Season 9 Episode 8/ Trauma: Caring for Yourself as You Walk with Others

Alex (00:03.339)

Well, Brenda, we've come to the final episode of our season on trauma and I don't know about you, but I feel like we barely scratched the surface.

Brenda (00:11.993)

Mm-hmm. No, I would agree with that.

Alex (00:15.114)

Yeah, it seems like because of everything we're learning, because it is part of a cultural conversation, there's always more to say. But what we hope more than anything is that this season is giving people just the beginning or the foundation to inspire them to move into not only ministering to these people, but also more learning about this subject. So today we're going to tackle a subject that we want to end on this note,

Brenda (00:29.615)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (00:39.653)

Hmm.

Alex (00:45.027)

because we think it is important. There is something distinct about walking with people in trauma. That means that we have to really be careful about ourselves. We have to care for ourselves. There is, I think, an encounter with evil that we don't experience in other places, in other...

situations or problems that we walk with people in. When we encounter people who've experienced abuse and great neglect, I think we're encountering an evil. And that means that we need to take care of ourselves. So today we're just going to give some just practical tips on how to do that as we walk with others.

Brenda (01:26.471)

you

I know for me, Alex, I don't think this was something I realized until I kind of had a moment where I shut down. It really came through the experience of just continuing to meet with people, meet with people, meet with people, meet with people, meet with people and not do the self care. Even just listening to my own body of what was happening before I actually kind of crashed. I almost quit my job because I thought I cannot do this. And the reality is, is I couldn't do it at the rate I was doing. I couldn't do it.

Alex (01:42.901)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (01:50.453)

Mm-hmm. Right?

Brenda (01:57.278)

in exclusion to my own self-care. And since the Lord has shown me that and I've been able to go back and do some things differently, now I can say I'm in it for the long haul. And that's the thing with trauma counseling. If you are walking with one person or if you are walking in our case with multiple people, it doesn't matter. You have to realize that you're really running a marathon with someone and so you have to pace yourself and for their sakes too because you don't want to rush them and you don't want to bail on them.

Alex (02:06.688)

Right.

Alex (02:19.329)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (02:25.537)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (02:26.682)

So of course we have to go back to our favorite Diane Langeberg.

Alex (02:30.739)

Yes, I'm glad you got the book out.

Brenda (02:33.885)

Yes, so good. So she's written a meditation for counselors called In Our Lives First.

Alex (02:39.445)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (02:40.197)

Love the title because it's exactly what has to happen. The first place that we have to go is our walk with Jesus and allowing him to be in our lives first. I just want to read this one quote from the book. The book has so many great things to offer. A lot of it is written maybe a little bit more to people who do this professionally, but the principles apply to anybody. This is what she said,

Alex (02:59.066)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Brenda (03:10.123)

in relationship to Christ. We are handling toxic things. We have toxins in our own hearts and it is not hard to either be destroyed by the work or to destroy those who come to us for help. So the first work we have is caring for our own souls in relationship to Christ and this takes me all the way back to season one.

Alex (03:24.011)

Mm-hmm. It's a great quote.

Alex (03:35.02)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (03:35.922)

to the things that are so needful for every Christian doing any kind of ministry work, but especially I think we have an understanding of our utter dependence on Christ when we come into this place of trauma counseling. And so we've talked about our superpowers. We've talked about we have to be sitting with God in His Word, not just to gain knowledge quote unquote, but to actually gain an intimate relationship with Jesus, to hear from Him through His Word, for us to receive comfort, for us to be convicted.

Alex (03:50.104)

Right?

Brenda (04:06.008)

for us to be challenged and encouraged in our walk with Jesus. And then we have to be dependent on the Holy Spirit in recognizing His presence in all of these times that we're meeting with someone and recognizing that true wisdom comes from Him and we're going to need His discernment. Prayer has got to be at the beginning, the middle, and the end of this care. And then finally, that we need to have good community around us. We have our own struggles that we're bringing into a counseling context.

Alex (04:13.06)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (04:36.185)

And sometimes there's even been traumatic events going on in my own life while I'm actually entering into the trauma of others. I've got to be well supported. I've got to have people praying for me, speaking into my life, safe people that I can go, safe spaces and places. So yeah, I just think that this idea of caring for ourselves is an issue of stewardship and an issue of if we don't steward our own souls well, we will be depleted.

Alex (04:43.897)

Right.

Alex (04:58.884)

Hmm.

Brenda (05:06.531)

unable or will be self-reliant in how we try to help others.

Alex (05:10.812)

Yeah, as well said. I thought we might take a minute and unpack ways that we have used those three or think about using those three like when you were talking about particularly in trauma, like how do we rely on God's Word and in listening to other traumas, how do we

think about the role of the Holy Spirit and in trauma, how do we think about the role of others? Because I think there's some unique challenges. The first one I was thinking about was in trauma, I find myself, like you said, not going to God's Word so much for knowledge, but...

really it's with the wrestle because when you hear these hard stories and you do encounter evil it sends you back to wrestling with God and going back to his word and clinging to what the true truths are but also for me it sent me back into the Psalms into lamentations of and in places of lament to cry out to the Lord sometimes on my own behalf because of what the trauma story brings up but sometimes on the behalf of someone

else but I think we have to talk about the wrestle you know the the wrestle of hearing these hard things and as somebody's asking questions like where are you God we're asking the same questions sometimes like we don't have the answer to that for them and sometimes for ourselves and so we're clinging to the promises and truths of God's Word because we're asking the same questions they are.

Brenda (06:29.665)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (06:44.069)

I think that's really good. Yeah, I think in terms of prayer, how would you see that specifically or the Holy Spirit with trauma?

Alex (06:52.828)

Well, I was thinking when you were talking and you said, in the midst of how often trauma stories caused me to be in a conversation with the Holy Spirit, even while I'm literally while I'm sitting with the person like Jesus come to like Jesus be a part of this Holy Spirit. I don't know what to say next. Like it is like a in the moment crying out and I love that in some ways. I hate that the story.

is so hard for them, but I love that it makes me so much more aware that what we've always said is that this is a three-way conversation between the person we're with and the Holy Spirit and us, and I never see that more clearly as I do when I'm talking to someone with trauma because I do not have easy answers. And so I have to ask the Lord to show up there.

Brenda (07:46.809)

Yeah, and I think in that community part of it, we also see that we need support for our personal lives, but we also need support in our work to be connected to other counselors who are also in the wrestle, who also know they're dependent and then who have maybe more case wisdom than we do or just wisdom for the moment in general.

Alex (07:55.463)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alex (08:00.295)

Yes.

Alex (08:07.744)

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that brings up the last one because there's a unique challenge in involving others and still protect protecting the confidentiality of somebody's story and what they've shared with you and yet getting support for them and for you. And I think it's it's tricky, right? Because there are times that were triggered and we might need to process some things and yet we can't reveal another person's story. And so we have to be able to do that really wisely and be very,

Brenda (08:33.184)

you

Alex (08:38.591)

vague about what we're hearing but be able to maybe process through like you know someone's story today really caused me to revisit my anger in this situation or it caused me to revisit an old hurt but we can't reveal the story so there's something really tricky about involving others but very important.

Brenda (08:58.212)

Yeah, I would agree. Well, the second way we talk about caring for ourselves is to have patience with ourselves because God is patient with us. And what we're just basically saying is we need to realize that we are in a growth pattern. And if you think you've arrived, you probably shouldn't be doing the work of helping people, right? Because there's always the personal growth that we have.

Alex (09:18.731)

Ha

Brenda (09:26.125)

And then there's the ministry work of relating to others. And we just have to realize that God is patient. And so we don't need to beat ourselves up. We've talked about in some other podcast about being able to admit if we've hurt somebody or if we've actually sinned or wronged someone and how to go about making things right. So it's okay to mess up. We're going to mess up. That's part of being human, but we just need to be ready to admit

Alex (09:34.348)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (09:53.387)

Hmm.

Brenda (09:56.002)

our mistakes and then so often what we see is that builds a stronger relationship and a safer friendship as you go on. think there's something and we just see this all the time just in life. If I go to someone and I can admit that I've wronged them or they admit they've wronged me and we have this exchange there just tends to be this real sweetness that occurs. The way the Lord supernaturally I think intervenes and builds that bond.

So, as we've been saying throughout this series, you don't need to be a professional, you don't need to be a perfect people helper, you don't need to be a perfected Christian, because there's no such thing in terms of our practice, but we just need to be willing to sit with people in what's hard, to sit with people in what can't be resolved, in those tensions, because not everything can be resolved, and to stick with them.

You know, just to have that stick to it-ness, if you will. And I think even the patience, you know, to stick with someone is supernatural from the Lord a lot of times because there's just going to be times that it feels like it's dragging on too long or the person's not making enough progress or, you know, you feel like they're taking too much from you, whatever it is. And it's just going to be asking for the Holy Spirit to grow that fruit of patience in your own life as you sit with

Alex (11:02.925)

Mm.

Brenda (11:22.42)

people.

Alex (11:22.896)

Mm-hmm. think what you're saying about sitting and what's hard and what's unresolved is so true because there's just something I think I was reminded last week. There's something about our humaneness that makes us makes it really hard for us to sit in what's uncertain or unresolved and that's often the experience of walking with someone in trauma like you said is there's a lot of uncertain and there's a lot of unresolved that we have to wait in and again it drives us back to God's Word.

It drives us back to the promises about waiting on the Lord. But I do think we need to recognize that there is a toll that sitting in that uncertainty takes that we have to reckon with as we care for ourselves.

Brenda (12:10.384)

There's just a toll, not only in hearing about somebody's trauma, but I think just the toll of watching.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. Maybe it's just even the toll of watching somebody in pain. I'm thinking about right now a dear saint that I know whose husband has been so sick and he is dying and she's just had to be with him in excruciating pain and I think the toll that is taking on her to watch that but even just the toll and watching her and hearing her knowing she's watching that, it just breaks my heart or I was reading about a friend of mine who lost two of her adult children and they're

Alex (12:22.189)

Yes.

Alex (12:39.343)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (12:48.952)

One had two little children and within two years she lost two of her four children. And again, just that toll of not just even hearing her full story. It just wasn't, it was a Facebook post. It was a, I think an anniversary post and she wasn't relaying the full story, but she was just relaying the toll on her. And I just found myself weeping because her, I was feeling her emotional toll in a little, as little bit as I could or as much as I could. And that's why I think taking care of ourselves is so important.

Alex (12:49.892)

Alex (13:06.969)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (13:18.308)

because we're going to absorb not just the facts of the story, but we absorb the emotion of the story and the toll of that other person. This is actually what it means to carry one another's burdens, right? That as somebody comes and they lay down their burdens on the Lord and they lay down their burdens and we say, I'll pick up part of that burden for you, then that is a weight that now we have to carry.

Alex (13:22.009)

Yes.

Alex (13:26.425)

Right.

Alex (13:42.352)

That's a way. Yeah, I'm glad, I'm really glad we're talking about that because I think if we don't acknowledge it, that's when we try to move to easy solutions that often harm people. It's when we say glib and trite things that aren't helpful. And it's because we want to resolve it, right? We want it to be solved. We want it to be better. We want to fix it. And so I'm glad we're talking about holding that, that,

resolution, holding the pain and and being honest about the toll that it takes because I think if we don't talk about it, we can go the way of simple solutions that are easy solutions that we just want to spit out and move on. Or we can go the way of just like you said earlier, just completely shutting down ourselves and not knowing why. And often for me, I'm going to shut down because I feel like I'm a failure because things aren't being resolved the way I thought they were as quickly as I did.

And so just being able to recognize like we're not doing something wrong when we can't reach resolution because some of these hurts, as you've said many times, will not be fully healed until heaven.

Brenda (14:54.336)

I think we can be results driven. I mean, we are results driven.

Alex (14:56.494)

Yes. And this is not a place where we're going to see fast results.

Brenda (15:02.988)

Right, but I will say if you stick with it and you...

allow the Holy Spirit to do His work. mean, we often see, more often than not, we see significant healing and growth come to people over time, over time, and that's the key. And it's precious. It is a rewarding work to do because of the way you really see God do what no person can do. What they can't do for themselves, what you can't do for them, what nobody else can do for them. You see God show up in ways that you just really aren't all of God.

Alex (15:19.63)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (15:39.16)

Mm-hmm, that's true.

Brenda (15:40.961)

Well, there's some questions, Alex, know, we're wrestling with here, I think, is what do we do with the heaviness of the information we receive in counseling? What do we do with the images of the stories that people tell us? And how do we handle our own emotions?

Alex (15:56.595)

Yeah, think that's three really, I don't think there's one easy solution for any of them. I think I can throw out a couple of things I've done. some one simple one I find myself often doing because being with someone in their trauma story is often being still and quiet and sitting. I find myself moving like I have to use movement to work these things out. If that means that I come home and take a walk, it could also mean I come home and clean because there's just there's something to

me about coming home and cleaning like I can see that that something got done right it's the resolution that I want to see in the story that I don't always get to see so it sounds silly but I love to come home and cook a meal because there's ingredients and there is a finished meal or I love to come home

Brenda (16:41.88)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (16:42.834)

vacuum a rug because there's a dirty rug and it is a clean rug. Like there just is something about accomplishing something that feels good in those moments where we tend to feel helpless and fixing a problem for someone instead of looking for that there. That's just real practical, real inside my world.

Brenda (17:00.57)

I love that. So that's why I come home and want to do laundry and cook and clean after work. never under my days off a lot of times Mondays I like to cook so a lot of times on a Monday I'll play on several things to cook and it just feels so good and to get the laundry done and I think you're absolutely right there is something the those.

Alex (17:14.962)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (17:21.271)

Those things are just good for us. Just the normalcy and even what I might call the mundane, but bringing order and seeing that order can come back and that tensions can be resolved.

Alex (17:24.029)

right?

Yes.

Alex (17:31.614)

Yeah.

Brenda (17:32.587)

Another one we've talked about and these really, if you think about Alex, we've talked about teaching people about breath work and grounding in grace and presence and movement and moving toward beauty and rest. And really these are the same things that we need to know for ourselves and do for ourselves. And I know for me, breath work has not been something I've done for a very long time, maybe just in the last year or two, really. I mean, I've known it was good, but knowing something and doing it are two different things.

Alex (17:45.118)

Right.

Alex (17:59.254)

Hahaha

Brenda (18:02.434)

But it has been really great and I think I really love the idea of breath prayers, of really connecting, particularly in the mornings now I find a lot of time before I start my quiet time that I'll do some deep breaths and I'll incorporate some prayers into that. And it's just a beautiful reminder to me every morning that God has given me breath.

It's a beautiful reminder to me to use the breath he's given me for his glory. It's a reminder to me that I'm dependent on him for breath and so is everybody else around me. Nobody's dependent on me for their breath. Nobody, not one person like that is God's realm. And then I just think the idea of breath always brings me back to the Holy Spirit, right? That he's with me, he goes with me, he's empowering, he's giving me the wisdom, the discernment, all the things I need throughout my day.

So I think I think all of these are always reminder to me of just God's presence and that's why I think it's so beautiful about when we come back to some of these what we'll call techniques or ways to think about finding rest or being able to take care of ourselves body and soul is that all of these in some way remind me of God's presence in my life and it starts there.

Alex (18:56.863)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (19:17.006)

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah, and I think that this idea of the images of stories that people tell us that I go back to some and handling the emotions that those evoke I go back to in addition to the things that we teach others with breath and grounding and movement and beauty and rest like are the tools that we encourage other people like the process journaling to process through those emotions the the visual theology that as we have these

difficult images in our head that we train our minds to meditate on the images of beauty in the scripture. so there are really all the tools that we've mentioned throughout our conversational counseling podcasts are ones I find myself employing for myself in this place of caring for myself in listening to others in their trauma. It's just a, it's just a good reminder. think it's Diane Langberg again, who, who

in that book that you mentioned taught me that the the antidote to evil is beauty.

and that we have to expose ourselves to beauty, that if we hear these stories of evil and harm, we're gonna have to return to the beauty of who God is and the beauty of His gifts that He has given us. So good meals, fellowship with friends, nature, the arts, those things are not extras or frivolous when we're doing this work, they're essential.

Brenda (20:49.12)

Yeah, they are essential and yet it's interesting to me how many people don't recognize that and can even shrink their world down again to the size of their pain and there is no beauty in their world. I was talking to somebody recently and we were having this conversation about beauty and rest and she comes out of really severe trauma but her life is basically made up of working all day and sleeping.

And so you might think sleep is rest, but it's not. It's really just a way for her to escape the rest of her waking hours. And so really this idea of what would be, what's beauty for you? What's restful for you? She couldn't even name it.

Alex (21:33.464)

Yeah.

Brenda (21:34.76)

And so as we help other people, we also need to know. I know for me, a lot of all of this, I'm thinking maybe all of these fit under my adventuring and ottering that I like to do. Adventuring, but there is something about for me, and again, I just say that because I think everybody, some people might find that the quiet and solitude with a good book is where they really recharge and they're moving toward beauty because they're reading a beautiful story, where for me it might really be my...

Alex (21:44.405)

yeah, adventuring. We need to put that down as one.

Alex (21:57.211)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (22:03.837)

my last adventuring was climbing a rock wall and doing a zip line. And there was something just about the thrill of those things and getting out in nature and moving my body and breathing heavily and all the things in the context of living in a beautiful town like Chattanooga where I get to see so much beauty as I'm doing those things really is what rejuvenates me. Like I can come back to the rest of my life and the heart in my own life and the heart in other people's lives so much better.

rested and equipped and ready to go after I've had those those times. So we're all different. We have to figure out what...

Alex (22:40.087)

Yeah, you climb the rock while I read the book.

Brenda (22:42.72)

That's right, it works! Well, finally, we just want to go to care well for yourself is we want to say, don't go it alone.

Alex (22:52.601)

Yeah, yeah. We say it in all different aspects of trauma care, they're in caring for others, but particularly in trauma care, there's gonna be value in a team of people. And often when I know you do the same thing, when I hear someone's trauma story or recognize that they are coming out of a lot of trauma or in a lot of trauma currently, one of the first things I do is encourage them to build a team. And again,

I encourage them to do it a lot of times, not for me to choose that team for them to give them some agency. And it does not have to be a big team. It can be two people who are willing to be on a text thread with them that they can SOS reach out to. I even tell them, you don't have to even tell your trauma story to your team. You can just let them know that you're working through some hard things and you might need to reach out to them for some prayer or encouragement.

It's amazing how much better people do when they have one or two people, two or three people to just surround them. And by the same token, how we need those people in our lives, whether they are other professionals who have information and skill that we don't have, or they're just... One of my favorite meetings a week is with two other counselors where we go through some part of God's Word together and it just feels like...

Brenda (24:02.582)

Yep.

Alex (24:20.145)

like we're not really sharing a lot about what we're hearing every day again because of confidentiality, but it's just the comfort of knowing that they sit in the same types of spaces that I do and hear the same types of things and how that affects each one of us that is comforting as we wrestle through, you know, other parts of our lives.

Brenda (24:42.977)

Yeah. Right. And I'm wondering if somebody is in a place where maybe they don't know where to go or who to talk to. They've met with somebody and, you know, they're stuck. They don't know what to do next.

We might could offer in our show notes some good websites some good places Places we go Alex that might be helpful and we can't always assume that the person in the church is going to be able that their pastor will be trauma-informed or Other people that are in leadership that people are getting more and more trauma-informed which is really beautiful But that's not always the case. And so I think it'd be great Maybe if we had some links in the show notes of some good

Alex (25:06.697)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (25:19.284)

Yeah.

Brenda (25:27.447)

places that we trust, places where we're going to gather more information and get help.

Alex (25:35.121)

I think that that's a really important thing to keep saying is that actually the more I work with trauma, the more I find myself reaching out to other people, experts in other ways, calling Child Protect, calling the Sunshine Center, which is our center for women who are coming out of domestic violence, calling even our, ours is called DHR Social Services and asking questions about things that I don't know about

Brenda (25:45.581)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (26:06.22)

or calling other professionals and seeing how they handle situations. And you would think as you grow and the more that you deal with trauma, the more you know and the less you have to, but the more I realize I don't know, the more I crave the wisdom of other people, the more I recognize that we are not meant to do this alone and that there is a skill in protecting confidentiality and still receiving help and instruction for ourselves as people who are walking with someone.

Brenda (26:18.734)

Yep.

Brenda (26:32.11)

you

Yep. Well, I think that wraps up our season on trauma.

Alex (26:40.253)

Yeah, hard to believe. And as we said, we recognize that we're just scratching the surface. We wanted to give a good overview of what trauma is, what the effects of trauma are. And then we also wanted to make sure that we didn't just leave people with a problem. We wanted to give kind of a paradigm that we use for thinking about helping someone by establishing safety in their body and understanding the role of the body in trauma, by establishing safety in God again, which who often feels

distant and we're unsure of him and many times people have been hurt spiritually so establishing safety with God is difficult and then establishing safety within ourselves and relationships with other people and so that's just a paradigm I continue to use this is not a linear step-by-step approach to walking with someone in trauma it's much more

Brenda (27:30.151)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (27:34.139)

you know, spiraling back around and revisiting each one of these things as people are ready and recognizing where again, as we've said before that we need to give people who are coming out of trauma as much decision making and empowering as we can to use their voice and make decisions even as we try to help establish safety for them. So what we hope as we said at the beginning of this podcast is that this isn't the end of your

trauma training is the beginning of it. That it just inspires you to learn more.

Brenda (28:05.094)

you

Alex (28:09.435)

to seek out resources. think you're right Brenda, we not only need to put resources of who we use, but maybe also some good trauma books that we've learned things from and that we've appreciated. There's a lot being written. There's a lot of good stuff. I'm particularly excited that Christians and the church are starting to talk about trauma and using biblical paradigms for trauma. And so there's a lot of really great things that we can all be continuing to learn

from. So we hope this is helpful and we hope this is the beginning and we hope that you feel not only inspired but equipped to know that you can walk with people in their trauma.

Brenda (28:59.676)

Great wrap up, Alex. You hit it all the...

Alex (29:01.087)

Mm.