224)
Because when the bear's about to eat me, I'm not sitting there going, I want to size up this bear. I wonder how much this bear weighs. I wonder when he had his last meal. I wonder, you know, gosh, he's got this really nice coat on him. You know, we're not thinking. We're just saying, run!
Alex (20:10.309)
Right.
Brenda (20:14.191)
or grab a weapon or fall down and pretend like you're dead. And so one of the things that we have to remember when we're dealing with people who are either in the immediate dangerous situation or stuck in that aftermath mode is that it's gonna be very, very hard for them to think logically as long as what I'm gonna say, their body or their brain has hijacked them.
Alex (20:19.471)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (20:43.418)
Right.
And then the other thing that happens is that if you have this dangerous experience, this time I'm going to use a snake instead of a bear, you have this dangerous experience. Let's say you've been bitten by a snake in the past and many years later you're walking through your yard and you see a black coil shape in the grass and you immediately jump and start to run, right? And your body is reacting to a trauma that happened in the past, but according to your brain,
Brenda (21:04.85)
You
Alex (21:14.986)
very real and so it doesn't take our brain doesn't take time to distinguish that's the garden hose not a snake it just knows there's danger in the past and I needed to react to protect myself and so God gave us this system to be able to protect ourselves but in those moments is not often able to distinguish between a real threat and a perceived threat and the garden hose example you know we can smile at we probably all had similar experiences with bugs
or other things around the house. But I think when we apply that relationally is where it starts to get hard to understand and even hard to see. It's just not as clear. But we see this happen relationally where people who have had abuse within relationships begin to respond to perceived threats relationally that they pick up on and other people may not understand why they're responding the way they are because they don't feel like they're dangerous to the person.
and yet the person is responding to something that feels very real in that moment to their body.
Brenda (22:22.579)
So, it's been my experience in the Christian world that oftentimes when this happens to a person, how they are thought of is or what they're accused of as sinning. That they're responding in a sinful way. And you and I were talking a little bit before this episode just like what is the difference between a trigger versus that temptation to sin? Like,
Alex (22:37.168)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (22:47.335)
Mm
Brenda (22:50.463)
Where is that line there? Because I think very quickly, sometimes what looks like triggering, we can name as somebody's actually responding sinfully.
Alex (23:00.671)
Yeah.
And I think again, we want to drop a pin at that place where it moved from trigger to temptation to sin, right? And I want to be clear, being tempted to sin is not sinning, we want to drop this pin and say, at this point it became this, and at this point it became this. And it's just not that clear because our body -soul interaction is very intricate and very complex. But one of the things I just want people to hear is that our bodies do react and God designed them to react.
Brenda (23:17.739)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (23:32.315)
And again, he designed that reaction system for our protection. And so if there is this nervous system reaction of fight or flight, that is not necessarily sin or freeze. Like moving outside of our window of tolerance is not a sin in and of itself. We can sin in that place because in fight or flight, we might yell at our children and respond very harshly when we're feeling very activated. So we can sin in that place.
but it is not a sin to be in that place. And so what I like to remind people is that oftentimes our bodies will have a reaction and then there is a moment where we can take a deep breath and then we can choose our measured intentional response and that helps us not to sin in that place where our nervous system is over activated. But I just want us to be really gracious here to recognize that
If you had a car accident in a specific intersection in your town and you drove through that intersection and your heart begins to race and you began to sweat and you begin to feel very anxious, you are having a nervous system response to a very real trigger from a very real painful event. And you are probably going to feel some anxiety that I want us to be really careful not to immediately label as sin when what's really happening is our body.
is responding to a past danger.
Brenda (25:06.245)
I just think this is so important because we can sew simultaneously even or sew in a split second be a suffer and a center.
Alex (25:15.658)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (25:16.478)
And the Lord knows that. He knows how to meet us again as sufferers. He knows how to meet us as sinners. And this is why when we go further into the podcast, we're also going to talk about, you know, what do we do with our bodies? Because there's some things when we get triggered that we could do that would help us have a more measured intentional response and not just react out of that triggering.
Alex (25:28.224)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (25:38.304)
Right, yes. And the other thing I wanna say, and we will talk about this more as we get deeper into how we care for our bodies, but.
You know, the beauty of what God has given us in the Holy Spirit, we just can't understate even in this discussion of trauma one, because the Holy Spirit comes to bring us comfort. But two, when we're talking about this discussion about whether we're experiencing a trigger, whether we've moved into sin, is that we can trust that the Holy Spirit's job is to convict us of sin. And so we don't have to do this ruthless self -examination of, did I sin?
Brenda (26:09.27)
Amen.
Alex (26:17.466)
what if I sinned? you know, how does God send you? Like we can trust that if we are sinning out of a place, even out of a traumatized place, the Holy Spirit's job is to bring that to our minds and to convict us of sin. And we need to be listening for Him. We need to be sensitive to Him and we need to respond to Him, but we can trust Him. We don't have to do His job for Him.
Brenda (26:37.511)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's so good.
Well, let's talk about some of the long -term effects on the brain. We're talking about when we get stuck in these places. So one of the things that can happen is we could have a greater fear response. We just talked about that, the hyperarousal being more sensitive. You're kind of waiting for the left shoe to fall off or you're anticipating kind of that anticipatory anxiety and fear. One of the things sometimes I don't think people always recognize are things like difficulty with memory and learning.
Alex (26:48.344)
Mm
Alex (27:10.893)
Mm
Brenda (27:12.891)
And so we might want people to catch on quickly, move forward quickly. And it's not that they don't want to, it really is that they can't. Difficulty with executive functioning, like ordering and problem solving or higher level reasoning. Again, I think difficulty concentrating, slower reaction time. I I think all of these, we have to be careful. We may look at somebody and say, well, they just won't when
fact they can't.
Alex (27:43.267)
Right.
Yeah, I think some of the most hopeful things that I've said in counseling situations has been just introducing the idea to people, you're not losing your mind and possibly you're not ADD like you think you are because some of these cognitive functions correspond with symptoms of ADD. You may just be experiencing the effects of trauma and it is like a weight rolls off people and they're able to
to recognize that wow, the effects of trauma really are that pervasive and long term. And so, and they really do affect the brain. I'm not, I'm not just losing my mind or I'm not just experienced an early dementia. And I also think one of the reasons why we want to mention these is because when we, when we are ministering to people in our churches, like you've been saying, Brenda, we have to just be really careful to not, not come in with any judgements.
judgment, but to really come in with lot of gentleness and tenderness towards people's frailty in the aftermath of trauma and to recognize that there, as we're going to talk about in just a minute with fragmentation, things aren't always going to make sense right away. They're not always going to be well ordered. They're not always going to be remembered perfectly. And that is a trauma response.
Brenda (29:01.278)
you
Brenda (29:06.099)
Hmm.
Alright, well let's talk about some of the long -term effects on the body and this is just really a handful because I think you can look at stress, stress, extreme stress, toxic stress on the body and there's so much there but persistent fatigue, sleep disorders, can't get to sleep, wake up all night, can't go back to sleep, nausea, tummy aches, things that have to do with the gut, your gut health, headaches. Really what we're saying is that every system in the body has the potential to be
by trauma. And you know, there's a lot of people who are who who do when they start dealing with their trauma and they find healing from their trauma, they will find what they thought was autoimmune or chronic sickness begins to either disappear altogether or definitely lessen in its severity.
Alex (29:58.872)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, we're just scratching the surface of the physical effects of the brain and the body that trauma has. And we're going to unpack more about the body in coming episodes. But we also do want to talk about emotional effects of trauma. We've broken that down even in the definition when we talk about fragmentation and ambivalence. And so we want to just go a little bit deeper into both of those. And fragmentation is something that's very closely linked to the
that we just talked about on the brain. It's just the fact that our brains kind of break apart so to speak or they no longer feel cohesive. So that means our thoughts, our feelings, even our memories are going to feel disjointed. They're going to feel confused. And so that means there's a lot of implications to that. But two main ones I just want to touch on is that we are often going to find it difficult to regulate our emotions. We're going to kind of feel all over the
place and even that is a fragmentation where we're going to fall all over the place emotionally and we're going to feel like we kind of can't rein ourselves back in. We can't get back into our window of tolerance is another way of saying it. And this can lead to a lot of different things emotionally. We can feel depressed, we can feel anxious and even suicidal when we feel like our emotions are unable to be made sense of or regulated.
Brenda (31:28.853)
Mm.
Alex (31:30.105)
And then the other thing that fragmentation touches on, other main category that I see, is that it touches on the fact that we're unable to make our thoughts coherent and even sometimes tell a coherent story. So the story may not make sense because it comes in pieces and parts that aren't in order, or, and this is a big one, our emotion may not match the story that we're telling. And so we may see people laughing,
in a place where they're telling something really sad or we may see people very distressed over something that we're not connecting of why it was so distressing to them. And so the emotion doesn't always seem to match. And what we really need then is time and a sense of safety for the brain to be able to reintegrate, come back together and make sense, be able to tell a more coherent story and to have emotions that match what we're telling.
Brenda (32:31.405)
Yeah, like one of the examples about, you know, ambivalence by a person who's been perpetrated by abuse. And, you know, a lot of times people who experience sexual abuse, the violation is from somebody they know.
Alex (32:48.09)
Mm
Brenda (32:49.846)
And because of the grooming behaviors, in other words, the fact that this person has been so kind to them, you know, seemingly, and has done so much for them and bought them gifts and given them so many compliments and drawn close and intimacy and vulnerability, that victim can feel at the same time, really, really deep anger toward the perpetrator. But also they can experience a lot of grief and loss because
because now the relationship is over and they felt special and chosen by the perpetrator. And so that's what we're saying. We can have these really mixed feelings. I know a lot of times when I meet with people, they have the ambivalence of like, want to work on my story, but I don't want to dishonor or expose someone. That's a sense of ambivalence. It's like, but if I go, or even the ambivalence of, God has done so much for
Alex (33:40.271)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (33:49.477)
me in His grace and I don't want to go back and dishonor Him by going backwards. And so there's these tensions and you know one of the things that you said that I love is that we we don't need to try to resolve all those tensions for people. I know we say this a lot just in general because I think we're so prone to want to resolve all the tensions in our life and when we would really recognize how limited we are and how unlimited God is we would just realize that there are just so many more tensions that we
Alex (33:54.854)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (34:11.6)
Right.
Brenda (34:19.447)
can't necessarily do anything about or come to resolution, but to your point about the Holy Spirit, like we can lead somebody in a way that will hopefully create space for them along with the Holy Spirit to begin to reconcile some of those tensions.
Alex (34:38.399)
Yeah, I sit with a lot of people who, whether it's family member, a trusted member of their church,
who has perpetrated abuse and they, they're very deeply ashamed of the fact that they miss the person and that missing the person is, you know, we have to, we have to talk through and we have to remember that missing the person is part of the experience of the goodness they, this is really hard. This is a very hard statement. They did experience goodness at the hands
of someone who perpetrated great harm and great destruction on them. And like you said, we have a word for that. That's often part of the grooming process, but it is very real and we don't wipe away that goodness because we named it grooming. Like that doesn't automatically make it bad. It's still felt good. It's still experienced as good in those moments and they miss that. They miss parts of the relationship all the while knowing that they can't be in relationship with someone
who is perpetrated that abuse. And so we, like you said, we don't have to go in and say, don't feel that way, that's crazy, I can't believe you, I can't even believe that you would say that. Like we can sit with them in this recognizing that we're not gonna resolve that tension for them and they don't need to feel shame over that tension. One thing about ambivalence is those conflicting feelings bring a great sense of shame because we have this sense of shame of like, why can't I figure this out?
something must be wrong with me. I must be bipolar, which makes me laugh, right? Because I feel two different things. I automatically think I'm bipolar. And it's like, yeah, you're not bipolar. This is the experience of one living in a falling world and then...
Brenda (36:24.27)
Mm -hmm. Yep.
Brenda (36:29.746)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (36:36.899)
And two, this is also the experience where abuse has been perpetrated, but an abuser really knows how to see you well. And they use that for evil. but there was still an experience of goodness there. And so I just, I can't say enough that we don't have to resolve that for someone that we can sit in that tension with them. And it's going to create tension in us when we do that. And that, that is, we, have to be okay with that because the ambivalence
Brenda (36:46.931)
That's right. Yeah.
Brenda (37:03.411)
you
Alex (37:06.823)
as part of the experience of trauma.
Brenda (37:10.301)
Thinking about in our last episode, just talked about how trauma...
what do we say, it distorts our desires, right? And so you can see that twisting and the distortion and when you are actually, when somebody actually comes and exploits that desire for belonging, that desire to be known, how twisting that is and the distortion of that desire. And so how confusing that is. So confusing. And
Alex (37:31.927)
Mm -hmm. Right.
Brenda (37:42.823)
I think just as we really would think about that, we would have to have so much more compassion instead of being, hey, you just need to get over this and let's make black black and white white and draw the lines and move forward.
Well, Alex, we want to talk a few minutes and again, in all of these categories that we're hitting today, we're going to spend a whole episode really deep diving into each of them, the effects of trauma. But the last one we want to talk about in this episode, just high level, is the relational impact or effects. And we want to talk a little bit about with God, with ourselves, and then with others. And one of the impacts of trauma on our relationship with God is that it can just really make us feel alienated from God.
Alex (38:27.313)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (38:28.015)
You know, we can see this in the Psalms, Lord, where are you? Do you see me? How much longer? Why? And there's something about pain that does make us question whether God is really good. Is he really for us? Is he really present? Are his promises true? Does he really love us? Can he really rescue us? And so it creates a lot of opportunity for doubt. But we're going to see how doubt does
Alex (38:55.941)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (38:58.845)
have to have the final word in that as we begin to unpack this and what God wants to do with that doubt and how he can meet us in that doubt. I just think in terms of our own stories and in terms of walking with other people, again, we can't be surprised and we need to create space and leave room for people not just to wrestle with themselves but to actually wrestle with God as well, knowing that the Holy Spirit will bring them back
to the right view of God, that they will, that he will impress upon their hearts, that he will teach them, that he will comfort them, that he will love them, that he will show them. But that aspect of how trauma impacts our relationship with God is significant and something we have to be aware of as we go into trauma work.
Alex (39:28.891)
Mm.
Mm
Alex (39:46.097)
Mm.
Alex (39:50.105)
Yes, is, again when we talk about fragmentation, we're talking about fragmentation in relationships too. And so this alienated feeling from God is very real. We will continue to talk about it and we've talked about it in past podcasts, but I think it's very interesting to look at biblical characters and
begin to see their experiences through the lens of trauma and then to be able to name some of their responses, even this one, their feeling of alienation from God in light of the fact that they experienced a trauma.
Brenda (40:29.783)
Hmm, that's good. Well then we also need to look at how trauma affects our view of ourself, our relationship with ourselves, the way we relate or...
Yeah, just the view of ourself. And so you touched on this early, just how it causes us to question ourselves, question our sanity, question our ability, question our integrity, all kinds of questions. And what we find a lot of times is that it's easier to turn on ourselves in contempt than it is to feel shame. And why don't you unpack that a little bit?
Alex (40:53.819)
Hmm.
Alex (40:58.715)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (41:10.011)
You know, I think that has just been such a gift for Dan Allender to teach that because it makes so much sense that shame is just the most painful human emotion to experience. And it doesn't seem like it would be easier, but what we do instead of sitting with shame,
because it's so painful, it's so uncomfortable, we'll move into either self -contempt or others contempt. So we'll turn on ourselves or we'll turn on others. So have this deep sense that something's wrong with me because of what's been done to me. And I will immediately turn on myself and say, well, if I wasn't so weak, if I had just spoken up, if I had just had courage to stand up, then my dad wouldn't have abused me in that way. And that self -contempt actually almost
mitigates the shame. It's like, now I now have a place for it to go, but that self -contempt becomes deeply ingrained in us. And as we said, it is very alienating. We lose the sense of who God made us to be and how he created us in his image.
Brenda (42:19.096)
Somebody just rang my doorbell. So should I go just see who it is real quick?
Alex (42:20.677)
Hmm.
Alex (42:30.885)
I don't know what the pinging is. Have you heard it? Can you hear it?
Alex (42:39.217)
Brenda said earlier that KK was texting her and it was still coming through and it was making that ping. So I don't know if she didn't figure out how to turn that off. It's me. Okay, then I think what it is is this right now says zero upload, but in a minute it's gonna go to 1%. And I think when it's trying to upload, it's pinging.
Alex (43:05.903)
What is it?
But you know it's me.
I don't know what it is.
I know what it might be. The charger.
That's what it is. Hold on. Let me just make sure it's plugged in securely.
Brenda (43:27.706)
I'm gonna make sure that my settings didn't get messed up too really quick while we're... All right, input is USB, output is AirPods, correct? Everything.
Alex (43:30.511)
That's what it is.
Alex (43:39.737)
Like right now it's not saying it's charging. That's what it is. I don't know how to, I do not want to switch ports because it'll unhook the microphone.
Brenda (43:43.95)
What's not charging?
Alex (43:54.935)
Okay.
Well.
Alex (44:02.836)
What does that say? What does that mean?
Brenda (44:08.068)
We can't hear you. yeah. Are we good to go?
Okay.
Alex (44:16.488)
new recording track started due to changes in... didn't unplug anything I just pushed everything in. I didn't even touch the mic I pushed the... what's this called? Charging cord in.
Brenda (44:31.355)
The Jack.
Alex (44:38.33)
No, the charger goes right into the computer. The mic...
Alex (44:51.41)
Okay, good. We can.
Alex (44:59.626)
Yeah.
Brenda (45:01.648)
great.
Brenda (45:11.856)
Alright, Alex, I'll jump off here about with others. He just finished up talking about ourself and shame and all that and I'll...
Alex (45:16.212)
Okay.
Mm -hmm. And I just talked about self -contempt Brenda, so you can even bring in self -contempt with that if you want to. Like I said that shame causes us to turn on ourselves and on others and self -contempt and so that is part of the alienation with other people. I don't know what's wrong.
Brenda (45:46.526)
Alright, you ready? We can just start.
I think Alex, you're hitting on a great point even as we talk about the impact or effects on trauma with others. And that is when we have shame or when we have contempt, then it begins to impact how we relate to other people. And oftentimes what that looks like is alienation. We begin to pull back from other people. We don't want them to really see who we are. We don't want them to see our struggle. We don't want to be vulnerable.
And so we just end up pulling away or we can have the opposite. I think even in a contempt of self -hatred now my reaction to that is that I'm just spewing hatred everywhere I go and I'm doing things to keep other people at bay because I don't want them to get too close. So I think it could go either way.
Alex (46:37.055)
Sure. That's right. Yeah, so trauma has effects on the body, on the emotions and the relationships. And we could talk for days and hours about all the different ways that trauma affects us. And as we said, we'll unpack that more in coming podcasts as we start to talk about.
how we walk with people in trauma. But we wanted to end today and talk about the concept of resilience. And resilience may seem like a weird place to go when we talk about trauma, but we want to acknowledge that this is a definition of resilience that we want to unpack, where the resilience is the human's heart's ability to suffer greatly and grow from it.
Brenda (47:26.556)
This is the person spraying my yard now. My dog is going net -so.
Alex (47:32.797)
Ahem.
Alex (47:38.152)
Mm
Brenda (47:38.185)
Let me put her in her cage. He's gonna leave in just a second, but I'm sorry.
Alex (47:42.698)
That's why.
Alex (47:47.368)
You
Alex (47:59.336)
Okay Malia, now it says it's uploading.
Brenda (48:10.484)
You
Alex (48:20.488)
I mean we probably have five minutes left.
Alex (48:34.75)
Probably, okay. Okay, I'm just gonna start. We'll make it work. Shane will make it work. We wanted to end today on a note of hope by talking about resilience.
Brenda (48:45.858)
Thank you, Shane.
Alex (48:56.542)
And resilience has been defined as the human heart's ability to suffer greatly and grow from it. And of course, we do not want to suggest that we just automatically bounce back from trauma, but we do want to suggest that with care and over time, that people can recover from trauma. God has given us the ability to heal and be restored. And this is part of the wrestle, right Brenda? This is the section we really wrestled through because again,
Brenda (49:21.505)
Mmm.
Alex (49:24.798)
I feel really sensitive to not communicating, like we can just bootstrap our way in any way, bootstrap our way into healing from our trauma or in any way put any condemnation on anyone if they don't feel healed from their trauma. Because the reality is there's some effects of trauma that we will experience until we are with Jesus and we're fully healed and fully restored.
But we also want to recognize that because of the cross, remember if we remember the story, because of the cross we do begin to experience the effects of redemption here. And God has given us the ability to have some healing on this side of heaven.
Brenda (50:06.614)
I think so often we think about sanctification just in light of our sin struggle and just like we're not going to be totally over our sin struggle on the day we die, we're not going to be totally over our suffering struggles and the impact from those by the time we die either. But that hope of glory is that both get swallowed up in total victory when our victory is realized, when we're with Jesus and our suffering and our sin has been, is no more. And so I think that's when we talk
Alex (50:11.38)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (50:15.944)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (50:36.553)
about resiliency. do have to, I mean we have hope. We have hope in the gospel. We have hope because of the cross.
You know, we talked about looking at the physical body as a metaphor for trauma, like we get scrapes and bruises and then, you know, we have open heart surgeries or major diseases or accidents and those sort of things. And I mean, the body, we really, even when I watch the little like Discovery Channel videos of the body, I'm always just, like my mouth is just open. In fact, I just saw a little thing on Instagram where it was talking about how the DNA
Alex (51:04.692)
Hmm.
Brenda (51:12.44)
your baby is always in a mother's body and even in her brain for her whole life.
Alex (51:16.713)
Hmm.
Brenda (51:17.612)
like just so like I'm thinking, my goodness, this is why I'm so connected to my children, right? It's because because their DNA stays a part of me. I mean, it's just the body is so fascinating. But when we look at the body's ability to heal itself, like God has given the body the ability if we care for our bodies, if we take care of our immune systems, we can be strengthened. We can fight off sickness better. We can get over sicknesses better. And there are some things we can do on a soul level that is very similar. Like we can do
Alex (51:21.413)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (51:47.616)
things to build our resiliency. There's comfort that we can bring. There's places we can put ourselves. But at the end of the day, Alex, you know, our bodies are never going to be fully healed on this side of heaven. And our soul is never going to be fully healed either. And I think, you when we look at resiliency, we need to remember that there's a lot of things that impact somebody's resiliency. And that's why we can't make comparisons. Well, these people went through the same experience. Then why can't that person get over it? you know, and I'm
Alex (52:15.69)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (52:17.462)
I've had some situations to be honest with you that I have counseled two people in similar situations and I can find myself being kind of judgmental. Like how come this person can't just get over it? But you know, when you start looking at their previous life experiences, when you start looking at their social support structure, what they've been taught about relational wisdom or personal coping skills or their physical health, all of these things can affect how they're going to respond.
Alex (52:25.961)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (52:47.315)
and how resilient somebody might be to...
to a trauma. You and I were talking about Rebecca Lyons, somebody who has written and spoken a lot about resiliency. And this is what she says, resiliency and building a resilient life can actually awaken strength, hope and meaning. So adversity, I'm sorry, can actually awaken strength, hope and meaning. And, you know, I think where you and I sit in the professional counselor's chair and in our non -professional lives as we meet and walk and love people, I will just have to say that
that only God can take the terrible and make it transformational. And that is the hope that we have, that from the garden, trauma has been a part of the story of the now and not yet. And yet, over and over and over again, we do see where God intervenes and takes the most heinous situations, the most notable being the cross.
Alex (53:25.396)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (53:46.02)
Mm
Brenda (53:46.563)
and actually uses it for the most divine deliverance and transformation.
Alex (53:50.876)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, well said. Well, this is a hard topic. Talking about the effects of trauma can feel hopeless. So we hope that people have heard the hope and healing that comes on this side of heaven and after. And we also hope that people will stick around for the next couple of episodes where we talk about our next episode, we're going to talk about how to walk with others in trauma recovery.
And then we're going to talk about how kind of a model to break that down. what I hope more than anything in tackling the effects of trauma is that people here, number one, if you're experiencing the effects of trauma, you're not crazy. A lot of these things are real. They're really happening and they're very understandable. And also I hope that it gives those of us who surround people who are
very much grappling with the aftermath of trauma, gives us a great sense of grace and a beginning of some ideas of how to care for those who are walking through trauma recovery.
Brenda (55:11.911)
I think time that to see how long it.