This is Part Two of Navigating Trauma: Understanding the Window of Tolerance and Healing

00:00:00.000 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 their needs will be met, as we've mentioned before. But as they move forward and it's a dysfunctional setting within a family dynamic, then things just can go haywire. And that's the issue with so many adverse childhood experiences and as an adult that we come into a place that is unhealthy.

00:00:33.000 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 trauma's 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. And it's really, really hard for the person to just to be open and honest.

00:01:06.000 And that's where 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. 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.

00:01:37.000 They see things so much more differently. They see themselves as low self-esteem. They're not worth anything. They feel they have no value. So those things are really, really difficult as a human being to try to get through. 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.

00:02:15.000 So when we get into Diane's work, Dr. Diane Lamberg's work, she has a great understanding of true complex trauma and the heart level that really it just breaks your heart to hear the difficulties that people go through. And there are two points of complex trauma. There's also satanic ritual abuse. And we can go into that a bit.

00:02:40.000 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. And the pastor's child would ask you know their daughter to go there over to their house. And you know they didn't think anything of it. They felt comfortable as a pastor setting and you know pastor home.

00:03:07.000 However, the problem was when their little daughter 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, and he molested her. But 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.

00:03:37.000 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. And you can 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 God would be mad at her because he is a man of God.

00:04:09.000 And that was absolutely taken advantage of her. It's erroneous. And let's put it blank. It's just pure evil. And this girl was confused, and she didn't understand what to do. 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 she was in a lot of distress. And finally, she went up to him one night and just said he told me not to say anything.

00:04:40.000 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. 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 just come alongside them. Love them with the love of Jesus. Do you have anything you want to mention?

00:05:11.000 I just want to go back to what you were saying about that little girl and going over to her friend's house, whose father was the pastor. He actually told her that God was going to be mad at her for what she did. So he created a fear inside of her of God, not a healthy fear, not a reverent fear, but an unhealthy fear, which created her perspective of who God is in the long term for her life.

00:05:43.000 Extremely damaging. Right. Thank you for bringing it up because that's part of what they go through, the distortion of you know their view of God. So there was a comment by Dr. Diane Lamberg that was really important. 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.

00:06:13.000 They have zero understanding of safe so they can't understand what it truly means. And you know when you have people distorting God, that makes it to the point where 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.

00:06:39.000 They're just trying to separate themselves, which is disassociation from what's going on at the moment. And when they do that, they reach for something and the evil. They're actually kind of made to do that, to reach for something. That's where evil comes in. But anyway, that distortion of God, 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.

00:07:06.000 And where his hands and feet, so that's why we're here as a ministry to try to help trauma survivors, try to help people with complex trauma, and anybody else who's gone 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.

00:07:36.000 It'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. 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.

00:08:06.000 And 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 improved upon. And so that's why we're here. 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.

00:08:36.000 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 Dr. Lambert has really, really helped us to see. And again, a video will be online. And I just want to give a couple of statements if it's okay. For example, life for trauma survivors is disordered, chaotic, and unsafe. You know Here's another example.

00:09:06.000 The little boy raised in chaos believes no one can ever be trusted. Get what you can while you can and watch your back all the time. So what it really means is trauma shapes meaning. So all of these things play such havoc with our minds. 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.

00:09:36.000 But you can avoid sustained function to you know 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 ACEs and trauma, we go back to emotion, which is shame. And obviously, shame, lack of attachment, pain, and powerlessness. 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 trauma.

00:10:09.000 It's powerlessness that they stay in because that's all they know.