Hi, everyone. It's Gerard again, and this is Alison. Hello. And we're going to be talking a bit more about trauma and complex trauma. And just to define the two, we have felt that it's something that's really needed for the body of Christ to truly understand this in a much deeper way. And it also goes really with what we've talked about last week, was trauma awareness. So anyway, we're going to go forward and Alison is going to come into you know speak about this a little more.

Yeah, guys, I just wanted to define complex trauma for you because I don't think if I didn't know this, that I would understand it. So you know we all talk about, oh, we've been through traumatic events and most of us have been through something traumatic, whether it was a car accident, whether we lost someone, this complex trauma is a deeper type of trauma. It's a trauma that usually happens in early childhood is when it begins.

And it's something that happens repeatedly. And it's something that typically comes to us by the hand of people that are to be taking care of us, to be our providers, our caretakers, our protectors, make sure we have the food we need, make sure we have the love we need, make sure we're nurtured. And it's possible that they don't know how to do that.

And so or that they've had something completely different modeled for them in their life and they carry that forward into their lives as parents and it goes into the children. And so it is a form of any really typically any kind of abuse, whether it's emotional and emotional is very much abuse. It's sexual abuse. You want to name some other verbal verbal abuse.

Yeah. And then physical abuse as well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, go ahead and keep going. I was just going to say that it can happen in kind of any area of our lives, whether it's in our families, whether it's in our churches, whether it's in politics, even. This type of stuff can happen to us. Absolutely. So again, just to just to piggyback off of what Allison was saying, with complex trauma, too, it can go much deeper than that, too.

Complex trauma or PTSD as some people call it. It really have continued trauma. That goes over and over and over again. And that's where that it's the emotion of powerlessness that you feel because you just don't have any hope that you'll get out of whatever the circumstance is. And sometimes with the evilness that's part of that, people really are, it's very, very I'm not going to say it.

It's just terrible what they go through. Pure evil, and it could be just sexual abuse, gang rape, you know, other things that just we can't even imagine. That's out there. And they're continuing going through it, you know, being electrocuted. The nails being pulled off. And sometimes even their fingers being cut off or anything of that nature. All of this is trauma based mind control. I know I'm going deeper into it.

But what the whole premise of this is about is to show that we need to come alongside this. So along with trauma, awareness in the church, we, as the counselors, and the caregivers, and the pastoral counselors, need to come alongside them, and just to show the love of God. And everything that it's not our responsibility to find out if the detail of what they went through, it's about being there for them, letting them open up, and to see that they can trust you because really, with the essential life skills, they have none.

So they can't trust you. They just don't know who to trust. They just don't have anybody that they could ever trust. And so as we come alongside, that is something that is really on our hearts to do. And we're just trying to explain it a bit more so the people in the audience can understand that if they have gone through it or even just trauma that it could be from a death or could be one off or a mini one off maybe it could be just one incident. You know, it can be an issue.

But getting back to the first podcast, we went into adverse childhood experiences. So that all of this ties in together to show us that the defense mechanisms that we had built up as a child to get through again through what we were going through at the time rather has brought us into the adult life because we just never changed. We didn't know how. So all our responses are based on our child's defense mechanisms.

So when you're dealing with complex drama talk of it, they have disassociated. So they have separated their minds from the trauma they were going through because otherwise they would just they would literally die. Because of all the pain and the trauma of the unprocessed emotions and the anger and all the emotions that come about it. But at the end, all of this is done in the complex trauma way, just for mind control.

And so they in turn will just come out of themselves. They don't have any mind well emotions. It's the other person who's doing it to them that has taken that from themselves. Yeah. You know, typically, when we talk about repeated types of abuse and it's starting in childhood, if you think about a child, they're very, they're like clay you know. I worked with clay for a while in my life. And I loved how you could just make it informant in any way that you wanted to.

And when I thought about this, I think about how you know when we're so young, our little minds are so malleable, we're just like clay, and we can be formed in shape. In a way that is very good or evil can come in and form and shape us. And so if we go through these types of things, then we feel completely betrayed. And as he was talking about the trust, I mean, you don't have a meter for who you can trust.

You don't have a sense of boundaries or limits in your life. You don't have an understanding as you grow into an adult. When these things repeatedly happen to you. You don't have any really foundation for building a good life you know. Life building blocks and relationships and it can begin to really be destructive in your own life. I love how you put that with foundation.

That's the key because we build off of what our foundation is as a child. So you have a child that goes to all of these things and complex trauma. A lot of times it happens to the child and continues on for quite a period of time. So because you don't have the foundation, you don't have the building blocks in place for going from one step to another on just both the gratuity level and then the brain growth as well. It can lead to very difficult lifestyles.

What I mean by that is if you come out of that particular situation, you are in a really difficult place because your life is central skills are not there because you just don't know. You don't have any how can I say you know I have a point of reference to look at to see how to do these things. So that's just one area. And when you're disassociating from the you're trying to just really just about separating it.

So you're not confronting it to just putting it aside because and sometimes you just didn't even know you do that but it is there underlying and you know as you go forward to try to get the help and the understanding of what happened. And it's not going into every single detail. It's just knowing it's there. Somebody is listening to you.

You bring it out from within and then your mind is able to work with the caregiver and you're able to come out on the other side in a way that it does take time but what I really love about it is that it works and it will help you and the other point that I want to point out as well is that it is a way to live wholeheartedly.

So it is a complete turnaround and again it takes a long time and unfortunately whereas we're studying and going through so many different things and understanding it from books and listening to other doctors and other people who have gone through it and other ministries as well you come up with something that just it really affects you in a way because you want to be there for them but it's horrific what they've gone through.

But it's not again above the details. It's about knowing they've gone through it and bringing them to the other side. Yeah. Well, just to kind of come alongside of what you're saying, the first thing you said was you have to come along beside them and love them. You know, love will be completely non judgmental or person that's been through anything like that at all. There can be no judgment whatsoever.

It has to be done through an act of love and listening. I mean, true listening, which is an art. We learn that. And the other part of that is really understanding that these people and the things that they've been through are well, if they want to share their story with you, it is their prerogative.

But if we come beside them and start asking them to share their story and basically saying, you know, I want to hear what happened to you. It's almost like we're going back and we're coercing them to do something that they're not ready for if they're not ready. One of the things I've learned and I'm sure you have too is that you almost have to reverse the trauma events.

So you come in and you do it backwards. You bring it around to the other side so that they feel love in those moments so that those smells that they smell no longer remind them of those moments. Or if they do remind them, then you have that capacity to understand what emotion you're having right then and be able to self soothe. But if we are coming alongside people and forcing them to tell their story or judging them in any way, we're actually doing more harm than good for them and taking them back into trauma.

Yeah, that's so true. And when we're sitting with them, we want to be able to two things, just let them see because they know in one second, whether you're trustworthy or not, and they can see whether your judgmental or not. And they can see the whole thing is they have to build up a trust. So they have never been able to trust anybody, as I mentioned before. So by taking it one step at a time and as Alison has mentioned that we don't really go right into the trauma, that's not the issue.

The issue is that we want to help them want to get these things out in the open. And we just truly have to be there for them. And that's what we want the church to do as well. And what I mean by that is to let them know what's here and available to help the individual get through these things. And a lot of people truly don't understand these type of complex trauma events. They just don't. And so we're here to you know help people understand it.

And if you have gone through it, which certainly love to be able to help you. We have tools here for you. And when we say tools, it's not a step one, two, three. It's just about the tools available for active listening from our part for you to explain your story for you to understand that we're here. Trustworthy. And we build that trust. It's not something we go in there and expect right away. It's something that's a long-term course of action. And you will have the ability to do it.

And that's one thing that I think the lowest place in our heart to really try to help these individuals. And again, it's two parts. It's the individuals for the trauma that we've experienced. I would daresay nobody escapes that. We go through traumas and our childhood. But also it's the complex trauma, and that's the key with the complex trauma to know the difference, but to understand that what our goal is to help the individual to end up from the time they come in to the time they leave with what we're able to offer to just start to live wholeheartedly in our lives.

Yeah. That's definitely the goal. And it's our hearts. To be able to help them do that. And while we don't know all the answers, we know where to find them. And we know who to find them from. Absolutely. And we also you know, as we've mentioned before, we have our own experiences. And we were just talking about this earlier and how it's really been able to give us the capacity to be able to connect dots in other people's lives as well as our own.

And so we can kind of see things in a different way than others may. And help them to understand where they are and what they may need in that moment. Exactly. So getting just going a bit further with Alison mentioned, we don't know everything. And that's for sure. And anybody who tells you they do, I wouldn't trust them. But anyway, why I say that is because for their weakness school of theology and doctor Michael Heiser, I've mentioned him before. I think I may have.

But anyway, what I loved about his explanation, this is what we have as well, is that there is data there that we can connect the dots. So we have the ability to tap into the resources of various doctors and others who are in the same field in line of trying to help complex trauma victims, but also they have workshops and they have other things for counselors and so forth, they're able to help us to understand that, okay, we have this resource that helps us.

We have this resource that helps us and we put it all together with the tools. And again, the tools are only meant to say that they give us the resources to help you. So that's what we want to do. And again, we firmly believe that we have a great ministry and that this is truly going to be able to help the people out there with both the trauma, complex trauma, and other things you know from reverse childhood experiences. Just to be the best way we can be.

That's the whole thing. Yeah. That's what we want to do. And you know I don't know if we were going to talk about Sophie's choice. Maybe talk about that. There was there is a and it's called Sophie's choice and it is about this woman who was taken into custody by how would you phrase that the Nazi?

And she had two small children and she was not Jewish. And professed herself to be a Polish woman, but they kept her anyway and to be able to stay there and I don't remember the exact details, but she had to choose. Whether she wanted to give up her son or her daughter.

To be able to stay in their grace, which they're great was nothing. I mean, it was eagle. But anyway, long story short, for the movie, you can watch it if you want to just to get a clear understanding that this woman after she was out of their camps after she had been treated, been dehumanized, been made to feel like she had no value, no earth, no comprehension of self.

No one that she could turn to. No one to love her. No one she could trust. She somehow landed with this man and he was a very animated theatrical loved her, would do crazy things with her. And she loved that about him. Because it was a sense of freedom for her. And he was that way, and then he would have a few days in between of all those good days.

He would come back to being this very evil man, and he would call her names and he would bring harm to her through criticisms and the content that he had for himself. And others. And he made her feel so empty. And so sad. And he would leave her, but then he would turn around and come back. And she would embrace him with open arms.

So a friend of theirs moved in, they were living in a co op and a friend of theirs or someone moved in and befriended them. And this man literally fell in love with this woman. And he was a very kind, loving, gentle man. And he saw what was happening. And. It was heartbreaking for him to see her continue to go back to this man. So he fell in love with her. And then he started letting her know when this man would leave her.

He started letting her know that he had fallen in love with her. And that he had a place where they could go and they could live on this farm and they could be in love and they could have children. They'd be married and have this wonderful life. And she told him no. And she kept going back to this other man because he would come back in the picture. And you just think about that. How many times have you seen that? Literally, in life today, how we go back to the things that really bring us harm.

And people go, well, what is wrong with them? What is wrong with them? But it's not that there's something wrong with them. It's something internal and it's something about the way their brain works based on the way that they were as we talked about earlier the brain being formed and shaped and so how they were taught to think about themselves. This woman was in a camp. This woman was degraded, this woman was condemned.

On the other hand, there are women men that are in relationships where there is unbelievable, able that happens to them and make them feel the same way about themselves, but yet that's what they identify with. That's what makes them more comfortable. They don't know how to receive. The goodness and the kindness and the love because it's not anything they've ever experienced in order to think they deserve it. Exactly.

The self esteem, there's no self esteem. So what they did in this particular picture and other complex trauma victims as well is that they dehumanize them. And so by that, they lose their mind blown emotions. And it's turned over to the other person, whether it's the perpetrator or whoever's doing these acts. And because of that, they just everything about them is just really the brain itself is Allison was mentioned.

Just can't handle the emotions of being human of being accepted of being loved for who they are. They have no point about it through that. So that's a great illustration. Thanks for bringing that out. I appreciate that. Sure. Anything else you want to mention? Well, they're different forms. I mean, not everybody experiences long-term effect like that, not everybody has you know where it comes from childhood.

There's different types of traumas, Gerard was talking about earlier, one offs, but there's one offs can turn into really big things and affect families and just in the way that it affects the person that actually goes through the trauma for instance, if somebody had a really bad car accident. Right, exactly. And they're hanging upside down in the car and they can smell the asphalt.

So they're traumatized from that event. They get out, they're so happy they're alive. They thank God they're alive. And then everything hits them after that because life changes after that because there are injuries, but they're alive. Oh, yeah. And then they have children and the effect on the family from the trauma and the impact of how financially how they were affected, everything.

And so then the children experienced the trauma and the same way that the parent is in a different way from a house perspective. They don't have any means of understanding. Exactly. So just you know coming along people who go through who those types of experiences. It's all Trump. It's all trauma. Some is more complex than others, but they all have the similar effects on our emotions or unprocessed emotions because there's so many things.

And God made our brain in such a beautiful way that we have chemistry, as I mentioned, chemical reactions to the emotions. And again, when you're dealing with any type of trauma, when you're dealing particularly as a child, we don't understand the things that we have gone through that create our defense mechanisms as I have mentioned a number of times. But when we bring that and still into adulthood, they didn't have trauma from the car accident or it could be, say, a fire in your house, you lose everything in that, or a death in a family.

You know, sometimes those things really can be just create, like I said, I guess we'll be almost like a post traumatic stress syndrome. And that's based on the unprocessed emotions. But we don't know this. This is why we're doing this to bring this to the attention of everybody out there that it runs the gamut from the childhood to the adulthood and all the trauma that we've experienced.

So our goal and our hope is to bring all of this to you is to help understand what's the dynamic behind all of this as you go forward and you don't understand what's going on and you're just trying to work from emotion like I explained in the first video, then you have the prefrontal context, which is where your function where you stay in function of doing daily work or activities and so forth. And then you have a midbrain, which is you really a protection area, and then you have the emotions.

So the traumas triggers the emotions, and when you're in there, as I mentioned before, it's shame lack of attachment pain. And the only difference when you're dealing with complex problem is the powerlessness is first. But anyway, that being said, that's the way our brain is made. And it's so freeing. And as we've talked about, we've gone through some things in our life. And I know from my perspective, I didn't know how to deal with it.

I just didn't know. And so as I've learned through schooling and all of the things that we've talked about, is that I'm able, and I know Alison is, we can step back because we know something happened there. So if we're in a situation if something comes at us, you know, in life happens, we can see where our emotions are meeting triggered. But what we want to do and help you with is to do the same thing to the whole lottery. To know we're not perfect. We know that. But we're working with interpersonal relationships.

If there's something that triggers something within that relationship, to know that you can step back and it's easy, when I say it's easy, it's not easy itself, but it's easier in knowing how to do it. That's what we love to explain to you. So when you can step back from actually deescalate from the confrontation, if that's what it is, you can look back and see what you're looking internally because you're saying, what triggered that because sometimes we have, I lovingly say, speculative imagination.

Exactly. We're trying to see what the other person was saying. We just go back into our defenses. And I know from my personal experience, it hasn't been a wonderful thing to do because you can create so much more conflict. And God does not want us to act you know to be that way. God wants us in love. And the reason the reason he does that is because he understands and interpersonal relationships. That's who we are. And as I said before, where is he? Right.

And so as we work with each individual person, we want to be the best me that we can be. So we have to stay within our mind will and emotions. So we can be helpful and loving to the other person is when we get out of that. And I love the way that discovering mercy has mentioned this as well, it's the limitations versus boundaries. So the limitations is "I can't do that." So if somebody is asking you to do something, it will take you out of your mind will and emotions, or you might be just at a point where you just need to have self care.

You just say, I can't do that. Instead of the boundary aspect, which is "I won't do that." And when you're dealing with people who have survived trauma or anybody, which would you rather have, somebody to be honest with you, say, look, I'm so sorry. I just can't do that at this time, but maybe you know maybe tomorrow or something like that. Because that's respect. You want to stay within yourself. And respect the other person, but just know that to let them know at the moment, I just can't do that.

But it's not that I don't want to do it, but I will be able to do it maybe tomorrow, or whatever the case may be. So I think that's just a wonderful way to take and just to keep the interpersonal relationships intact. And that goes for couples, friends, family, and anybody else that we deal with in church. Totally agreeing. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just go back. I think I've said this before. What we don't know can hurt us.

And just as Gerard was saying, being able to be in a place now to step back and look. And it's not always pretty. But you can do it, when you get to that place. And to evaluate yourself and why you're feeling the way that you're feeling. And to not just assume that somebody is thinking something like you were saying. Because 9 times out of ten, people probably are not thinking what you think they're thinking.

It's just a very empowering thing for your own life to be able to manage that. To experience the emotions that God has given us, but to be in touch with them. And to understand why we feel that way. And to be able to take care of ourselves in that, to be able to nurture ourselves in that. Exactly.

One thing I just wanted to mention as well is that I'm getting back to Jesus in this particular aspect of when Jesus was on the cross. And I said this before, but I wanted to kind of drive home the point that Jesus did two things in the cross. He brought us to him because we're able now to be fit to be in his presence because of all the sins is forgiven. And praise God for that. But secondly, there is an evil realm. And when I say, I should say the spiritual realm that has evil in it.

And I can go into greater detail, but we will do that in another podcast. But for this particular episode, I really like to point out that Jesus also defeated evil, and again, we're His hands and feet and we are not bound by the evil at all. We're loose because of what Jesus did. So all of these things that Alison really, I think, was a great way to point out that we don't know I think how did you mention that we don't...what we don't know can hurt us.

Exactly. And that's true. And that's part of it too. We can truly understand that a lot of things that we deal with are internal. They're not evil. There's perpetrated on a person, but the thoughts and processes of our individual cells is what we have to deal with. And in order to understand that it's not like a double or anything like that, it's the emotions that we're dealing with because when you're a true believer, we are in Jesus family.

And we have been given the authority by Jesus to remain in that. So nothing can hurt us. So that's why we're getting more into how to handle our emotions, which came about from something that might have been evil, or something that other people like our parents or whoever it might be that did this particular thing to you. You know, because you might have a lack of attunement and other things we mentioned, which is really just about you know being attached to somebody.

That creates issues, but that's the tool. These are the tools and the ways that we want to go about to address them. So we want to get away from where you know stuck in evilness is creating this. Although the evils out there were not part of that, true believers are in Christ, and this is what we want to do. We want to make sure that we bring this to your attention and not only that. It's the tools I keep saying tools and it's not the best word for it.

We have the resources. That's the best word for it. We have the resources to help you. And this helps us. I mean, we're walking the walk. This helps us to be able to look in the mirror and look at things that we can see and do better. But it's not out of guilt. It's out of wanting to be the best that we can be. Again, we're not perfect. But we're able to help people come alongside them involved and just to show them that.

And isn't it? It's more peaceful. And again, it all goes about to live in Ohio. Yes. You know, I'll just add about Jesus you know. Everything that he did for us and where we are in him, our relationship with him is first and foremost. I'm not talking about us, but yes, it is first and foremost for us too. But to be in healthy relationships, we have to have that relationship first to understand how deeply loved we are.

And so and then and then the other relationships come out of the fruit of the relationship with Jesus. So he has done so incredibly much for us and he has set us free from and loosed us from the power of the enemy. But it is like Gerard was saying it is up to us to do the work.

To do the work, to with someone who understands, with someone who has the experience, with someone who has the heart, and who has been led by the hand of God to do this type of work. We don't do it because we just decided that's what we're going to do. Yeah. And so because I think what is so critical, I mean, our whole world, I'm not talking about the world, but in our realm of life, everything revolves around relationships.

And so to be able to live wholeheartedly and have healthy, thriving, loving relationships, no matter what we've been through, and I won't always be perfect you know. I mean, we know that you know. But we just, we want people who have been through challenging, traumatic, or complex traumatic moments in their lives or times in their lives to be able to be free from that and live a wholehearted life. And to be able to say, hey, I repaint this and now I can help somebody else. That's the best way to do it. And that's the bottom line is that's a love of Jesus. Yeah. And you know getting back to briefly through the complex trauma, people who have suffered through that, they don't know what the true God is, what He's like. And so that's what we are here to do. To help them. And it isn't Bible scriptures or anything else. It's just showing, sitting there with them as they walk through this journey to come from where they are to living wholeheartedly. But it's sitting there with them each and every time to show them the love of Christ. And once they see that, that's what truly changes their heart, to understand that there is somebody they can trust, someone that can be vulnerable with.

And you know for me, that's one of the most exciting things again to help them to be the best person that they can be. But that's me, and I can be. Right. And again, it's learning the same thing along the way. To be the best that we can be, and it's so exciting to be able to dive into different resources to learn from different people and be able to bring to you what has been placed on our heart, literally, because we don't just randomly choose books to read or resources to read and share with you.

It really gets placed on our heart before we do it, and we know that it has to do with what we need to bring to you. And that's just how I love to you. We want you to be the best that you can be. And again, when you look at the interpersonal relationships, when people are doing it out of love, that's where the peace comes. And so that's what we're looking to do. Right.

Well, I just you know I just want to say thank you for listening. This, again, is we're really excited. And I've said this before, but every morning when I get up, I'm so excited to either be working studying and or researching. For everything on the subject matter and to be able to bring that all together to help you know everybody that is part of the ministry and part of this podcast to just be there to help you.

That's what our goal is. Right. And thank you so much for listening to our podcast. You can find us on Spotify. And you also can find our website milmacmusings.org and listen to our episodes there and find resources there. And then what's the address for emailing us if they would like to? This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.? Yeah.

And so if you could do that, that would be wonderful. And again, what we would like to do is you know for further podcasts, if you have a suggestion of some of the material we've gone over, materials, excuse me. We would love to jump deeper if that's something you'd like to do as well. 

So thank you. Thank you very much and just have a wonderful week and God bless you and enjoy your week and thanks again for listening. 

Thank you all. Have a wonderful day.