trauma

Today, I have a special request from a podcast listener, Crystal from Mississippi, so thank you, Crystal, for providing this. With the war that's going on in Israel, she was asking for my insight on how we can conceptualize being mentally and spiritually and emotionally able to handle and process times of crisis.

Specifically, I think we need to start with what Crystal said she's already doing, which is praying. She's been in prayer for Israel and for the peace of Jerusalem. She's trusting in God and asking for Him to come into the situation and have His hand and His healing and His presence absolutely. First place you go, right? Well, maybe second, if you're in the attack, the first place you go is getting out of the attack so you can survive, so you can pray. And that's just how God made us. So, if there's time before there's something that happens that is fearful and there's time to pray, great. But if we think about what trauma does and the fight or flight response, the people who are actually on the ground there who have been affected, they may not have had time to think, okay, I'm going to pray now. Their spirits may have been praying, but they didn't have time for that conscious thought. In many cases, when crisis is imminent, survival becomes the first thing as that's what God put into our bodies. When we're alive, then guess what we can do? We can pray.

Survival and prayer would be the first two things. The thing about trauma, such as a crisis or war or the COVID pandemic, is that there's a lot of unknowns. There's a lot that is something we can't tell when it's over. We can't tell if something more is coming, if there's more danger, if there's more threat. So, it seems scarier because it's out of our realm of understanding because we've never been here before. It's something that we're not used to and that's a big "T" trauma. And the difference between a big "T" trauma and a little "t" trauma is not the amount of trauma that you have, but whether it is something that is a kind of big isolated, one-time kind of event like a war. I mean, even though it may go on and on, the fact that there was this attack is a big "T" trauma. It was like out of nowhere and overwhelmed everybody's system and everybody's in survival mode.

And now what do we do? Right? And as the rest of us in the world who aren't affected are listening into those who are affected by it and the news of what's going on there, we're going to have different perspectives. It's a lot different when you're in the midst of it and you're the one experiencing the crisis than it is for those a continent away. Now, that doesn't mean that we're not all traumatized, but the effects of the trauma and how to deal with it are different. So, for the people who are actually in the war zone, or the medical crisis is imminent, for when they're the ones who are in that pain point directly and the pain point is still going on, even if it's like a one-time attack, but the fallout is still there. We're not minimizing it but we're just saying like this is something that we can kind of put a finger to and say this is the problem. Like the COVID pandemic is the problem. There may have been lots of people who were hurt by it and lots of people who were affected from the ripple effects of it, but the people who were suffering with it in the midst of it, they were the ones who were surviving it in that immediate moment.

The people in the war zones right now, for instance, are experiencing it in that immediate moment, and the best thing that you can do try to slow down your thoughts, your movements, your breaths and just gently, compassionately soothe yourself. Once you're in a safe place and able to survive, basically at that point it is hunkered down and continue surviving. Especially when the threat is still going on. It's too soon to heal from trauma when the threat is still there, the unknowns are still there, the fight or flight is still there, and you're still in survival mode. So, at that point, the best that you can do is hunker down with the basics of taking care, of trying to make sure your basic needs are met, that your loved ones' basic needs are met, and that you just at this point survive. Try to get to water. Try to take slow, deep breaths. Try to focus on something physically comforting in your present space. If there's anything like that, get to shelter if possible. If you can eat, try to have something to eat that can settle your stomach. Just go back to the basics of your physical body. There will be a time where you will know that the threat is passed, but it may not be immediate. And that's okay. It's not okay that you're going through that, and I'm so sorry that you are, but it's okay that you don't have to have it figured out.

You don't have to know your next steps. In fact, you can't, because your brain can't even fathom what has happened. It hasn't made meaning of the story because you're still in survival mode. All you need to do at this point is give yourself grace and compassion and do the next thing that you need to for your physical body to survive. We mentioned prayer as well, also being able to ground yourself in the present moment and your present location. If you are safe recognizing, okay, for this moment, I am just focusing on where I am right now, or I'm just focusing on these words, I'm saying them over and over again in prayer. If that brings you comfort or stroking a stone or something that you can just hold on to and caress it over and over, anything like that can be helpful. So survival first!

Then the next thing is for those who are coming out of something tragic, is to not judge it, not put a time frame on it for recovery, not put a time frame on it or a judgment on it for what it should look like or how it should be handled. There's no rulebook when things that are out of the ordinary happen. It's not like, okay, you should be past something at this point, at this mile marker of loss here. You should be over it by this month or this many days out-that's individual. To try to put pressure on yourself or anybody else for not healing or getting back to normal according to a timeline is absolutely unhelpful.

It's a lot better to just be present for those if you're walking alongside people who are going through the battle, whether that's a physical bombing type of battle, an emotional battle, a relationship battle, medical battle, financial battle, whatever it is, if you're walking alongside somebody, just be present. Meet their basic needs, pray for them. Don't try to throw in anything amazing to say. You don't have to fix it or make it better. There's nothing you can do to fix it or make it better, so just take the pressure off of yourself and just sit with them. Meet their basic needs, hold them or don't if they don't want that, give them space if they need it, but be available, provide them with resources. Provide financially or food or whatever you can if you're not the one in the circle of the crisis at that moment. And that can be helpful too, to feel like you're doing something.

Now, for those of us across the world from, for instance, the stuff going on in the Middle East right now, we might have loved ones there, we might have just heard it on the news and care, right? Either way, the same things apply. If you have an ability to be part of the solution of providing for basic needs normalizing, providing comfort for physical needs, sending money to a reputable place, doing something that brings meaning and support and care, you will feel less powerless. Praying, donating, serving, comforting, letter writing, sitting with somebody who needs it, who's on the other side of the world.

Praying that you happen to know this, praying for someone who knows someone involved in something like a war or is having some sort of threat or trauma or danger in some other way. Taking action when you are not in the center of the trauma circle in that immediate moment may look like prayer. It may look like a financial donation. It may look like dropping off blankets or clothes. It may look like putting a sign in your front yard to support something. Doing something is better than nothing because it gives you a sense of agency. It's more traumatic to feel stuck and unable to do anything. So put some good out into the world and try to be there in whatever way is possible that you can.

Support doesn't mean being responsible for everything, and it doesn't mean trying to fix everything. It just means noticing what you have to give, noticing what other people have need of and prayerfully, considering what actions to take, and giving it all to the Lord and then showing up.

It starts with stabilizing. Whether you're in the battle or you're next to somebody in the battle or you're just hearing about the battle, whatever the trauma is, the steps are stabilizing after survival, making sure that the trauma isn't continuing or reoccurring. If it is, then it's not over yet. Trying to give skills for how to hunker in and deal with things if the battle is still going on. And that might mean doing the best you can in circumstances that are not ideal to meet basic needs, physical needs, safety needs, nutritional needs, comfort needs. Then once those acts of survival and physical being are certain, once the story has solidified and it's like, oh okay, I see what happened and now that danger is passed, we're no longer in survival mode, even if we feel like it.

Then it's a matter of getting some extra things like some therapy help or getting some trauma counseling, getting some ways to deal with the anxiety or seeing a doctor for medication if you're having trouble sleeping because of what you've been through or whatever. But those are not things for while you're in the middle of it. First is survival, second is stabilization, and then it's rebuilding.

If you're not in the circle, it's being somebody who can take action towards a positive result to help somebody who is in that circle will make you feel a lot less helpless and a lot safer or at least doing something. Understanding that we've had wars for a long time, there have been pandemics before for a long time, there have been atrocities before, doesn't minimize what anybody is going through at any given time. Pain is pain, hurt is hurt. War is war. Illness is illness.

It is all super unpleasant and not stuff of God, it's not the stuff of heaven, so we're not going to be able to understand it other than it's suffering. When we realize that what suffering needs is comfort and love and safety, we can provide that for ourselves, our loved ones, or those that we see who are affected. Taking that action helps us to survive the human spirit, to survive human beings, and to move on. The hurt may linger, but when you're in the middle of the crisis, it's not the time to figure out the next year of your life or the next ten years. You're still just where you are. Trying to figure out this next survival instinct or how to support the person who is in that survival place.

I hope that's helpful. It's. Taking the practical and being there, going back to basics, taking away judgment, taking away trying to understand in our own human understanding, trusting that God loves us, and He's there to be our comforter and an ever-present help in times of trouble. Praying for those we love and those we know are going through difficult stuff. So Crystal, thank you so much for sharing that. I really hope that that was helpful in some way.

I just want to pray right now, Lord, for the peace of Israel, Jerusalem, the Middle East, Lord, that You will work miracles of healing and help and wisdom, protection, salvation.

Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name.

You know, May is mental health awareness month, and I didn't really call it out because even though I was aware of it, and I knew it was, I wasn't really concerned about it because it's kind of like always mental health awareness month for me. But there is something that I do want to talk to you about, which is really about our nervous systems and how they are primed from such a young age and how the things that you trip over today, the things that trigger you, the things that hurt you, the things that scare you, the things that depress you or cause you anxiety or anger are often rooted so much earlier, before you even know that your nervous system encoded them and came up with these amazing strategies for survival.

When we think about going back in time to the pieces that make us up as we are today, of course, there is our spiritual core, and that is, I believe, the part that is God breathed. And then when we get saved, he saves us from our humanness, but that our soul, our spirit are His. They are saved, and they're covered in the blood of Jesus and redeemed. That's what I believe is our true self. However, we also have this human experience that is also reality. It is where we are right now. It is the experience that we are having, and that human experience is also sacred. God made our bodies. God made our minds. God made our personalities. He made our makeup and the way that the body makes us up, so to speak, is through our thoughts and our connections throughout our body, in our nervous system.

We have a lot of different chemicals that fire, give messages, and tell things what to do. We can think about our arm moving or that we need to move our arm, and it can do it. We can naturally focus on things if our eyesight is working well to be able to see far away or up close, or we can alter that through glasses because we're trying to help ourselves. There are often ways to correct for things that we're having difficulty with. When it's something like an arm, a broken leg, or eyesight that we can do something about that's concrete, it's easy to see.

But what we can't see are the things from such a young age that impacted our nervous system. For example, were your cries attended to by a loving caregiver consistently from the time of birth until you were a toddler? Did somebody meet your needs when you didn't have the words to ask for it? Did they come to your cries? Did they console you when you were hurting? Did they bring peace and regulation, or did they ignore you? Because that's still in your nervous system.  Your nervous system will know whether you have been cared for predictably and dependably, even though you probably don't remember back to being a baby. You may not trust other people, and it can go all the way back to the attachment you had with your caregivers in infancy.

Let's say that went well and you now know that my basic needs are met, and then we step it up to the toddler years, and you're starting to learn whether you can really branch out safely, whether you're safe to go on your own, and yet still have help if you need it. Healthy secure toddlers will be able to go explore but keep the parental unit or the caregiver in sight or in mind. They can go away and they can come back and they know that there's this ebb and flow that is healthy, that their back, they still, you know, someone still has their back. Then if that's not there, if they're insecure, that attachment can follow them the rest of their lives, too. It can be something where in romantic relationships later, you feel desperate, like, please don't leave me or I'm going to be abandoned and I'm not safe without you. Or if you've had a trauma where you really were not seen, not cared for, not heard, left alone, frightened, then you learned other lessons that got encoded into your nervous system.

Your nervous system is brilliant. It is here for you to survive. Then you look at the things that happened during the elementary years. How were you perceived by classmates? How were you perceived by the teacher? How were you taken care of at home? How did you feel about different things? The labels you started to get...sometimes those are the years where people start to get messages about themselves, like they're no good or they're always trouble, or they always want something and they're a bother, or they don't read well enough, or they're no good at math or whatever. There may be some truth to some talent type things. There are people who are more language-based learners and people who are more math-based learners, but people seldom have taken the time to really say, but that isn't a deficit in you. This is just your strength area, and we can also enjoy this other area and continue to also cultivate our strengths, and you are great.

However you've been created, whatever your design is, is okay, you are loved, you're acceptable. Every kid is a genius in their own way, but if no one ever comes alongside and says, you don't have to be good at this because you're good at that, everybody is good at something. Then comparisons are in there and that is something that once it starts, unless you nip that root out of there, it can continue to bother you for the rest of your life. You have to some point intentionally say, I am not going to fall to comparisons. I'm not going to be defined by other people. I am defined only by God, and I am enough because He is enough, and He doesn't make mistakes. When you can stand in that and have peace in that, that's a very solid ground to be on.

Our nervous system remembers rejection or ridicule or not feeling good enough, and it wants to compensate for it. Then you bring on the middle school years and oh my goodness, there's so many changes going on hormonally and socially and you're trying to figure out how to make that next leap into the next development period. In some ways you're still wanting to hold on to being a kid or you can't wait to get rid of the kid stuff and really be taken seriously, so there's struggle there.

Then we all know what the high school years can be like and the peer pressure and the coming into our own and trying to find our voice. Before we know it, oftentimes what people do is they end up making decisions about their life, whether they'll marry or not, what education they'll have, what they're going to do for a living, and where they're going to live. Sometimes those choices don't turn out so well, or they do for a time and then they don't or they're great. You know, it is possible to have a lot of great things. 

Overall, all of this goes into a nervous system that remembers. Your nervous system remembers any traffic accidents you had when you first learned to drive. It remembers any time where you had hoped for somebody older and wiser to give you a stamp of approval, and instead you were met with criticism or rejection or somebody who didn't get it. It remembers every time you felt safe or felt threatened. It is trying to predict the future based on all of this input that happened through all of these different relationship stages, developmental stages, and needs that were there and whether they were met or not.

So, it's really common for people to all of a sudden wake up and realize something's wrong here. What affected me so much? Some people's coping skills and ways of dealing with it, decide I'm going to deny it, move on, and not look back as if those that are affected shouldn't let it bother them like they're just wasting time and are wimps or something like that. Maybe they tell themselves, you just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going. Sometimes people get stuck there and wallow and they're like, woe is me and I never had anything good, and I'll never get past this. Sometimes it's a bit of both, right?

The healthiest way when you acknowledge something isn't giving you peace and joy is to figure out what's happening here and do I need help with it, need more education, or need to take personal responsibility to change something or get more skills? What do I need to do to be responsible for me, so that I don't cause damage to other people's nervous systems, nor do I prolong my suffering here with what my nervous system has learned to try to manage and deal with. It can look different than how it looks at first glance, right? It can look like maybe trusting somebody you wouldn't normally trust, or realizing there's a problem when you didn't think there was or realizing that you're not the problem and maybe it was your environment that was the problem, or maybe the people you were around were the ones who were toxic. We have to kind of figure out where the lies got in there about you and where the lies and the not helpful coping skills came from. 

They probably served well at some point.

Your coping skills probably served you well at some point, but when they start to not work in certain situations or they themselves start to hurt, that's often when people need to call for counseling because they don't know what to do anymore. The way they manage things isn't working anymore, and they don't have anything else to rely on oftentimes because they thought they had it. Sometimes people think I am going to find my value in dating, and then they find that they're put down in dating, and that didn't work. So now what? Or I'll find my value in just rising up the corporate ladder, and then they get laid off, or they don't actually like their job, and they're like, well, that didn't work for me. These times where we have to reevaluate are not failure. It's a learning experience. All of life is a learning and growing experience, a refining a journey, and we both get hurt and we heal.

Just like with that arm, that is so easy to fix with a cast, we can see that as a concrete example. But when we move forward, we can do that in other things, in other ways in life, we don't have to constantly be stuck. We can take these certain actions that teach us different outcomes, that tell us the truth, that help us to regulate our nervous systems, that help us to see ourselves more clearly and say no to the things that are hurting us and breaking us down. Instead, we can get something like a cast through support from other people, through our faith, through telling ourselves the truth, through going through trauma therapy, through learning new tools and reading more books, listening to more podcasts, and applying it. Life does not have to cause undue distress forever. It just doesn't. But you have to do something different to get something different.

When people have such horrific things repeatedly, over time, they might have what's called chronic PTSD. So, PTSD would be the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. That's like replays in your head, feeling like you're back in time, feeling like something present is still connected to something that happened in the past, but you don't know that the past is over. It feels like it's this continuing thing that follows you. If that's happened repeatedly during your development or your growing up years, where you continually had trauma, it can really wreak post-traumatic stress, and then they call that CPTSD because that chronic nature, that ongoing nature, is harmful. We get used to those things, and we don't even realize to challenge them.

So, I want you to take a look at where in your life you're struggling today and see what patterns might have come from way back. What experiences does this remind you of? When did you feel like this previously? Because that is the wound or the hurt that may need to be healed. It's pretty easy if there is a one-time big trauma like a car wreck, and you can put the casts on the arm and the leg to heal those, but if you have a trauma and, in your mind, you can't stop hearing the horn blaring, tires screeching, someone screaming, or anything like that, it is still causing you triggers and pain. That kind of situation is a one-time trauma, but it still has invisible expressions. It needs a cast; it needs support. Even though you can't see it and it's not tangible like an arm or a leg, if untreated, it can cause more mental health issues. It can make anxiety worse; it can make depression worse. It can just bring on a whole host of things in the body and the mind and even mess with your spiritual life.

So, I just want to encourage you that mental health awareness month is not the way I want to focus on it for you because we're not talking mental illness, although it is illness when something is not well in our system, in our nervous system, in our mind, in our relationships, it can cause us to feel sick or to be sick or to act sick. So mental wellness, mental health is to recognize when we're showing symptoms of hurt, pain, or trauma to our nervous systems because of the history of what we've lived through and survived, we get help now to heal the stuff from the past, heal us in the present, and help us to go forward in the future a lot healthier than we are today.

If something is troublesome today, don't beat yourself up for it. There's no point to that. Take a look with compassion and grace to see what you've lived through and how that may have been something you strategized with to try to keep yourself safe and surviving. I'll bet there are more threads there that you'll notice if you look at it through that lens. If that's the case, then you'll know what's still needed, what needs to be healed, or what type of help might be beneficial.