Unspoken → Spoken: Karen Speaks

Descripción

KEY TAKEAWAYS: * Karen was interviewed by Focus on the Family and has some thoughts to share on forgiveness, "battering" and whether or not her husband rescued her. * Megan and Karen discuss misconceptions in the interview surrounding abuse and relationships. NOTABLE QUOTES: * "...our brain is part of our body, so emotional abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse is all physical violence because our brain is part of our bodies." — Karen DeArmond Gardner * "You can't tell a woman that God hates divorce and then ask why she stayed when she's been abused, but that's what they did. This very entity speaks about how God hates divorce." — Megan Owen * "We are conditioned to behave how they want us to behave, how they want us to react, how they want us to respond. We're the one that shuts down our voice. We're the one that does all the changing. They don't. We do." — Karen DeArmond Gardner * "We [forgive] because we've been forgiven. But we can't even do that because we haven't even forgiven ourselves for allowing this stuff to happen to us and thinking that "if we'd only done this or that", and we hold ourselves to a standard." — Karen DeArmond Gardner * "Many say, 'Don't you want a restored marriage' -- restored to WHAT? It was never a good structure in the first place!" -- Megan Owen RESOURCES: * Mountain City Christian Counseling: mountaincitychristiancounseling.com [http://mountaincitychristiancounseling.com/] * LINK TO THE INTERVIEW: HERE [https://www.focusonthefamily.com/episodes/broadcast/finding-hope-in-the-aftermath-of-domestic-violence/] * Coach Karen's book [https://a.co/d/1XEJnMj] (0:03) MEGAN: This is Pretty Psych, the podcast where we discuss and deconstruct the impact of evangelical Christianity and cultural phenomena on the psyche, the deep and sometimes uncharted territory of the mind. We venture into raw, rough, and sometimes triggering moments, but we know that through this what we will find will be pretty fascinating, amazing, and pretty intelligent. My name is Megan Owen. I'm a pastoral trauma counselor, and I have spent decades studying the science of human behavior. I draw parallels between therapy and connection to God, self, and others. I love what I do, and I will walk hand in hand with you through the fire to help you find healing and rest. Most importantly, I want to bring you home to yourself. (1:14) MEGAN: Okay, hi Karen. (1:16) KAREN: Hi Megan. (1:18) MEGAN: It's Megan and Karen with Pretty Psych, and we're so happy to be together. We just love our talks. We love running through things. We love debriefing on everything. I really don't know where I'd be without Karen right now. I need to be able to talk through so many things, especially as we're getting close to the holidays. Karen, thank you for being an amazing friend to me and an amazing coach. (1:40) KAREN: Oh, you're so welcome, and I feel the same. (1:46) MEGAN: Well, we decided to come together today to debrief a recent interview that you did, Karen, where you talked about domestic violence, and you got to share about your book. I have so many questions, and I have thoughts about how the interview went. If you haven't seen it, we're going to go ahead and link it here. We did send it out in a big email blast as well. It's gotten a lot of attention from the women in our circles, right? (2:19) KAREN: Yes, a lot, and a lot of encouragement because very few people knew in advance that I was doing the interview and when it was going to release. These were the women that knew ahead of everybody else. (2:34) MEGAN: Right, but it was all very exciting. There were a lot of comments. There's been a lot of feedback. A lot of the feedback I have noticed seems to be surrounding how you gave a lot of pushback during the interview, and I noticed that as well. Were you conscious of that as it was happening? (2:53) KAREN: Yes, I was very conscious of it because I wanted to be careful and to listen to what questions they were asking and making sure I understood what they were saying. It was kind of like they were saying, here's a narrative that we were going, and I'm like, well, no, it's this. I would push back on that narrative, especially around physical violence because most ministries are really big no matter what they feel about domestic abuse. If he's hitting you, you should leave. You should get out. You should be safe, but most domestic abuse is not physical. That is what I wanted to make clear, and that part I did make clear that that's not what this is. I would have liked to talk more about coercive control and what all that looks like. However, I think most of the people that have responded to me understood the direction that I was going and were somewhat relieved, and it resonated with their stories. (3:59) MEGAN: Absolutely. I was so impressed by how you handled it. The questions felt like machine gun questions. I mean, you barely had an opportunity to answer. That's hard for me. I need to take a minute, take that sacred pause, like I tell our coaches, and think about it, but you didn't have the opportunity to do that, right? (4:21) KAREN: Right, though a couple of times they had said something, and so they asked a question, and I actually answered the previous question, and I don't know how much of that was left in the interview, because we did talk more than 30 minutes, and I think the clips are just under 30 minutes, but there were times I would go back to a comment that was made or kind of a half question that they asked. (4:51) MEGAN: I felt like there was a little bit of an agenda on their part, and I did notice that you kept everybody aligned with what the purpose of this interview was really well. My very favorite part was when one of the men said, is there like a scale so that you know if you're being abused or not? And the other guy said, yeah, like a scale of one to ten, and they were like, yeah, yeah, and then you said there is no scale. I loved that. (5:26) KAREN: I know they definitely gave me time, because in my brain I'm thinking, a scale? No, there is no scale. You're right. (5:35) MEGAN: Yeah, you said that, and it was so great. I loved that moment. You did get that message across that abuse is not just physical. You spoke of emotional and verbal abuse, which is very important, and I even think you said emotional violence, and that sort of blows that idea out of the water that DV or domestic violence is only physical. Remember that old term people used to say battered women or battered women syndrome? I don't think people realize the kind of psychological abuse that can happen with a narcissistic abuser, and you mentioned, you did a great job of mentioning how in your previous marriage, how he would shoot you down, treat you as a non-person, and make you feel small, and always had this threat looming of physical abuse, which that's just as bad. (6:33) KAREN: Right. There are guys that are batterers, quite frankly, which is where that came from, and which everybody thought that's what it was. However, my ex used physical violence very purposefully, and that I was able to get across. There was a purpose behind it, and it didn't happen all the time. This wasn't a once a week or once a month. It could be once a year. It was just one of his tools in his toolbox, so to speak, that he would go to if he wanted to. (7:04) MEGAN: Right, and that is how my kid's father was, too. There were physical altercations. Maybe there were four in 12 years or something like that, and I just knew that that was in his back pocket if he wanted to use it, and that's what control is, right? (7:24) KAREN: Yes, yes, absolutely, and someone that I've been following her podcast, Tabitha Westbrook, in her book, she said, hey, our brain is part of our body, so physical or emotional abuse, psychological abuse, verbal is physical violence because our brain is part of our bodies, and yes, yes, it is. The bruises heal, but that healing from the psychological and the words and the thoughts, the things that they put on us, the conditioning they do to enmesh us to them, we have thoughts, and we think there are thoughts, and they're not. With my coaching clients, I sometimes say, that's not your thought. That is your abuser's. That's what he's been telling you, and you're talking like it's you saying that, and that is hard for most of us to grasp, that when you come out, not even all your thoughts are your own. (8:35) MEGAN: Yes, I mean, you're excellent with that, and that is a big part of what you do in coaching. I do something very similar. As you know, we need to get connected to our core selves. If we're connected to our core selves, our core spiritual selves, and we know who we are, we'll be able to isolate those thoughts that are just intrusive. They're not part of who we are. They've just been spoken over us, and it's like curses that have been spoken over us, and we need to put them where they need to go. So you did a great job of redirecting. They needed to be redirected, and I thought they did a great job interviewing there. Obviously, this is what they do for a living. They're very professional and all of that. They're not trauma-informed, obviously, and you walked that balance of sort of stepping them into it a little bit. You gave them a little peek behind the curtain as to what it might be like. I really like how you mentioned that a lot of women get married and they don't know until they say, I do, and they walk into the hotel or whatever it is. Another one of my favorite parts, though, Karen, is when they said, why did you stay? Why did you stay? Which is a very insensitive question, which they mentioned was insensitive, and then you told them it was insensitive, which I really appreciated because that just kind of shows a lack of understanding. You can't tell a woman that God hates divorce and then ask why she stayed when she's been abused, but that's what they did. This very entity speaks about how God hates divorce. They work hard to keep men and women together, and then they asked you in the interview why women stay. What was that like for you? (10:24) KAREN: You know, I hate the question, and yet I like it at the same time because of the fact that I want to. It's a time to educate, and the odd thing is I don't remember quite what I said except probably something along that line. (10:40) MEGAN: No, you said when women are hearing that God hates divorce, then why would they leave? And you even mentioned women who stay at home as though to help them understand when this is your whole world, this abuse, and you don't have anything outside of it. You don't go to a job where you're treated well, where you understand that it's not a you-problem. It's a him, you know, all of that. You brought that in. (11:09) KAREN: Yeah, I did. Thank you for reminding me. I should have listened to the interview today again because I had forgotten that. Those were moments to me that were just holy because I don't know what they were expecting, but I know that even with each question, I wanted to get across to the women that would be listening, talking about hard marriage or going through hard things or the fact that, you know, well, before you leave, you should make sure it's really abuse, knowing that it takes women so long to recognize what they're experiencing even is abuse by time they recognize it, then there's no doubt because they've actually been doubting it for so long. And I didn't get to answer that the way I wanted to, and I'm not sure why. I mean, it took me almost 30 years to admit he was an abuser and that I was being abused. And it was a horrifying moment. It was easy to say that about him, but to say I'm abused, then what the heck is wrong with me that I would even allow someone to do that, which I will tell you right now, I tell everyone when I talk to you, take that word allow out of your vocabulary because nobody allowed him to you did not allow it. You did not give him permission. You did not sign up and sign on your marriage certificate as with a small print saying, go ahead and abuse me because I'm allowing it. We do not do that. (12:48) MEGAN: No, no. And if you could answer that question now, is that what you would say? Is there anything else you would add to it? (12:56) KAREN: I would add that it is gut-wrenching to finally have it hit you that this is not normal, that you finally realize you can't do this anymore and you don't care if God's mad at you. You just don't care. You just know you have to get out because this is not what they said. You've done everything. And I heard one woman say, I had to know I did everything. I had to know I did everything to give him the opportunity to change. And as I listened, I thought you could have never done enough, but she didn't know that at the time because she was actually listening to programs that was telling her to try harder and to forgive and to do better that you just needed to do. If you did enough, there would be change on his part. But I think what I, and we didn't talk about this, but I've been thinking about this a lot about the change. He didn't just change. That question did come up in the interview. So when did they turn abusive? And that was sometimes right in the honeymoon night. I know people who the wedding was beautiful, it was amazing. He was so loving. And as soon as the door closed, everything changed in an instant, in an instant. And it's not a change. He didn't change into this kind of a man. He's taking off his mask. He was always this man. He didn't change. So we're trying to do enough so that they will change, but what are they going to change too? They were never the man they pretended to be. This is him. (14:48) MEGAN: Right, right. That reminds me of this sort of restoration talk that we sometimes hear in marriage therapy or in churches, like, don't you want a restored marriage? And I always want to say restored to what? It was never this way. He didn't start off some sort of great godly man. And then he, you know, became more, you know, when House gets old, what is that like? Dilapidated. And the marriage became dilapidated and we need to breathe life to it and restore what was there. No. And I am one of those people that on my wedding night, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I was very sick that night. There had been a terrible virus going around and I had to do EMDR for our wedding night. You know, it was horrible. And I hung in there for 11 more years, 12 total. But it does, it's agonizing to leave that. And part of that, I think, is that sort of sunk cost fallacy. You've put so much into it. We put so much effort. We changed. We were doing everything we could. If we do this, then it'll get better. Maybe if I do this, maybe, you know, all of this. Sacrifice more. Get thinner. You know, all of the things that you think are going to make it better. And it doesn't. It's almost as though he enjoys watching you spin your wheels and try. And I want to riff off of that sentence you said a minute ago about how agonizing it is to make that decision. You have children. You know, you might have little ones or it doesn't matter. They might be grown. You know, people are now going to know that this happened to you. And there's just no way around it. And it tears your life apart. It is a breaking open. Back to the interview, I felt a little bit like they were very fixated on forgiveness. So at the end of 30 minutes, you're already smiling. At the end of 30 minutes of you sharing your story, they were very concerned about whether or not you had forgiven your ex-husband. And that I was fine until that moment. And then I just had to do the giant eye roll because really this is what we're concerned about is whether or not Karen's forgiven this man. Of course you have. We know that. Of course you have. But I just felt almost as though here they were putting a brick on your shoulders when it belonged on his. Right? (17.29) KAREN: Yes. And I also like the question because I was able to say what I believe about forgiveness because I did do that. When I first got out, I was like, I'm a Christian. I'm supposed to do this. And yet I was still angry at him. But what I have learned about forgiveness, when you put it all together, you take the Old Testament, the sacrifices that had to be offered, and it wasn't open to everybody. Not everybody got offered forgiveness because if you were impure, you couldn't go offer a sacrifice. I mean, there were all these things that you had hoops to jump through. And then Jesus comes with radical forgiveness. But even he said, if you don't forgive, you can't be forgiven because it was very conditional at that time. But then in Matthew, he expanded and said, but if you refuse to forgive from your heart, because it's easy to give lip service to anything, but it dawned on me, we don't refuse. We can't forgive from our heart until we deal with what's in our heart. But then you jump to after Jesus's death and resurrection, and now forgiveness has become you forgive because you've been forgiven. There's no, God won't forgive you. There's no, how many times do you forgive? We do it because we've been forgiven. But we can't even do that because we haven't even forgiven ourselves for allowing this stuff to happen to us and thinking that if we'd only done this or that, and we hold ourselves to a standard. And so we often though, in that forgiveness, which I think comes out of healing, we naturally forgive, we naturally release because we don't want them to have territory in our lives anymore. But even then it's easier to release them than it is ourselves for the choices that we made when we were in survival mode. (19:44) MEGAN: Right. And that's where we need that self-compassion. (19:47) KAREN: Yes. (19:48) MEGAN: Especially if you come from a family of origin that didn't value you, that abused you, you have to understand that there was conditioning there. In some cases, not all, but in some cases, you didn't have really a choice. This is what you knew. This is what you thought was normal. There really was no way for you to choose any other way. So we have to see that we don't come out of the womb with all of the tools and all of the savvy and all of the understanding and being able to tell what good character is. We just don't come out that way. We have maybe one tool. And then now as we're older, we have a whole toolbox. You spoke so wisely to these questions when they asked you about forgiveness. It is natural. It has to come from healing. I think about Joseph. Joseph had to name it. He had to name what they had done. He had to look at it, probably looked at it from several angles. He had to cry a lot. Joseph was always crying. He had to cry. He had to grieve. And then he had to go back and say, I'm going to forgive you. We don't even know if his brothers understood at all what they had done to Joseph. I think if I went up to my ex-husband and said, I forgive you for what you did, he would just roll his eyes. He doesn't get it. He doesn't care. But it was for Joseph, that release that you spoke of. I think though, even the very last chapter of Genesis, the last verse maybe is Joseph went off and wept again. And I think that's because his brothers never got it. They just didn't get it. So it's good to see the humanity of people in scripture, to see that we're just doing the best we can and forgiveness needs to be held loosely. Just hold it loosely until it comes. It's going to come. Forcing forgiveness, that's never a good idea. Then you have a bunch of people just giving lip service to it, right? (21:49) KAREN: Yeah. Well, and I've met women who did not deal with their pain, did not name what was done to them because they had forgiven him because that's what good Christian girls are supposed to do and never deal with their pain and then would feel tormented. And I'm like, it's not torment. It's your pain screaming for release. It wants to be named. It wants to be heard. And so forgiveness can actually stop the process of healing because you think once you've said that, you can't go back and look at it and say what he did to you or what you, or the things that you never got from him, the neglect and whatnot. And so it's not always healthy because, but it's become a badge within Christianity and it causes spiritual bypassing. It causes people to think that they're fine. I don't need to do that. I'm just fine. And you're anything but fine, but you don't know that you're not fine. And I say that because that was me. I did that for many, many years and thought I was fine until one day I wasn't fine at all. (23:04) MEGAN: Right. Because that emotion lodges into your body. Emotion is energy and it can actually make you ill. You have all of that inside of you. I've also known women who finally opened up and shared their pain and were immediately shut down, called unforgiving, called bitter, when they were trying to just express that they've been in pain and not just shut them down. And then it could be another decade before they're brave enough to say something again. And that again, that's more of the healing work that we do here is we listen, we honor, we companion through that complicated grief of all of that loss from after you're coming out of an abusive situation. (23:48) KAREN: Yes, absolutely. And something when we, I want to go back to the whole change process, because it occurred to me while we were talking back and forth, you know, who's the one that changes us? We change. We're the ones that change. We are conditioned to behave how they want us to behave, how they want us to react, how they want us to respond. We're the one that shuts down our voice. We're the one that does all the changing. They don't. We do. (24:20) MEGAN: And if there's any hope in that, it's that we know that we can change and we can grow and become the version of ourselves that we were supposed to be, because we know what it is to change. (24:34) KAREN: Yes, absolutely. So that is a beautiful end of that is because if we changed, that means we can change not back to some former version of ourself, but as you said, to our truest self, nothing gave me more pleasure than last week at looking at one of my coaching clients and to say, I want to introduce you to your true self. And, and she just lost it because I, she said, I don't know who that is. And I go, well, that's what we're going to learn. We're going to discover her. And, and another part of that was scary to realize a true self because what if you don't like her? And and, and honestly, sometimes, you know, as I discover my true self, sometimes I am too much and sometimes I'm too loud. Sometimes I'm too quiet. Sometimes it doesn't matter. I have learned to be okay with who I am as long as I'm still in this healing process. (25:37) MEGAN: Yes, yes. And that's, and we will be it. If we are changing and growing, we will always be healing. And we, we just don't finish that, you know, during this life. And so that, that self acceptance is very important. I don't think you're too much. I don't think you're too loud. I love all versions of Karen that, and I love all versions of my clients as they're growing and they're changing. And, and as they're getting to know who they actually are, and that's a huge part of healing after abuse is, is getting people connected to who they are on the inside, because those, those things have just been decimated, but you're in there. You're in there. You're in there. Your soul can't be destroyed by your husband. It can't be, it might feel like it can be. It might feel like you have heard people say soul murder. That's not possible. That's not possible because that's the breath of God in us. And that part is going on from this life. So your soul is in there. It's just, sometimes it takes a little while to connect to you, right? (26:42) KAREN: Yes, it does. So one other thing that I would like that in the interview that I really didn't like how I responded was that about Tom being my knight in shining armor… (26:55) MEGAN: That's what I was just going to talk about! But they set you up for that, Karen. (27:01) KAREN: I know. And as if he had to rescue me. So first of all, I was single for five years before I met Tom. And when I came out of the abuse, I literally had man haters scrawled on my forehead. Heaven forbid that a man even look in my direction. I would give, I apparently, I just would give them a look that was like, like, come near me at your own risk. I didn't realize I did that until someone mentioned it to me. And all of a sudden I went, oh, so that's why they all of a sudden didn't come towards me. Oh, I was giving them a look apparently. So anyways, he, Tom did not rescue me. And well, he said it to me one time, he goes, I think some of the things I did while we were dating were things that abusers do. And I'm like, no, you, they actually mimic what you do. (27:54) MEGAN: Because he's genuine. Tom is very genuine. (27:56) KAREN: He's genuine. He's a good listener. We went deep where we're not good at small talk. Neither one of us. So we went deep. We didn't go like everything all at once, but we spent a lot of time talking. He's never wanted to rescue me. And he told, when he told me that he loved me, he knew I couldn't say it back. And I couldn't, he didn't even want to tell me, he felt like the Holy spirit says, I want you to tell her. And he's like, yeah, I really don't want to do that. Cause he thought it would scare me off. It didn't, but I, he was okay that I didn't say anything. And so a few days later I said, okay, I need to know why do you love me? And everything had to do with who I was. Nothing about what I look like none of nothing about, it was just all my qualities and my strength. And, and I'm not even that person that I was even then, but he saw all those things in me. And that's what he loved is who I was. And that was the first time I'd ever heard somebody talk to me in that way and tell me who I was. And the other question they asked is, did he redeem all men? No, he did not redeem all men for me. (29:22) MEGAN: I noticed that too. (29:33) KAREN: Yeah. I couldn't think fast enough. He did not redeem all men, but he is a reminder that there are good men out there. They're just very, very hard to find and that abusers are really good at mimicking good men. And they're hard to tell apart, which is a whole ‘nother conversation. But that was one, I really wasn't satisfied with my response because I didn't need a knight in shining armor. Like I said, I didn't date. He was the first man I dated. I did not date for five years, ‘cause I just couldn’t. (30:01) MEGAN: I highly recommend it by the way, at least two years, if not more, yeah, take that time. They also sort of insinuated that he taught you what love was. And he may have, because he's a very loving man. And he's an example to all of us women, like there are good men out there. We all love Tom. That's not the only way though, to learn what real love is. You can actually learn what real love is by watching what Jesus does. And that's how I learned how to raise my kids. That's real love to me. So sometimes we do show each other who Jesus is. We really can love each other that way. But that's not the only way for a woman to. (30:43) KAREN: Yeah. And that's a really good clarification because I actually said that because Tom loved me in a way that I didn't know was possible. I didn't know. And the clarification of what love is between a man and a woman and what it's supposed to be. I was married to a man for 30 years who took everything from me. And Tom just kept giving of himself, even when I couldn't give. And that like, this is like one day it just hit. This is what marriage is supposed to be like. Now it hasn't all been easy. We've had difficult times in our marriage. But that's different than having a hard marriage. You will go through difficult times because God never promised that everything would be nice and easy. I mean, I wish it was, but it's just not. We've experienced some challenges, but you go through it as a couple. He is not my leader, though I will tell you because he's a bodyguard. If we're in a crowd, I'm like, get in front of me and I'm grabbing your belt loop and I'm hanging on and you get us through the crowd. And because I don't do well in crowds. If he all of a sudden tells me hit the floor, I'm going to hit the floor because he knows something's going on that I have no idea about. But when he's talking to somebody about trauma and that, he's going to pay attention to me. He's going to let me lead in that. So we never talk about who's the leader because it's a partnership that we do together. And we don't talk about submission because it's just not a topic of conversation. I called it the S word for a really long time. (32:23) MEGAN: Right? No kidding. No kidding. So we're going to have to wrap up in a minute, but I love your relationship with Tom. For those of you who don't know, Tom was attracted to Karen's strength. She's always been a strong woman. He has showed her love, but there are other ways for us to learn. We can learn love from just watching what Jesus did, you know, how he did things, not even looking at the words, but how he did them. So yeah, I thought that was interesting, but it was a great interview all in all. I hope that women listen to it and I know that it's important to you to just say, even if it reaches that one woman, that one woman who needs to hear it, that then it was all worth it. Right? And I love that about you, Karen. Okay. So I think that's it for today. We have so much. We could just go on and on, but we'll stop there and we'll do another podcast soon. Karen, thank you so much for what you did for so many women by having this conversation and being so brave and just holding your own. I just loved that. It was amazing. Thank you. (33:34) KAREN: You're so welcome. Thank you. (33:38) MEGAN: I hope this conversation has encouraged deep thought as well as helped you draw parallels between therapy and your connection to God, self, and others. If you'd like some one on one time with me unpacking some of your most precious life stories to find healing and rest, contact me on mountaincitychristiancounseling.com. To help this podcast reach more people, do subscribe and review this podcast and share it with someone who would benefit from healing and rest. My name is Megan Owen, and thank you for listening to this episode of Pretty Psych. Catch you next episode, and in the meantime, do find healing and do find rest.

The Long Way Back to People: Creating and Maintaining Friendships After Abuse

KEY TAKEAWAYS: * Megan and Elle Arters talk about their struggles and strategies when it came to making friendships and nourishing relationships after coming out of their abusive relationships. * Megan and Elle also discuss the power of groups and what kind of people are good confidants when it comes to sharing traumatized part of oneself. NOTABLE QUOTES: * "I was hyper vigilant and paranoid for every new person, [and] every old person, [I was] like [to] anybody in my circle, like are you trustworthy? Are you safe?...it really does so much damage to your relationship with everyone." — Elle Arters * "[Something] that I did was offering maybe 1% of my life to somebody to see how they handled that 1%, and if they proved trustworthy, I felt like I could offer 3%. But again, not flooding anybody with my trauma life..." — Megan Owen * "But as I've had to walk stuff in the last 15 years, it expands my capacity for their story, for what they're going through, for what they might need, you know, different things like that." — Elle Arters * "...we had lost our belongings. We had lost our homes. We had lost our children. We had lost our friends and our family and churches and we were in it together. We were comrades." — Megan Owen RESOURCES: * Mountain City Christian Counseling: mountaincitychristiancounseling.com [http://mountaincitychristiancounseling.com/] * To look into Crisis Support Groups: HERE [https://mountaincitychristiancounseling.mykajabi.com/services?preview_theme_id=2154149170#section-1689651941997] * If you are interested in the Spiritual Processing Groups, please reach out to admin@mountaincitychristiancounseling.com (0:03) MEGAN: This is Pretty Psych, the podcast where we discuss and deconstruct the impact of Evangelical Christianity and cultural phenomena on the psyche, the deep and sometimes uncharted territory of the mind. We venture into raw, rough, and sometimes triggering moments, but we know that through this what we will find will be pretty fascinating, amazing, and pretty intelligent. My name is Megan Owen.I'm a pastoral trauma counselor, and I have spent decades studying the science of human behavior. I draw parallels between therapy and connection to God, self, and others. I love what I do, and I will walk hand in hand with you through the fire to help you find healing and rest. Most importantly, I want to bring you home to yourself. (1:12) MEGAN: Hi, friends. Megan Owen here from Mountain City Christian Counseling, and I have Elle Arters with me for our podcast Pretty Psych. Elle, I am so grateful to have you today. (1:23) ELLE: Thank you. I am very excited to be here. (1:26) MEGAN: Elle and I have known each other for 15 years. We are very good friends. She is an amazing advocate and coach, and she works with Mountain City Christian Counseling now. So great with web design and all of the tech things that I can't do, and we've worked together before, and I'm probably saying all of that wrong, Elle, but I'm really grateful that you are working with us again. (1:49) ELLE: Yep, that was perfect. Thank you. I'm excited to be back here with you, too. (1:54) MEGAN: Okay. Well, we thought we would talk about friendships after abuse. This is something that I think Elle and I both struggled with 15 years ago trying to navigate how to create and maintain friendships when you have just come out of an abusive situation and you do have complex trauma and are struggling with the 5F responses, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and fold, and everybody is so different, and there aren't any books out there on how to create and maintain friendships after abuse, right? (2:28) ELLE: Exactly. Exactly. (2:30) MEGAN: So we thought we would start by talking about how easy it is to cocoon and pull in after you've left an abusive situation. A lot of us suffered from post-separation abuse. Everything felt scary. We felt like emotional burn victims. Everything felt very raw, and that's normal for CPTSD, and we still need community, and so how do we bring that together? Isolation seems very peaceful for a while, but then after a while, we can sort of get weird, right? I know I get weird. Isolation will make me a very weird version of myself, and so we do need to have each other. We struggle with abandonment wounds if we have CPTSD, and we tend to do one of two things, which are very extreme. We can either try to lock others down to help heal us, or we can do the door slam, which that was sort of my choice of coping was the INFJ door slam, so we have to find somewhere in the middle, right? (3:46) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. I can completely relate. (3:50) MEGAN: I know. Somehow, we didn't slam the door on each other. I'm not sure how that happened, but right, so it's not our fault that we have CPTSD, and we can take responsibility for the symptoms and any obsessiveness that we might struggle with at the same time. (4:09) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. I was thinking when I was kind of reflecting back myself in preparation for our dialogue today, and I think we probably chatted about this when we got together last month too, but how, like you said, we're wired for community. It's a critical piece in our ability to thrive, in our ability to heal, and yet the challenge, of course, is for so many of us, we also had our community betray us, so our relationship with community in general has been shattered. Our relationship with ourself has been shattered. Our relationship often with God has been shattered, so everything is flipped upside down. Everything's kind of disconnected, and yeah, we do all kinds of different, wild, weird, understandable. Of course, that's a hard place to navigate, and yet, like you said, we are desperate. We still need community, and we need friendship, so how do we do that through these different stages too? When I reflect back from almost 15 years ago when my life exploded and trauma started, how I related to friends and community in that stage was one version of crazy, and then as I continued to heal, or not heal, but as I continued on that journey, and then these different stages, my relationship with community looked different, and still difficult, and still, I don't know, it's just a challenge is really all I'm trying to say. (5:50) MEGAN: You're saying it well. (5:51) ELLE: Yeah, it keeps presenting all these unique challenges, and so yeah, that's why I was so excited, really, that you wanted to chat about this on the podcast, though, because like so many things, I launched down this path so blindly, and that included, like I was not prepared for how my relationship with community and friendships would change, would evolve, how difficult it would be, and like you said, I didn't have any books on that, or I didn't have resources to kind of help guide me, or even just prepare me for that kind of massive shift, so I love that we're talking about this. I'm confident it'll help others, and for anybody listening who can relate, you know, like it's not you. You're not alone. This is such a normal piece in walking trauma and post-trauma. (6:46) MEGAN: Yes, well, let's start there then, with that transition. So before our lives imploded, to borrow your term, our friendships might have been based on church involvement maybe, or what we thought healthy friendships looked like, or they might have been more transactional if you were in more of a legalistic place. That was our understanding of relationships. We didn't really have this sense, I think, at least I didn't have this sense of, okay, I'm going to be loved no matter what happens. I felt that I had to perform all the time. That was where I was at the time, and so if we think of that sort of before implosion and after implosion, BI, before implosion, we then realized, I think both, I don't mean to speak for you, but we sort of went through this together, and that's a lot of how we connected. We realized that we were right. We wouldn't be loved no matter what we did. We felt that, and that was devastating for me. I didn't know how to start over at the time. So isolation for me felt a lot safer, and it worked because I'm introverted, and I know you are too, and so we probably did something similar, but at the same time, like something you just said, we desperately need to be seen during those times, and we're terrified to be seen during those times, and we need some contact. We need some friction for our social skills and to be able to grow, but groups were terrifying at that time. (8:44) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. Again, I guess when I reflect back, there's so many different stages, but going all the way back to the beginning for me, yeah, when my world exploded, that included, and part of the catalyst was a betrayal by friends and close friends that were in my community, and then I had some friends who remained who were steadfast and loyal and beyond grateful for that, and then I had, of course, kind of the other extreme of friends who felt like they needed to take different sides, and anyway, I think betrayal is probably the best way to explain it, and so yeah, then I remember that first year, in fact, feeling so paranoid. That was like another, I don't know what the right word is, like just another outcome, I guess, that I wasn't anticipating. (9:25) ELLE: I was hyper vigilant and paranoid for every new person, but every old person, like anybody in my circle, like are you trustworthy? Are you safe? Is everything I'm going to say, is it going to be used against me? Is it going to be literally given to other people who would intentionally and cheerfully weaponize it? And this is what I mean, like it really does so much damage to your relationship with everyone. There was that early season where I felt so hyper independent and distrusting of so many people, which is a really unhealthy but understandable outcome, I guess, of trauma. (10:12) MEGAN: Absolutely, and that's a CPTSD symptom, is that hypervigilance, and I wasn't like that before, but then after going through that betrayal, right, I would panic over an email. Everything felt raw. That's that sort of emotional burn victim sort of feeling of, you know, and I was ready to slam the door. I was ready if it felt in any way threatening, but yes, I think you're describing it beautifully. (10:41) ELLE: Yeah, and I'll share too, in case anybody else is kind of finding themselves in a similar place. I feel like, obviously, I had some friendships that I would say were healthy and grounded, and I'd had for decades, and so grateful for those. Then I had some other friendships, probably at that time, who I was doing more like the day-to-day life, because that wasn't within my church community, and that community was very, honestly, just very codependent, right? That was like a whole other conversation, but I know you've talked about that in different spaces of just that spiritual community can often create these very codependent beliefs and relationships. Anyway, so even some of my friendships, I don't mean codependent in like a pathological way, but just generally speaking, I just felt like very needy, and other people were stronger. So even some of my friendships, again, not all of them, but some of them probably showed up that way, and over the years, as I tried to work through that, and I was healing and realizing, oh, I don't like that dynamic. I don't need to be that way, but I can look back and see how I would pendulum swing in those early years. So for me, there were times where I was it really wasn't healthy. It was far too needy, but then I would swing all the way to the other side of being hyper-independent, and for me, that was, I think, part of the motivation for, okay, I just need to isolate and withdraw. I'm too much. My world is so traumatic, and for a long time, I was going to friends to be like, yeah, can you help me fix this? And then other stages on that healing journey of feeling like, oh my gosh, that's not their responsibility. It's mine, and flipping all the way to the other side of, okay, I won't be needy at all. I won't ask. I won't come to you at all, and I'll just be very withdrawn and isolated. Sometimes that was because I felt like the world was untrustworthy, but sometimes that was because I felt like I was untrustworthy. So I'm just sharing like different, like a whole variety of different ways of trying to relate to others while on this crazy post-trauma journey, right? (13:12) MEGAN: Yes. Thank you for sharing that. So it really, it feels like you were over-correcting, and I think maybe that has to do with how we feel about ourselves. I know that when I was needy, I hated feeling like that, and I can see where I did that as well, that hyper-independence, which is a trauma response, right? Swinging over, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners have done the same thing because it doesn't feel good to be the one who always needs help, and sometimes people don't give help in a gracious way either, and that can feel like a little stab or a small betrayal, and so it sort of pushes you back over it. But we, like you said, we desperately need that community, and it's a good point that you're bringing up that our friendships can change. Sometimes we do grow after trauma, and we can't relate to people in the same way that we did before, and sometimes people don't like that. Sometimes they champion us for growing, you know, really just kind of, for me, it was growing up. I had to grow up and see what I was made of, but our friends might not be a great fit anymore. Not everybody is growing, and not everybody is recovering, and not everybody is actively working on healing, and sometimes we can't put up with certain behaviors anymore that maybe we put up with before. So since you're sharing, one of the things I remember doing is allowing people to treat me poorly because I didn't want to lose anybody else, and so as I grew, I stopped allowing that, and then I lost those people. So it wasn't even, it didn't even really work, right? (15:08) ELLE: For sure. I've experienced similar things too where, like I said, sort of those early stages, you've got this pendulum swinging thing happening, so that's a challenge, and then once you even get to the next stage of healing where like, okay, I've kind of found my healthy space of how I want and how I can show up and relate to friends, even that healthy new growth space no longer fits for either extreme of other people who wanted, yeah, who wanted me to show up in those other spaces because that fit their own dysfunction, or even if it's not a dysfunction, it just may be just a different space on their journey. I just no longer fit in those spaces anymore, and so I think it's a positive, but it still is challenging because now you're in new spaces and trying to find those friendships and those other people who can relate or who are in those new spaces, yeah, it's just, it's a challenge. (16:15) MEGAN: It's a challenge, and that's why we're talking about it. So yeah, and I think that sort of being nice to a fault so that people won't leave you, that's fawning, that's the very definition of it. So that might be a phase that you go through. So it is, it's a primal feeling in us to want belonging, even if we say we don't want belonging, we secretly really do want belonging, and so how do we start to do that? And I think that's the question you asked right at the beginning, and by the way, Elle, you're so articulate. That's why I wanted you here. You have a way of explaining things that just make sense to me. So okay, so we need some friction. We need some contact for our social skills after abuse, right? I have this story I often share with my clients that within a few months of my taking my children and leaving, the neighbor at the house next door asked me why I never look him in the eye, and I realized that I had lost so many social skills by being in a 12-year-long abusive relationship and had to start teaching myself, training myself, and as I started to heal, little interactions became tolerable. Not floodlighting, but twinkle lights, and I remember sort of practicing. The second thing that I did was offering maybe 1% of my life to somebody to see how they handled that 1%, and if they proved trustworthy, I felt like I could offer 3%, but again, not flooding anybody with my trauma life, which okay, so even as I'm saying this, I know I did that at the beginning as I was trying to learn how to adjust. I was just in such crisis, I think, that I would often floodlight until I learned this term, twinkle light, but that's when as I got healthier, I began to be able to be in a group and just share a little bit. (18:33) ELLE: Yeah, definitely. I definitely relate. The 15 years is just such different stages of this kind of healing journey with friends and community, but yeah, oh my gosh, the first two and a half years, like a full two and a half years, my world shattered, my boundaries were shattered, there was just so much that was just shattered, and you're just leaking out. I knew I had so few healthy coping skills and tools at that point, and yeah, any person who was in front of me who was willing to listen, I just trauma dumped. I didn't know that term at the time, but looking back, that's very much what I did, but yeah, I agree. Just like you said, the longer, the more we heal, the longer we're on that journey, of course, that shifts and you start to find those boundaries. I love your tip. I love how you put those words to these specific boundaries of when you're starting over with friendships, acquaintances. I've used this with dating. You don't just like, here is 100% of me, I'm sure you'll be fine, or 0%, going back to what I said on that pendulum swing. It's very normal then to be, if you feel like, oh, I've shared too much, I'm too trustworthy, then to flip all the way to the other side, and I will share no things, and I won't trust anyone. Obviously, it's like, what are those good tips of finding something more in the middle? I think that's so wise to like, okay, well, I could start with 1%, I could start with 3%, I can start and continue on. If that other person, of course, is honoring and respecting and knowing how to hold space for that incremental amount that you keep sharing, yeah. (20:25) MEGAN: Well, and that's what's important right there, is that relationship that we're able to find somebody. In the therapeutic relationship, that's where we do all of this work. It is 90% relational and 10% modality, in my opinion. That's where we practice almost building healthy relationships and having clients know that their feelings are validated. And even we say the words trauma dump, and we both did that. I know we both did that. I remember doing it. And there is a bleeding out quality to it, but I don't want anybody to feel shamed for that. The reason we call it bleeding out is because we can't stop it. We desperately need help. And it's an emergency protective measure. That's an emergency protective measure, just like the other side of the pendulum, which is totally shutting down. That's also an emergency protective measure. And at the time, that's what we needed, but it's not a way to live our whole life. And so when you're able to work it out with your therapist or coach or whatever, and you want to begin to make some of those connections, shallow connections at first are okay. That's normal. We might've gotten used to floodlighting, bleeding out, trauma dumping. Those are the words that we're using today, apparently. But that is not sustainable for anybody, including us. And it really is a cry for help. It is our saying, we're not able to find what we need anywhere. And right now we are the weaker brother, right? We need somebody to step in and say, hey, have you thought about this and this and this? And of course, those are the things you and I have been offering for all of these years because we didn't have those things. (22:26) ELLE: Yeah, exactly. And for sure, no shame at all, no shame or judgment for anybody who's in those stages and myself as well. I don't shame myself for that. Those early years, exactly what you just said, I was in genuine need and needed help. And I think that's so wise to try to be as aware as you are able in that stage to know where do I go? Who are the safer, I don't know if the most appropriate is the right word, but it made me think of how you and I met in my first year. Some people might know, but you and I met on a Facebook private group for other women who were walking in a similar situation. And that was such a gift for so many reasons, but that was a safe space. I was on fire. I think we all pretty much were. We were all in the thick of it in the earliest stages. And to have a place where we could dump, we could share, and we could receive encouragement, we could receive, it was trustworthy, and we could receive validation and everything that we needed in a community, that was a game changer. Even though it was online, I didn't know anybody, really, initially. But yeah, that was so, so, so precious and helpful at that time. I'm so grateful for that. And just learning, okay, who else in my community at that time was safe, and then who else in that community just wasn't. I shouldn't go to them at 100%, or I shouldn't go to them at 80%. I could go to them for five. (24:16) MEGAN: Right. So what are those qualities? What would you say are the qualities of somebody who was safe during that time? (24:25) ELLE: Yeah, that's a great question. I think part of why that online group, as an example, was safe was, one, it was other people who were walking what we were walking. So there wasn't judgment. It was just full of grace, full of mercy, full of empathy, full of compassion. There was a lot of wise women in there, even if we obviously, we did not have all the answers. So many of us were walking blindly. But there was also, and I think at that time, it was, I think it was like a Christian group. I think that we were all of the same faith background. (25:12) MEGAN: It was called Joel 225 or something like that. And it was started because there was nothing out there for Christian women who were looking at these marriages that were abusive, and we just didn't have anything. And it was confidential. There was safety in the confidentiality. (25:33) ELLE: Yes, absolutely. (25:34) MEGAN: So the flip side then for the unsafe would be lacking in those things. You just, those positive qualities of, it was full of grace. It was full of mercy. There was understanding. There was compassion. There was safety and confidentiality. And so an unsafe, and I don't want to label people as unsafe. It just might not be a good time to be open with somebody because they haven't learned yet to keep confidentiality or to honor your story without judgment. (26:24) ELLE: And I think too, in that group and just in general, I think there's a humility. And while so many of us would probably also be experiencing maybe a form of a humiliation a little bit, but I'm not saying because we deserve that or anything. I just mean out other people. It's- Yeah. But there was also a humility in having to walk something where we don't have all the answers. And there was a humility in walking just the raw, real parts of some of us had lost homes or some of us had, there was just a lot of loss. It created, or I think it cultivated this very humble space that we all were inhabiting. And so again, very hard to be judgmental when we're all at like a rock bottom of sorts. And so there was this really unique sacred beauty, I think, that we got to inhabit then because of these very humble spaces. (27:37) MEGAN: Memories just flooded for me as you were talking about, as we had, we had lost our belongings. We had lost our homes. We had lost our children. We had lost our friends and our family and churches and we were in it together. We were comrades. (27:55) ELLE: Exactly. And I really, I love this because I really haven't reflected on this in a long time. But again, it was just this, the other aspect of humility is again, none of us had the answers. We had no idea. Most of us were like, so many surprises. A lot of us, like you said, we lost belongings, we lost friendships, we lost respect, we lost reputation. We lost so many things and we didn't have answers of quick fixes, but there was again, just this genius of that. And so all we could do was witness one another, not even knowing how powerful that was. I would never have been able to articulate that or had the vocabulary for that at the time, or even an awareness at that time. I remember goodness in those early years, again, just feeling so blind, just so blind and just being so at God's mercy. I have no idea. I barely know if this was, I think this was still the good decision, but I'm reaping so much pain and suffering. So you're just walking so blindly and so humbly. And yet, again, I just think that's where the power is. And we were all doing it in a similar season. So yeah, I think witnessing without trying to fix, witnessing without a judgment, witnessing with just compassion, feeling like we didn't have enough. And now looking back and realizing that was so brilliant and adequate. And yeah, it didn't fix our circumstances, but it was just this really powerful, humble love. (29:42) MEGAN: It was, it was profound in that, you know, the more I'm listening, I haven't thought about it this way either. And I'm really getting emotional. But it was profound in how we just companioned. Because like you said, there was nothing we could do to fix anything. It was just belonging. (30:05) ELLE: Yeah, it really was. And it wasn't, we could offer encouragement, you know, and we could offer the cheerleading, and you've got this. And obviously, we might have resources, and we can offer these tools. But none of us were in a power to fix it. And yeah, wow, that was exactly what we actually needed. So yeah, we can find those communities in those stages. (30:32) MEGAN: You know, eventually, that was the catalyst. I think just that modeling for the nonprofit that I started Give Her Wings that you were a part of also with me. And that's where I remember Brandy sending us all roses that first Valentine's Day, which was I'd never I just I can't even tell you what that did for me. And that's what- Yeah, you remember too? (30:59) ELLE: Yeah, I remember that. I saved-shout out to her here. But I saved the little card that came with the flowers for years and years and years. Because yeah, it was so it was just so encouraging. You felt so alone and isolated. And yet, yeah, she's wonderful at saying, “Nope, I see you.” (31:21) MEGAN: Yes, yes. And that was, I mean, those were the things I learned for starting the nonprofit. And now of course, we offer groups for women going through those things, crisis groups and deconstruction groups that start in January. And all of that started with that group that you and I were a part of that, that witnessing that compassionate witnessing of our grief, of our pain of our loss. It was profound. That's, that's all I can say about it. So yes, so finding groups like that. It's, it's everything. It's everything. And, and Elle and I and Karen and, and our new coaches coming up and everybody who's in this business of, of empowering and loving women into healing, none of us will ever judge you. Because we know what that's like. We were judged so harshly. So, so harshly during that time. And it does nothing to help or heal anybody. It's so unloving. So, and you feel that you can feel a smidge of oppression will set us off a smidge of judgment will, will make us want to run like we know that you all would feel that from us. And so you'll not experience that with any of us. (32:44) ELLE: Yeah, I think, you know, after kind of, at least for me, after that most intense season of trauma, and I kind of, I loved what you said, like bleeding out, this is exactly how I described it. There's this two years, two and a half years where I just bled out or like hemorrhaged. And, and then I, for me, I had this very distinct timeline and memory of when it was stopping. I remember thinking like, “Oh, he's binding, God is binding my wounds.” Like I was in a new season where he was beginning to heal. But I share that to say again, for anyone listening, if they're farther down their own journey a bit, because I probably would have thought, okay, there I have now, the hemorrhaging has ended, the intense trauma is over. And now I'm just gonna like, like this very binary, like, and now I'm going to go into the healing stage. And not realizing Yeah, or maybe thinking like, okay, like, it's just this one, you know… (33:49) MEGAN: Linear… (33:50) ELLE: …all uphill. That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you very much. Yes. And not still not fully, fully prepared for like, “Oh, I definitely am moving into healing stage that is real.” But it is a whole other new bag of worms. It took me a little while to realize all the different stages are needed, and they're good, and they're valid. But again, still can be challenging to find other people who can hold those spaces of zigzagging. (34:23): MEGAN: Yes, yes, that I'm so grateful that you said that because it is and I, I can name on one hand, you know, on one hand, the number of people who were able to do that with me. And we're still friends. And you're one of those. Because I have been up and down and in and out. And it's been a lot of things in my life are steady as far as like my mothering, or my, my counseling business or the nonprofit or chaplain, you know, the things I do are steady. But as it relates to being vulnerable, even now, 15 years later, sometimes this little part of me goes, “Oh, my gosh, I was too vulnerable. I shared too much,” you know, and, and then, and you have been there the whole time. You, you are a safe container. You always have been for me. I've always known I could reach out to you. (35:16) ELLE: Oh, that's so sweet. I love that. And same like, truly, truly same back. And, and I think, my guess, I think part of the reason why you and I are able to do that is a little bit because we have walked very similar things, you know, and that's another aspect that is such a blessing and you hold on dearly when you can find those people. And we just kind of have to walk maybe a little soberly or humbly to know that they are a little harder to find. I let me say like, again, over the next, I mean, over the last decade or so, my community and my friendship circles have ebbed and flowed multiple times, not like every year, not like unstable and chaotic, but they have just ebbed and flowed as my life has not just circumstantially changed, but more again, just along my healing journey is really what it is, is as I have either healed or grown, or just as I have changed my different value system, or if I've changed different boundaries or different things like that, as those things have changed, the people who have stayed that course, again, are just usually people who are walking something pretty similar in their world. So they're not shocked by the zigzagging or the new changes, or they're not offended, or they're not confused. And I'm not even like necessarily judging somebody else who is responding that way. It's just okay, like their life journey is taking them in a different space, or, you know, they're just somewhere else, you know, on their journey. But you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, when you go through trauma, and you go through some of these things, you've seen some things that you can't unsee. Right? And so, you know, I can think back, gosh, 20 years ago, if somebody had shared a story, I wasn't like a terrible person, I didn't, I didn't not care about them. I just didn't have the capacity to hold their story yet. I just didn't. But as I've had to walk stuff in the last 15 years, it expands my capacity for their story, for what they're going through, for what they might need, you know, different things like that. And that just takes living, in my opinion, you know, like, you don't go to a 20 year old, not because they're not amazing, but you just don't, they only have 20 years of life experience. Yeah, I think that's just another part of what to expect in your like, community changing journey. (38:00) MEGAN: Yes. And it's good for these changes to happen. And that will kind of end there, you hinted at that a few minutes ago. It's important that it does change, change means of growth, even when it's crazy painful, there's something waiting, some new blooming in some way, that the breaking means there's resurrection, it's that cruciformity. And so try to write it out, if you can, when those changes happen, and know that it can get better and will get better. So, Elle, I just I can't thank you enough. This is just filled my cup today. Thank you for coming on Pretty Psych. And for all the work you do for us behind the scenes. I just love you to pieces. You're so precious to me. (38:51) ELLE: Thank you. I love you too. Thank you so much for letting me have this conversation with you. (38:56) MEGAN: I hope this conversation has encouraged deep thought, as well as helped you draw parallels between therapy and your connection to God's self and others. If you'd like some one-on-one time with me, unpacking some of your most precious life stories to find healing and rest, contact me on mountaincitychristiancounseling.com. To help this podcast reach more people, do subscribe and review this podcast and share it with someone who would benefit from healing and rest. My name is Megan Owen, and thank you for listening to this episode of Pretty Psych. Catch you next episode. And in the meantime, do find healing and do find rest.

20 de dic de 202539 min

Unspoken → Spoken: Karen Speaks

4 de nov de 202534 min

Unspoken → Spoken: Karen Speaks

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