00:00:02.000 Hi, everyone. My name is Gerard, and this is Allison. And we're here today to follow up with the podcast that we just previously recorded. We received some feedback. And it was about Windows tolerance. So we want to kind of describe that for you a little better. If you can picture a window and the bottom half of it is just safe to the color white. That's where our normal that's how I halfway point. That's how we really should be.

00:00:30.000 We're living healthy at that point. We're living more in function instead of protection and or emotions. But as we found out, it is the fact that what the adverse childhood experiences, what can happen if they're unprocessed or you really don't understand why you're bringing your childhood defense mechanism that you had at that time to into your adult life and try to deal with problems.

00:00:59.000 That would make that window of tolerance higher. So what happens after that is that when life happens and things come at you or triggers, or the things you're experienced before, and you're not sure why they're there, but the problem is they're in process, you wouldn't have tolerance is much higher. So again, when things come out to you, you don't have much, much window of really tolerance. And then your emotions from there spread out. You might be angry.

00:01:26.000 You might be you know frustrated anything like that based on what's happening in the moment with the person that you're having a relationship with or a circumstance. Or whatever the case may be or say, for example, traffic, it could be, for some reason, you could be sitting there just so frustrated and angry, and there's no reason why it should be, but it's just because you have all these unprocessed emotions. So again, halfway point is what we're shooting for.

00:01:54.000 As we try to become healthier and we get down process, demotions process. So if you do have issues that trigger something, you can step back, and you can say, why am I going through this? Because you have the understanding now. And unprocessed emotion, your defense mechanism as a child is becoming healthier and you bring it into a dull level now. So I just wanted to mention that because again, it was asked of us, and I just wanted to, again, go into a deeper detail about that.

00:02:25.000 And again, these are the things we'll be going over in other podcasts as well. But again, that's what we wanted to do here. And as we move forward, we're going to go into more trauma and we're dealing with complex trauma. We have a video we just looked at, and it will be available on the podcast website. It's my doctor, Diane Lange, and she's really a great Christian psychologist.

00:02:56.000 And she has brought, again, our goal here is to bring a love of Christ into this as well. So we have the neuroscience science meets the Bible. And then it's understanding the neurons and how it all works together, but again, we have the Bible and Jesus and his example for us and exactly what he did for us, which is two things he gave us. The forgiveness of our sins, but he also defeated evil as well. So we'll go into further detail on that, but today right now is trauma.

00:03:27.000 And we want to just go in and we have a screen up there, but we can't show it at the moment. But some of the things that we want to talk about are what trauma does and how it can really, truly affect us. And how as people who are either counselors, prayer ministers, or people who are helpers, we just want to come alongside the people who have experienced trauma. And one of the things that the church today, there is trauma awareness out there.

00:04:00.000 It's been more government studies have been really pursuing that, but we as a church, we have to do a better job of that. And that's not only from a denominational church building perspective, but for the body of Christ. We have to learn to come alongside people and to help them with just getting through things. And Alice and I were just talking that the lord is comforted us as we have gone through these things so we can comfort others as well.

00:04:31.000 And I think that's really important as a church to really recognize that it's not bad behavior. There's always something underlying that. And there's some great ministries out there is a great ministry. I think it's compassion, prison project, that also goes into ACEs that we suffer as a child, and it's an amazing amount of people who in the prison population who have experienced that.

00:04:58.000 But as a legal system, and in my fault in the legal system, but it is something that we have to do a better job of. And that's understanding this bad behavior there, but it's something underneath it, that created the bad behavior. And you know I mentioned in a meeting that I was just not too long ago. That as we look at children, and they come out of the womb, I know this extenuating circumstances of a mother who is pregnant who might have gone through abuse with things of that nature.

00:05:31.000 But for the most part, a child is not born evil. It just isn't. So we're not born evil. I mean, every child comes out and it's just a matter of the learned environment. So if parents are attuned to their child, the child understands safety, that there needs to be met as we've mentioned before. But as they move forward, it's a dysfunctional setting within a family dynamic and then things just can go haywire.

00:06:01.000 And that's the issue with so many adverse childhood experiences and has an adult that we come into a place that is unhealthy. So again, trauma itself is a very difficult thing that we go through and as a child, you don't have the ability to recognize that. And Thomas created by things that hide your heart and what I mean by that is your defense mechanisms just will not allow you to be you because you just want to survive at that moment to get through it.

00:06:36.000 And it's really, really hard for the person to just to be open and honest. And that's what we want to be. And we were just talking a bit earlier that it's very difficult to set boundaries in place and just to be the exact person that God made you to be, which is healed, whole and healthy. That's exactly what it is.

00:07:01.000 So as we move forward with the trauma aspect, we're looking at how, again, the trauma takes place, and the ability for us as caregivers to come alongside and help the person through trauma. They see things so much more differently. They see themselves as low self esteem, they're not worth anything, their value of they feel they have no value. So those things are really, really difficult. There's a human being to try to get through.

00:07:31.000 And as we've mentioned before, it's really called a dynamic of being human. And so our goal is for everybody to come to the point where they can understand, you don't have to be perfect because God never made us to be perfect. The only thing that we want to do is to be attuned with him. So he can help us to be the best that we can be to help others as well. So when we get into Diane's work, doctor Diane Lambert's work, she has a great understanding of true complex trauma.

00:08:03.000 And the heart level that really it just breaks your heart to hear the difficulties that people go through. And there are two points complex trauma and there's also satanic ritual abuse. And we can go into that a bit. But you know a perfect example is there's a couple of examples she mentioned where she said that you know there was a child who her parents would you know they went to a particular church.

00:08:31.000 In the pastor's child would ask her daughter, you know, their daughter to go there over to their house. And you know they didn't take anything up, but they felt comfortable as a pastor setting and you know passed a home. However, the problem was when that their little daughter was you know went to the house, his daughter, that pastor's daughter left the room, and in turn, what he did was he actually asked her to undress.

00:09:01.000 And he molested her. But he all that time, he was saying, look what you're doing you know. So what they're doing, they're trying to have more of a mind control. And they're saying that you're the bad one. And it had nothing to do with that. But afterwards, this happened quite often, but afterwards, the parents were seeing their daughter who had trouble regarding sleepless nights and just her whole personality changed.

00:09:29.000 And you could certainly understand why because when you see and understand that mind control, which is what the pastor was doing to her, that she's bad and that if she said anything that you know he was a man of God and that it would be God would be mad at her. Because he's a man of God. And that was absolutely taken advantage of her and it's erroneous. And let's put it by. It's just pure evil. And this girl is confused and she didn't understand what to do.

00:09:58.000 And she didn't want her parents to get hurt because he said it hurt the parents. So long story short, after a period of time, they noticed the behavior was getting to the point of really, you know, she was in a lot of distress. And finally, she said, she went up to him one night and just said, he told me that not to say anything. He told me not to say anything. So it did come out, but this is just one example of many, many in this world where people just have the ability to really have the mind control.

00:10:30.000 And so it's called trauma based mind control. And these people are just going through trauma. Like you wouldn't believe. It's just terrible. And I just think that we as caregivers just have to do just come alongside and love them with the love of Jesus. Do you have anything more to mention? I just want to go back to what you were saying about that little girl and going over to her friend's house. So his father was the pastor. He actually told her that God was going to be mad at her for what she did.

00:11:02.000 So he created a fear inside of her of God. And not a healthy fear, not irreverent fear, but unhealthy fear. Which created her perspective of who God is in the long term for her life. Extremely damaging. Right. Thank you for bringing it up because that's part of what they go through the distortion of their view of God.

00:11:31.000 So there was a comment by doctor Diane Lambert that was really important. When you from a trauma survivor, the vocabulary and how they hear words are differently. So you and I can say safe you know. We're safe. They have no understanding of that. They have zero understanding of safe so they can't understand what it truly means.

00:11:55.000 And even when you have people distorting God, that makes it that makes it to the point where they the people who are going through the trauma reach for something because they want to get out of where they are based on what they're going through, the trauma, the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, they're just trying to separate themselves, which is disassociation from what's going on at the moment.

00:12:23.000 And when they do that, they reach for something in the evil. They're actually, they're actually kind of made to do that, to reach for something. That's what you will comes in. But anyway, that distortion of God is just, it's a horrendous thing for them. And it just builds no trust at all in God. And obviously, that's not the way he is. And where is he in feet? So that's what we're here as a ministry to try to help trauma survivors try to help people with complex trauma.

00:12:52.000 And anybody else who's going through trauma. And we all do. As we were discussing prior to the podcast, we understand that there are healthier families that have a better dynamic of growing up and how they understood the word of God and things of that nature. And so that's healthy. And that helps the child to live with a window of tolerance that's perfect. And you know they have a high self esteem. In a good way, they have a good self esteem and they're able to have social connections and interpersonal relationships that are healthy.

00:13:26.000 However, that doesn't happen to a lot of us. And to go back and understand how to look at where we are, how to get from point a to point B in a healthy way, that's really what we need to do. However, there's a lot of steps that it will take to do that. And first, the first and foremost is understanding that each of us have gone through it, no matter how good you think your situation was, but there's still areas that could have been approved upon.

00:13:56.000 And so that's why we're here. We want to do we want to start as a ministry to help the individual for the various forms of trauma and be the healthy people in their lives that they can trust and that they see the love of God working through us. And that's just not us saying that's the Holy Spirit within us. And when we can see the people for what they've gone through, look through their eyes, that's really, really important. And that's what doctor lindberg is really, really helped us to see.

00:14:28.000 And again, a video will be online. And I just want to give a couple of statements if it's okay. For example, for trauma survivors is disordered, chaotic and unsafe. You know, here's another example of a little boy raised in chaos beliefs. No one can ever be trusted. Get what you can while you can and watch it back all the time. So what it really means is trauma shapes meaning. So all of these things play such havoc with our minds.

00:14:59.000 And as I mentioned earlier, we have the three parts in a previous podcast. We work out a function. So if there's areas that we still have that are there, we can avoid them. And that's just another way of not dealing with the issue, but you can't avoid it staying function to say you know to be able to do what you're doing in a given moment, whether it's work or driving or anything of that nature, you can do that, however, when we have those triggers from the ACs and trauma, we go back to emotion, which is shame and obviously shame lack of attachment pain and powerlessness.

00:15:38.000 And the only other thing at that point is we're going to change the acronyms a bit because it's powerlessness when you're dealing with complex traumas, powerlessness that they stay in because that's all they know. Yeah. So as we were talking, it's about looking at what the prefrontal cortex does in our mind. And then we have midbrain, and then emotions. So the limbic midbrain, and we have protection. Limbic for the emotions. And if the midbrain, it's protection and prefrontal cortex is function.

00:16:08.000 So getting back to that, we want to talk about policy for just a minute or two. Powerlessness is an area where when you're going through the trauma or have gone through the trauma or have you know childhood experiences or anything of that nature, you really have to understand that we're just politics. We're listening. We're just don't feel like we can get through it. We don't understand how to. And we just don't understand what's the next step.

00:16:36.000 We're just living really from the lack of attachment. And then when you're in that phase, you just can't see. You don't have any hope. You just are in a phase of just disbelief. You're not sure how to get out of it. So those are the things that we wanted to discuss about the brain, but we want to continue on with the trauma awareness of the church, and we wanted to make sure that I just wanted to go over that as a quick review, and I was just wondering if you wanted to speak on it.

00:17:08.000 And like Gerard said, we're going to have that video on our meal map musings site, and we're also going to add this worksheet for anybody who would like to have that on there so you can really get a clearer understanding. But one of the things that we wanted to talk about is how the church is really currently addressing while we're not putting anyone and saying anyone's doing it wrongly.

00:17:35.000 I think everyone's hearts are in the right place and they want to see people live wholeheartedly, but I think what we're doing is because our focus is on meaning of life. I mean, it meaning is so important to everyone. We come along beside them and we talk about you know our hope and our healing is in Jesus. And that is true.

00:18:00.000 And that is very important, I believe, for us to convey to each person who has been traumatized and is a survivor of that. It's critical though, I believe that we can not just leave them there. We have to come back on them. And we really have to seek to understand them and to look inside of their heart and to see where they're coming from because a lot of the things that people do, a lot of the behaviors that we have are only symptoms of a deeper wound within us.

00:18:39.000 And so our heart is to be able to come along beside people and help them understand why they're doing things they're doing, help them to understand more over you know, I can't just say God loves you. And they're going to be okay. And they're going to take that. I like how Diane Lindbergh expressed it. She called it the splat talk.

00:19:06.000 And it's like you're throwing words at them and it just bounces off them or just splatters on them. They can not absorb that. And so I know I couldn't in my own walk. And so I think it's extremely important for us to really help them be able to see and one of the things she talks about is Jesus and how you know God is unseen. We don't see God, but we have faith in God.

00:19:38.000 But the scene part of God is God incarnate through the life of Jesus in the flesh and we can look to him and he teaches us so many things and so many examples and he went through so much and self so much suffering. And so when we are ministering and pastoring and counseling with people, what we believe is so important is to really send them back to the word and with a very specific word.

00:20:14.000 So that they take that from the lord, not from me, not from Gerard, because I could say anything to you. That would make you feel better that I think would make you feel better, but it's not going to be something that's going to be transforming in your heart and mind. And so helping them to see specific areas and as Diane expressed and I know probably Gerard has done this.

00:20:45.000 I have done this just pray for what is it you want me to show that person? Yeah, that's really important fact. It's a true fact. When you're dealing with people who have gone through both extended trauma and complex trauma, you have to understand they don't have a basis for trust. So as Alison was mentioning, you can say words and Diane mentioned it as well.

00:21:14.000 You can say words, but the meaningless, they just have no point of reference for that. And again, when they're looking at the what they've gone through, and you know we're trying to sometimes we try to do this in a good way to help them. But if you come in with two of them with scriptures or you're saying that God is which he is, he's a man of God. But from their point of reference, they see something that they feel that somebody who allowed bad things to happen to them.

00:21:44.000 And that's not God. It's just that we are in a world where people have a will of doing good or evil. And again, we're talking all about how, in most cases, almost like 99% of the cases, you have people who have issues that are underlying that creates the bad behavior so the old schools, it is the how does it go? It's mentioning that the bad, how does it go?

00:22:14.000 I'm sorry, bad. Hurting people hurt people, sorry about that. That's exactly what happens. And when we're dealing with the people who are affected by what these people do, then they have no trust, zero trust. So for us again, to come alongside them, that's what Jesus wants again. Jesus wants us to be the hands and feet for him. And to speak to love that he has for us and works through us to them. And that takes a long time. It's not a quick fix.

00:22:45.000 But once they understand and they look at your verbal and non verbal communication, they can see that you truly care. And you want them to stay to get healthy and to get healthy, they really have to still take back their mind will and emotions because they've given it up to their abuser. Or whoever else that may be the perpetrator of these horrific acts.

00:23:11.000 So again, I think it's a wonderful point where Allison mentioned that the church itself has to do a better job to come alongside this and to understand the need for trauma awareness in their church and in the body of Christ. And again, the denominational aspects we're not going to go down there, but the problem that I see is we have a lot of churches today who are more or less their purpose driven life or anything that shows us how to have a better life through Christ, which is wonderful.

00:23:44.000 But again, so many of us, I'm going to include myself in this. And I know Alison as well. We've gone through some trauma. There's really affected our lives. So when we listen to this, if we weren't where we are you know right now, going through all this and understanding that Jesus is our savior and he really got us through it. But that took a long time for us to understand as well. And so we as the people coming alongside the survivors, we have to show them that love.

00:24:15.000 And it's very difficult for them to see. But it can be done. That's the good news. That's a wonderful news. It can be done. And they can do the work to go through that and we are right there with them. And just praise God for how it's all set up. Yeah, their whole experience of trauma affects the way that they see themselves and that the way that they see other people in the way that they see God.

00:24:40.000 And so it's really on us the church, and those who come alongside people, to be the hands and feet, to really be that heart of God, to love them well. And I mean, love them into healing. Wholeheartedly living, you can't.

00:25:10.000 Just think that you can say those words to them and it's going to do the work for them. Or thank you for sharing your heart if they come to you and say they're hurt or what happened in their life. Just, oh, thank you for sharing your heart. That that is not healing for a person. We need to engage with that person and we need to help them. So true. Absolutely.

00:25:37.000 And so with that being said, again, we have to is a trauma awareness within the church. They have to understand that these people exist. And it's not sin. It's not it's the behavior that's not good. We understand that, but that's not we're not any better than anybody else. We have gone through things, but we have to understand that we're all equal at the foot of the cross. Everything at the photo across makes us equal.

00:26:07.000 And so when we as a church, we're trying to help people within the church, we have to be aware. Again, it's completely aware that these people are out there and they are hurting. And how many times I know in the past, I've gone out and saying, how are you? Oh, I'm blessed. No other sort of. And it's just a mask. But the real true people who have undergone the trauma, they're hard to reaching, they're trying to we have to reach out to them as well.

00:26:37.000 And again, it's just counselors. This is you know pastoral counseling, ministers, and just helpers. People come alongside within the church. I know for me, having the people in my life that showed me empathy that sat with me, listened to me, and I mean, active listening, great listening skills, never interrupting. They would only thing it would do is reaffirm what I was trying to say so they made sure that what I was saying they were understanding.

00:27:09.000 But that's it. And as you look in the Bible, you can see Jesus doing the same thing. Jesus is the example for us, but again, the church itself, we really, really need to do something to have the curriculum in place to have the understanding in place. So these people when they have shown, they've shown at the congregation. And within just a community, it doesn't have to be a church. It can be you know at work.

00:27:35.000 It could be anybody that is unique in a particular store or you might be you know doing anything in the community. We need to do a better job. And I'm talking about us as a whole. And that's what Jesus wants. So when we come to more of you know, for example, Romans 12 one, we have to renew our mind, but we also have to be this living sacrifice.

00:28:01.000 And what I mean by that is that, again, we are the hands of feet of God, and we're supposed to go out into the community, see what people are hurting, get into, you know, roll up our sleeves, be with them, counsel them, just and it's not them. To them, it's counseling with them to understand and get back to their living wholeheartedly. And some of them just don't even have a clue as to what that really is. That's very true.

00:28:29.000 I think one of the things that the way Diane put that is that we're a representative of God. And that we are we are actually creating his reputation. As we go out. And minister pastor council come along beside. However, wherever, whatever environment it is in, whether it's even through friendships you know, we are the hands and feet.

00:29:02.000 We are that person that's creating that reputation of God and every thing that we say and everything that we do in those people's lives are either going to lead them closer to a true understanding of the love of God for them or it's going to push them away from that. And as I may have mentioned it before, if I have, I'm sorry, but I just think it's important. A lot of these people, particularly people who have complex trauma, they have the essential life skills that just don't have.

00:29:36.000 And that's something where coming alongside them, helping them, being in the love of Christ, and them recognizing it. Again, this is a work in progress, and we just truly want to help them. And we ourselves want to get better as quick as they can, but it's just, again, they have to they have to come alongside us, see through our eyes, our heart, our non verbal and verbal communication that we truly care. When they see that, that's when change takes place.

00:30:06.000 Then they become vulnerable. Then they can open up a bit more. But we also have to sit down as we're talking to them to understand where they're coming from. So we ourselves have to be that active listener. So we can sit there and say, see things that they're trying to open up with because the starting to trust, they become vulnerable. And then we can do it in a way of asking open ended questions or anything to try to have them draw that out and to understand what they've gone through.

00:30:34.000 And the church today, we really need to do that. And we're hoping as our ministry goes forward with some conferences and some community outreach to bring us to churches, to have the ministry of the churches to recognize the people that they really I mean, ministers want to do this, they just don't know how. And as we come alongside them, that's our goal is to give them the tools to help them understand that.

00:31:06.000 And when we do that, people within nature's group and their community will be changed too. So we just our hearts are there. It's the love of crisis working through us to be able to do this. And it's truly our hearts. I mean, we mentioned before that I get up every day and I'm excited because I want to I just want there's so much that I want to talk about that we have to limit it and try to make sense of within the podcast for a given podcast.

00:31:33.000 But again, it's difficult because we just want to just you know shout to the world. It doesn't have to be the way it is. We don't have to be the way we live and we can be healed whole and healthy. Live wholeheartedly have better interpersonal relationships, but we're not perfect. And that's okay. We can sit there and say, self love, self compassion. You sit in that. So we become better. We're healthy. And we want to teach that to everybody.

00:32:02.000 And again, it's a work in progress, but I'm looking forward to keep moving forward with the podcast. And then it just bring in information that's relative for the particular podcast. And we also want to hear from you as well. We want you to ask if possible of nomad musings dot com. If you can just send your emails to us because we want to be informative and we have our understanding of how to be a formative, but there might be follow-up questions that would be great for you if you can send it to us so we can address them in the next podcast or over the course of a number of podcasts.

00:32:38.000 So that being said, getting back to the trauma awareness in the church, that's the number one goal of our ministries to get out there, get this to the people, help the ministers help the church to understand that the hurting people need to be just need to be helped and we can show them how to do that. Any thoughts on that? Just that that's the thing that we know in the church is is that our war is not with flesh and blood.

00:33:07.000 And so I think it's totally important for us to remember that it's not only that it's not our war. It's not other people's war. And so if we can see through those eyes and understand that that's the direction that we're going in and that we're coming from the love of Christ, but from an understanding of actually having walked in those shoes as well. We do understand it, and we understand the healing process.

00:33:34.000 And on our web site that Gerard gave you, it's mail Mac musings dot org. And we'll have the resources that we talked about. And we also have an email or we actually have a contact on that site also that you can ask us questions or speak about things that you would like to learn more about.

00:33:59.000 We have so much to talk about, like you said, it's so hard just to kind of put it in a little nutshell. But we're excited and we just want to help. We just want to help because having walked in those shoes, we know what it's like. We know what it's like when you experience someone who doesn't know how to address these things. And so we really just want to help be able to bring that forth and make the church healthier as a whole as well.

00:34:31.000 Oh, that's great point. Well, I just want to mention too that I think I made a mistake with the email address. It is nomathmusings@gmail.com. I'm not sure if they added the Gmail or not. But that's where we'd love for you to send it. Another thing I just want to say is empathy. And I want to really just double that just for a minute or two, but as we've talked about, and you'll hear more about some of our stories. We don't get too personal, but we understand.

00:35:01.000 We've walked the walk and we're there. But empathy was the key. For me, my heart and I'm assuming I was since as well, that has gotten us through what we've gone through. And when we have people who have been able to sit down with us just to understand us and just listen to us and you could see their listening to us and going through the heartbreak with us and just being there and just staying with this and just saying, I understand.

00:35:32.000 You know, some of them have been there, but some of them haven't, but the bottom line is they have the empathy to understand. And with sympathy, it's a bit different. Sympathy is on their for you, but empathy again is there. I'm there with you. So I just wanted to say that and just throw that in there as a just empathy is the key. It's such a great word and it's such a great word for our ministry and for the people who need this and for everybody really, for answer personal relationships, empathy is the key.

00:36:02.000 So I just want to thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. And have a wonderful blessed week too. Thank you.