Season 9 Episode 6/ Trauma: Safe in Relationship

Alex (00:03.264)

We're back in season nine and this is our season on trauma. And today we're in our episode on safe in relationships. Brenda, we've been talking about three ways of establishing safety to as we walk with people who have experienced trauma. First, we talked about being safe in our bodies and then safe in our relationship with God. And today we're going to talk about being safe in our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Brenda (00:32.606)

Yeah, because one of the things we've talked about, Alex, is just how trauma disrupts safety.

Alex (00:38.186)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (00:39.304)

And so we want to establish safety. And one of the things or ways, I guess, we would say that trauma disrupts safety is just in the distortions that we have about ourselves. It fractures us. It twists the ways that we think about ourselves when we've experienced significant trauma. And so we just have a few ideas that we think have been helpful as we've looked on and helped people with trauma and how they view themselves.

Alex (00:50.368)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (01:09.181)

And one of them has to do with the way a person views themselves with contempt.

Alex (01:13.557)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (01:14.187)

And what we mean by that is a lot of times somebody who's been through trauma, they have feelings of being despised or disliked or worthless or even disgraced. And really in order to cover shame, which we've talked about how shame is a part of trauma and it's also one of the most painful human emotions, we often move towards self-contempt. so what we wanna do is we really wanna help people move from this self-hatred or self-contempt back into

view of kindness, the kindness of God toward them, being able to see themselves differently through the lens of the Father. But maybe we could talk about some ways that we hear this running commentary or what we might be looking for, pick up on when we meet with people to be able to listen for self-contempt.

Alex (02:02.516)

Yes, I think that a lot of times that's the hardest part is picking up on those running commentaries in our heads. used to say the tape that plays in your head and then I realized it was dating myself because nobody listens to cassette tapes anymore and so I had to change that. But it's the script or it's the self-talk that keeps running in our heads and it's going to be things where we're expressing feelings of worthlessness. I hate myself. I'm such an idiot or another or really what we're

Brenda (02:14.165)

hahahaha

Alex (02:32.45)

is you're such an idiot because we're talking to ourselves. But it can also be you always mess things up, it's all your fault, or it can come out in conversation like in the ways that we use humor to put ourselves down and and really that's just what's in the heart is coming out in the conversation.

Brenda (02:56.429)

Yeah, some other ways I've seen this is that typically people cannot take a compliment, a sincere compliment at all. They just reject anything that you try to say that would be complimentary toward them. And then I think an interesting way contempt shows up too is people either think, I feel like I'm too much or I feel like I'm not enough.

Alex (03:00.543)

Yes.

Alex (03:16.094)

Yes.

Brenda (03:16.99)

They can kind of go back and forth. And then I think we even need to notice body posture. If somebody comes in and they're slumping, they're avoiding eye contact, they have a general demeanor of being defeated, then these are probably all some pretty good signs for us that the person is struggling with self-contempt. And I know for me, one thing I've had to learn is not to jump in and to try to say, no, no, no, that's not true about you. No, no, no, no, no. Like I'm going to convince them.

Alex (03:41.556)

Right.

Right.

Brenda (03:44.844)

of something that's deep seeded and deep rooted. That's not going to work and we're going to talk a little bit more about what we need to do instead. But it's not really so much our kindness, although our kindness is representing the kindness of the Lord, but it's really somebody beginning to experience. I think the kindness of the Lord that is going to begin to move that needle on how they view themselves.

Alex (04:03.094)

And yet I think it's good to kind of challenge people. I think one of the most challenging things for me personally, when someone said it to me and I've seen it happen with other people, is to challenge them like would you talk to other people the way that you're talking to yourself? Because that is kind of an orienting question when we realize that we would never use the tone that's in our head or the words.

that we say to ourselves, to other people, and so as image bearers, why is it okay for us to say that to ourselves?

Brenda (04:41.179)

That's so good. And then I think just following up on that is just the idea of does your self-talk agree with God? And I was talking to a woman just recently who came from an abusive background and now she's in a situation in her own marriage, but she keeps seeing herself the way her mother saw her and the way her husband sees her. She wants to know how me and my co-counselor see her. And we've just really been talking a lot, but how do you think God sees you?

Alex (04:47.478)

Hmm.

Alex (05:05.642)

Right.

Alex (05:09.654)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (05:11.156)

And does how you talk to yourself, is it an agreement with what God says is true about you? And so if not, part of repentance is agreeing with God, right? Agreeing with God, even in the way we characterize ourselves. So we have to ask ourselves whose voice is the loudest, whose voice rings the most true in my head or in the head of the person I'm talking to. And so we have to be aware of these things.

Alex (05:17.838)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (05:21.604)

Right?

Alex (05:32.527)

Yeah.

Alex (05:36.046)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, because God doesn't talk to us with that kind of condemnation. And if we're in Jesus, we have to remember that even the way that he corrects us is with kindness and gentleness and is loving. And so we have to be willing to make sure that the way we're talking to ourself, I think in tone and in words agrees with him. But that's really hard to do. It's hard to break self contempt because we often don't even realize or

recognize the things we're saying to ourselves that those messages are so ingrained in us that they're hard to catch a hold of and examine and even when we do we don't always want to change those things. I recently talked to someone who said,

Yeah, I think my self-talk is really negative. I tell myself I'm not enough. I tell myself I'm a loser, but that's what motivates me to go work out and do better at work and all these things. And he realized that it was working for him, so to speak. And it will work for a while.

Brenda (06:39.664)

Yep.

Alex (06:43.789)

And it may continue to work to motivate him to work out or to do better at work. But what we were seeing was that it was coming out in his relationships. And so it wasn't just his and self talk. It was also beginning to permeate the way he was talking to other people. And so it's going to come out some way. It's going to reveal itself in some way when we use that to motivate ourselves.

Brenda (07:08.218)

And I often just tell people that this is just not an area that you can cheerlead yourself into a better view of yourself. I think this is really a deep work of the Holy Spirit and dependence on the Lord for a person to begin to see themselves the way God sees them to be able to not just replace thought patterns, but deep seated belief systems. And I think that's where sometimes we get in trouble. We want to help somebody replace a thought when really what God wants to do is uproot and

Alex (07:15.898)

Mm-mm.

Alex (07:30.117)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (07:35.204)

Right.

Brenda (07:38.345)

and an entire belief system. And when you have been rooted and grounded in falsehood, when the system of truth that you've actually grown up in or grown up with have been lies, then that's not going to happen in a conversation or even in a short amount of time. Oftentimes it takes a long time, a period of time that we have to walk with people and continually help remind them of God's truth and His love

Alex (07:40.443)

Mm.

Alex (07:44.795)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (07:56.73)

Right.

Alex (08:01.306)

Hmm.

Alex (08:07.332)

Hmm.

Brenda (08:07.978)

found in his word and then found through his people.

Alex (08:10.549)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's really good.

Brenda (08:14.161)

So we want to help people move from contempt to kindness, but we also recognize that, I mean, I think one of the reasons people have so much contempt is because of their judgments, right? How they have come to, how others have judged them, how they have come to judge themselves, how they think God is judging them. And so we want to move them from judgment to curiosity. And what we're really saying again is that we want to help a person, when we talk about

Alex (08:24.474)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (08:36.633)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (08:44.018)

about like moving from judgment to curiosity, we kind of talk about this idea of receiving kindness of the Lord, like remembering he sees us.

And he is kind to us. And so rather than just parking on being judgmental and seeing ourselves in a critical self-contemptuous way, we begin to see ourselves, we begin to see the Lord's kindness and how he is seeing our story as opposed to, again, this idea of contempt which comes from judgment.

Alex (09:10.811)

Mm.

Alex (09:16.755)

I think this is really important because in trauma recovery, we often find ourselves acting or reacting in ways that we don't understand and what we can do at that point when we don't understand our own actions or reactions is we can begin to just become very judgmental about those reactions and become very harsh with ourselves again and lead to more self-contempt. And so I think that

curiosity helps us to move closer to back to who God really says I am and it helps us move back closer to repentance because when we're receiving the kindness of God and curiosity instead of distancing ourselves from Him in our own condemnation. In other words, that judgment actually produces more shame and that shame produces more distance from God. Whereas if we can kind of take a step back for a moment and see the bigger

picture and begin to think, okay, why did I just do what I did? And maybe even start a conversation with the Holy Spirit around what just happened and why was that reaction that way instead of going directly to judgment and condemnation for ourselves? Then I think we have an opportunity, like we said, for real repentance.

Brenda (10:36.223)

And I think to me, part of this curiosity is sometimes when people are talking about their trauma stories, they've already predetermined everything about it. And I think when we begin to ask more questions and get them to look at their stories, maybe from another point of view, like from God's point of view, not just their point of view, then it opens up the possibility that maybe there's more to the story. And I know you and I see this all the time where somebody will come in and they will lay a lot of blame at their own feet.

Alex (10:55.108)

Right?

Brenda (11:06.079)

for what is not theirs to take on. And so when you begin to ask them to think differently, right, because a lot of people who have gone through trauma are very black and white thinkers, it could only be this or that.

Alex (11:17.103)

Yes.

Brenda (11:18.796)

Well, really, maybe there it could be more than one thing. And maybe what you consider to be blame is actually I was just dealing with a gal recently and it was just really interesting because when she came, she had only seen herself as.

Alex (11:22.202)

Yeah.

Brenda (11:37.184)

as the person who had done wrong in the story. And as we began to talk about her story, and it was even hard, she said, well, now I feel like you're saying I'm a victim. And I'm like, well, you are. I'm not saying you're not responsible for your part of what happened as well. But it became very, very clear she was a minor and there were just a lot of hard circumstances that she very much was a victim. so again, I think we're just asking people to be willing and we're leading them in a journey to see their story, their true story, the way God

would see it instead of just the way they've always told it to themselves. And to your point, and in that there is a more accurate picture of like, where is my responsibility? We're not saying people don't have responsibility, but we just want them to rightly understand what their responsibility is because we've said so often that the same Jesus we go to our suffering is the same Jesus we go to for our sin. He is there for both our sin to forgive us and for our suffering to comfort us. And we just want to know

Alex (12:11.269)

Yeah.

Alex (12:15.928)

Right.

Brenda (12:37.195)

where we are and how we're going to run to him and what it is we're asking him for in that situation.

Alex (12:43.503)

Yeah, and one of the sweetest things or experiences I had at the Allender Center was the counselors saying this little phrase, this little thing. And we would talk about our stories and some of our responses within the story and in, you know, in relation to the story in years to come. And they would say, of course you did. Like, of course that's what you did. And there was just so much grace in that idea of like, yeah,

my responses were shaped by my trauma, my responses were shaped by my suffering. And again, to your point, I don't think it said that, of course, she did says don't take responsibility for it. But I do think it acknowledges that our heart responses grow in a soil that affects the heart, right? There's an atmosphere that the heart responds in. And if we can come to our own responses, our own even our own simple

responses with that kind of grace of, course, that's how you would respond. I think it actually is so much easier to run to Jesus with it. I don't think it keeps us from taking responsibility. I think it actually moves us towards him.

Brenda (13:56.952)

A thousand percent agree with you. Absolutely.

Alex (14:01.733)

So we're gonna transition a little bit talking about just our relationship with ourselves and talk about our relationships with other people because they're so interconnected. It's almost hard to untangle them because how we react to and even speak to ourselves as we said earlier will often come out in our.

relationships with other people. But we do want to acknowledge that part of trauma is not feeling safety and particularly not feeling safe in relationship with others. It can be hard to know who safe people are. We often have a skewed view of people who are safe. And so we wanted to just give a few points about what safe people look like. And the first one is that safe people are people who are willing to walk with me in the suffering.

Brenda (14:20.569)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (14:50.608)

I think one of the most common phrases you'll hear with people in trauma is, just don't trust anybody. I can't trust. And so there is a real... and for good reason, right? They have really been hurt by people and oftentimes they have maligned God or other people have maligned God in their story as well. And so now we've got not just a distrust in people, but a distrust in the Lord.

Alex (14:55.309)

Right.

Alex (15:09.082)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (15:13.447)

Yeah, I love this quote by Darby Strickland. She says, as people who walk with those devastated by the evil acts of another cannot minimize what they do or the impact they have.

Alex (15:23.77)

Yeah.

Yeah, to be able to walk with somebody and to not minimize their story and we're going to talk about that later how we listen to someone's story but to be able to to to walk with them in their suffering and not minimize the suffering to be able to hold it is what we say because it does it is weighty and that does feel like holding something emotionally. Those are safe people and the people that we feel the safest with in our own deep suffering are

often those we find who have suffered deeply and they've learned how to hold their own suffering and therefore they have the means and the experience of holding ours and so they know how to minister to us without dismissing our pain or making us feel like we're stuck in our pain because they've been there.

Brenda (16:20.265)

Yeah, and I think one of the things that we also need to do is help people have discretion on who to share their stories with. Because sometimes people in trauma, some people, some people are stuffers, but then some people just need to talk about it and get it out. And I think it was our friend Sherry Tate who said that every time she would share her story, she felt like a monster with seven heads because people were just looking at her like, what is your problem? What is wrong?

Alex (16:26.191)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (16:31.279)

Yeah.

Alex (16:41.401)

Mmm.

Alex (16:44.847)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (16:46.058)

And so I think even knowing kind of that the levels of people that we share with and recognizing not everybody's a safe person and not necessarily because they're not safe in the way that they're harmful, just that they don't understand or they don't have the maturity or they don't have the bandwidth or they don't know what to say. And so there has to be a little of a discernment because I think if you are somebody who's been traumatized and you just set off to tell your story to anybody and everybody, you will find that you are re-traumatized in heart.

Alex (16:58.477)

Right.

Alex (17:03.44)

Right.

Alex (17:14.715)

Right? And that, and that is really what we see, isn't it? Right? The two ditches, like people who stuff and don't want to their story at all. And then people who becoming convinced that, I need to tell my story. Maybe begin to tell it to just anyone. And so it would do feel like there's a middle road here where we begin to recognize that their levels are, I think of it as like co-centric circles, like the people closest to me, get my story, people who have earned that place in my life. And then what I,

Someone told me this week that I am the script person. I give them scripts, which I didn't realize I was a script person. But what I thought about it and I thought, I really do that a lot because I talk to a lot of people about...

Brenda (17:53.098)

you

Alex (18:00.183)

Okay, what's the next level of people that you might want to give a paragraph of your story to? And then what's the outer level of people that you may just want to give a sentence or two? And it's a big, vague flyover. My pastor, Adam calls it vague vulnerability. And to be okay that we're being honest out here and in the inner places, but it's just the fact that not everybody needs all of my story.

Brenda (18:30.112)

Yeah, good point. Well, the next thing we want to talk about is how safe people communicate support and belief. And I think this one is hard for me because in really communicating support and belief, it also means that you can't think you can fix the problem or fix them.

Alex (18:36.548)

Hmm.

Alex (18:48.016)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (18:50.082)

And I always say I wish I had some magic fairy dust that I could sprinkle and you know wish I could have a have a bell and ring the bell so we could unring or do something to go back in time but you know I've come to realize that if that happened then we really wouldn't need the Lord would we if we could just if we could just fix it ourselves and Jesus is doing something so sweet in our pain and with the person's trauma and with our privilege to walk with people in trauma that we couldn't experience

Alex (19:08.536)

Right.

Alex (19:17.371)

Mm.

Brenda (19:18.987)

him in any other way. And so I think just a safe person, we need to understand the power of presence. We've talked at length in our podcast about the power of presence just showing up and I've got some women who have come through trauma and now they're showing up for other women. And I know this takes time and and how people do that may look different, but it really is interesting to me that they just know that they've caught on that if they can show up and say, could we go have coffee? Would you like to go have a meal? How can I just?

Alex (19:30.714)

Hmm.

Brenda (19:48.574)

walk with you, support you. That is just powerful. They don't have to be a counselor. They don't even have to feel like they need to know what to say. And then responding emotionally appropriate. We're going to talk more about that, but we just need to, we need to know not to, to, how to even work with our own emotions.

Alex (20:06.155)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, then the next thing is that safe people honor boundaries and I think that this is a big one because what happens in a lot of stories of trauma is that a person's boundaries have been violated often from often at a very young age and so they don't even have a sense of maybe my body does not belong to other people or my emotions don't belong to other people and these things instead

to understand the concepts of boundaries can often be very difficult. But recognizing that safe people, first of all, they have their own boundaries. And that can be really hard because we I know in places where I've struggled, I often want people to be available to me 24 seven and recognizing that boundary people, Brené Brown says, boundary people are the most loving people, which is something that I have thought about a

lot over the last several years because we want to think that people who are very loving are always available to us 24 7 in any way that we need them. And yet the more I think about it, the more I realize that what she's saying is really true that people who set boundaries do that so that they can operate out of love and not out of people pleasing and not out of a sense of self fulfillment. And they're willing to set boundaries so that they're able to respond

lovingly and not just to make a person feel better in the moment. And one little example of that for me Brenda has been texting because texting is such a way that that we can expect people to be instantly accessible to us. And I know I am not a person who minds if people who I counsel text me, but I always make sure they know just don't put a timeline on when I return your text because first of all when I'm home, I'm not tied to my phone or

Alex (22:08.241)

try not to be. And secondly, there's a certain time of night at which I will not text you back and that's really...

really because I'm not in a mental space to respond to some things that people say or ask of me and I want to give them the best part of my brain and my thought processes and things and I can't do that after about 830 or nine o'clock at night. My brain is not there and so thank God for being able to pin texts and learning how to do that and it's just been a big place in my life where setting boundaries has been hard, but I think it's important and I am

Brenda (22:25.551)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (22:45.423)

convinced it enables me to love people more carefully, more intentionally.

Brenda (22:53.202)

Yeah, I have a few thoughts. I think that's all really important Alex and what I'm hearing you saying not only is it good care for ourselves and allows us to help others and be more prepared to love others well, but it's also modeling. We need to model for others what it looks like to have healthy and good boundaries. And you know, I thinking about just Jesus. He set boundaries. He was limited in his humanity. And so he had to

Alex (23:08.697)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brenda (23:22.798)

He he had to sleep, he had to pull away to spend time with the Father. He understood those limits and I think this goes back to understanding our own limits and understanding that I am not responsible for this person's well-being and change. I'm responsible for the part God's allowing me to play in it and to do that faithfully. But I think that one of the best things we can do is model what Jesus modeled. And I was also thinking about just how Jesus modeled kind of this idea of concentric circles, right?

where he didn't tell the masses what was going to be happening that he was going to the cross. The circle was smaller, the more intimate conversations he had until it was maybe time. But I think that's even just a modeling for us that we have those close friends, those trustworthy people. And then I like what you're saying about texting and that's one of the reasons I think that having other people to help us work with people, particularly in a lay setting, to have multiple people.

Alex (23:52.985)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (24:03.332)

Right.

Alex (24:15.609)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (24:20.139)

coming alongside. I always say if I could have one or two, if you have one or two trusted friends that we can put on a text thread with me, then typically at least you know we're praying. Maybe one of us can just reach out and say, hey, I love you. I'm praying for you. And even that, I don't think we always feel like we need to respond to whatever the issue is because a lot of times what we're wanting to also do is set the proper boundary that pushes the person back toward Jesus or toward other people, helpers in their lives.

Alex (24:31.097)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (24:46.003)

Right, right. Yeah, good point. I think these two things go hand in hand because it's not just that safe people honor their own boundaries, but they honor my boundaries. And I think sometimes the way that we know that they'll honor my boundaries is that they honor their own, but we need to recognize that, that when, I'm sharing with someone in trauma and

that there are still some boundaries that you know, I need to observe and that they need to observe with me. And so when I set a boundary with somebody, I want to see that they honor that, that they recognize that I'm inviting them into a place that as Brad Hamburg says, is wisdom and not folly. And it's an invitation of treating another image bearer, even if that image bearer is me to honor that boundary in me. So if we go back to the texting example, like I feel

like I can have a safe relationship with someone when they recognize my texting boundary and recognize like I'm not trying to be unkind to them but they they recognize that's just a place that I've set a boundary for the benefit of myself my family and for them and they honor that boundary.

Brenda (26:02.112)

That's good. And it's just going to take patience and time and conversations. And sometimes we're not going to do conversations well and that leads us to our next point. And that is safe people can repair well. And you know, the reality is, that goodness, every day I wake up and I go meet with people and I bring my own stuff.

Alex (26:04.594)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex (26:11.687)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex (26:24.268)

Mm-hmm. Yes, we definitely bring our stuff. Mm-hmm.

Brenda (26:24.788)

I got my own stuff, Alice. You got some stuff you bring. Right. And just because of my own stuff, whether it's what I'm going through, you my own suffering story that's hard for the day or my own sin struggle, it does get in the way of my ability to care for people. Well, sometimes and, you know, I'm I blow it and.

Alex (26:44.372)

Hmm.

Alex (26:48.51)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (26:50.025)

I just do. And so what am I going to do with it? What am I going to do when I blow it? I think this is just we need to be people of humility when we're entering in with other people. Again, I think this is just great modeling because if you're doing any kind of counseling, there is always the risk and the opportunity that both people are going to sin against one another. Both people are going to misunderstand the other. Both people may say something that's hurtful or not the best word at the moment. And so I just think if we can be humble people.

Alex (26:54.504)

Yeah.

Alex (27:12.594)

Yes.

Brenda (27:20.003)

that can just recognize, hey, I'm so sorry when I said that, it was too harsh, I didn't mean that, or I rushed ahead and made a rash judgment, will you please forgive me? There's just all this opportunity. And really, a lot of times, that's such great modeling too, because people who have been traumatized...

you know, maybe nobody's ever come back and even ask forgiveness or recognize they were wrong. And so I think we just, we just have to, you're, if you're going to be involved with people at all, Alex, if you're going to be ministering to people at all, allowing yourself to be vulnerable means that you are going to mess up. And so it's going to require humility and the ability to say, I'm sorry, or will you please forgive me? Can we do a redo? Can you teach me how to do that better? Say that better? How did that

Alex (27:43.794)

Right. Yeah.

Alex (28:09.665)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (28:09.802)

impact you. All of those kind of conversations are profitable and a part of this counseling process.

Alex (28:14.59)

Right.

Yeah.

This is one of the hardest things I think when we're working with people is recognizing that we may add to their hurt. It's a very hard thing to do. And yet what we see in attachment theory and in so many other areas of life is that rupture and repair actually makes a relationship stronger. And it's even part of attachment theory to recognize that we can rupture and repair. And so when we attach well to someone, it's not just when we

Brenda (28:26.122)

Yeah.

Alex (28:48.316)

attune well and contain well which are attachment theory ideas but also when we repair well and I just see even in my own life that the people I trust the most are not people who have had no conflict with they're really people who love me enough to to let me fail and also will acknowledge that they fail themselves. One of my

Clients likes to talk about a broken bone that is mended back together is stronger once it repairs and just the beauty of that metaphor. And when we think about relationships that relationships can actually be stronger and more

closer and more intimate because good repair has been made. And so I just think that's the beauty of the gospel at work in relationships is that we have the ability to repair when we've messed up and we have the freedom to fail and ask for forgiveness.

Brenda (29:45.334)

Yeah.

I'm going to wrap just a little bit maybe more biblical language around that idea as well and just that when we hurt people we can bring healing to them. Because sometimes we hurt people unintentionally. It may not be that we've sinned and so we bring healing. And then when we do hurt people and it is sinful then we can repent of that sin. And the way we repent is we ask the Lord's forgiveness. We ask the person's forgiveness. We talk about what can we do differently. We allow them to express themselves and you know we

Alex (29:53.172)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (29:56.606)

Sure.

Brenda (30:15.661)

just walk in humility with that. and I think people, you know, people are going to know if you're a safe person, Alex, they're going to, they're going to know over time, are you the kind of person that is humble? I mean, just think of some of the things that we've talked about. If, do we communicate support and belief? Do we have boundaries? Can we humble ourselves and admit when we've hurt and sinned against people and bring healing to them? So,

Alex (30:17.556)

Mm.

Alex (30:43.74)

Hmm.

Brenda (30:46.004)

So that wraps up our conversation about how to be safe in relationship with self and others. I know this has been helpful for me. These are things that you and I both have just learned on our journey. We didn't start here. And that's one of the things we just want to keep emphasizing is if you've done it wrong in the past, if you didn't know how to do it. And also just to say that, you know, we've said a little bit, there's a lot more we can say, but one of the things we want to emphasize is that the role of the Holy Spirit

Alex (30:48.69)

Hmm.

Alex (30:59.187)

No.

Brenda (31:15.449)

the role of your own walk with Jesus is vital to this process of being people helpers. And so we can give you all the skill in the world. And skill is so important. And we believe that we could have been better counselors 20 years ago had we had this information that we're sharing now. We would have done less injury and more good to more people. But at the same time, God has been faithful to us in our growth because we have continued to seek him. We have been open to wise others. We have asked the Holy Spirit

Alex (31:20.276)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (31:30.802)

Yeah, absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (31:45.393)

teach us. We have put ourselves in a place to learn and to grow and to repent and admit when we've hurt people and to go back and do that that work that needs to be done to make repair or to bring healing when hard things or bad things or things have just gone awry. So I hope this is helpful to our listeners and then coming up next you want to tease our our next episode.

Alex (32:13.47)

Well, the next episode of Things Just Goes Hand in Hand with what we've been talking about, we're gonna talk about how to help someone tell their trauma story. And it's a continuation of this idea of being a safe person, but particularly in listening, hearing and responding to someone's story.