GYC Conference 2023: But If Not

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Bible Buts & Band-aids: How to Apply God’s Word for Trauma Healing

K'dee Elsen Crews

Conceal and Seal: The Invisible Wounds of Trauma

Medications and finally they did a scan of her brain and found that it was not the pattern, the seizures of how they were presenting were not a pattern of epilepsy and basically the neurologist is like, I have no idea what's going on.

And so they sent her over to Beautiful Minds.

And thinking that a psychologist is a psychiatrist, she ended up in my office and asking, OK, what medication can I give her to treat the seizures?

And early on in the session, I told her, you know, I'm not a psychiatrist.

But tell me a little bit about your story.

So she started to share, and in this story she shared that she didn't start at the beginning, she kind of was all over the place, but she shared that her seizures began after she gave birth to her daughter.

And then we rewound it, rewind it a little bit.

And What she told me was that she experienced sexual abuse throughout her childhood by her brother.

Her brother raped her several times throughout her childhood.

And she said, you know, when I left the house finally for college, I was fine.

She was fine, but she was a heavy alcohol drinker.

And she's like, oh, her husband's wonderful.

And what was interesting is that she shared with me that at times when she had her daughter, she would go to her room.

She was intoxicated, but her daughter told her this later on in life.

She said, you would come to my room and you would hold me and you would say, I won't let it happen to you.

I said, what if her body was keeping the score?

What if, potentially, cuz there is a link between trauma and seizures for some, not all.

And I said, even if it's not related, it's very obvious that you struggle with trauma.

And she had anxiety, she had depression, she had other issues.

And in the next session we'll cover, I'll give you the full outline of the treatment that I provided her as a help for you all.

And a big part of her trauma was the belief, I am to blame.

So if you think about it, the main component of her trauma and suppression was she was the perpetrator.

If you really think about it, if I am to blame, then I am the problem, and she's walking with herself wherever she goes.

So we started working on this belief and changing the belief and having her exposed to her trauma and so forth, reducing avoidance.

And we went through treatment for about a year.

And now it's been 3 years, and I just saw her for kind of a checkup, and she hasn't had any seizures.

Now, I'm not going to say that that was definitely the only thing.

But we do see that there's an element, she also has chronic pain issues and others, and those have also been alleviated.

And 1 thing she told me, it was actually this past week that I saw her.

She's like, it was always going, going, going.

And I was like, you can just live your life.

And she's a perfect example of how the body does keep the score.

It says, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their own bodies.

The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort.

Their bodies are constantly bombarded with visceral warning signs.

And in an attempt to control these processes, they often become an expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside, They learn to hide from themselves.

So it's this illusion that we do hide, but we don't.

We forget about how trauma impacts our social development.

We see that with children, for example, they have lower academic performance.

There's an overall increase of unemployment, poverty, Medicaid use, higher risk of intimate partner violence.

There's a cycle of abuse where you're abused and then you enter into a relationship that also has dysfunction and abuse and so forth.

Higher divorce rates, have fewer healthy relationships, and overall also more unhealthy relationships.

So you kind of re-experience trauma over and over again.

Sometimes us from the outside are like, what are you doing?

More isolation, more withdrawal, difficulty relating to others, difficulty expressing or managing emotions which will impact relationships.

And oftentimes, increased risky behavior, including sexual behavior.

And I didn't put it on here, but if you think about a lot of our church problems are really related to underlying trauma.

You've heard this before, hurt people hurt people.

We don't remember that when we are being hurt.

Now, that doesn't justify what they're doing, but it gives us understanding.

If you don't heal what hurts you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you.

You see this a lot with family, where you are hurting.

Something happens at work, you come home, and who do you take it out on?

You're bleeding on people who didn't cut you.

And so if you're the person that's being bled on, understand this, have compassion.

But also, if you are hurting others, take a look into yourself and say, how am I maybe having some wounds, invisible wounds that I'm bleeding on others.

And sadly, this is the element that psychology doesn't really address.

But it's really the purpose behind Satan's strategy of trauma.

There's a loss of meaning and purpose with people who experience trauma.

There's diminished participation in religious or spiritual activities.

Kneel, Reveal, and Heal: The Journey of Trauma Recovery

All righty, we're gonna have a quick word of prayer again and then jump right in.

Father in heaven, please continue to be with us, Lord, especially as we talk about practical steps of healing.

We'll pray that you may open our hearts and reveal to us our own condition, but then also God to create a new heart in us as well.

All right, so the first presentation was entitled Conceal and Seal, right?

How we often suppress, how we often conceal our invisible wounds.

And so naturally, the first step would be to reveal.

We need to know what the problem is before we can actually heal.

So we're gonna go through The steps of kneel, reveal, and heal.

A lot of, I'll be referencing a lot of resources.

Here's a couple, and then I'll reference some more generals and general resources at the end.

But if you missed last year's seminar, I'll allude to things throughout this presentation about that.

And so you can either look it up on AudioVerse through these different things that you can look it up or on YouTube as well.

And just as a context, My sister, she's a marriage and family therapist.

Little side note to that, we're pastor's kids, grew up with a father who understood a lot about counseling.

So we both went into the field and then we have a ministry called Manna Ministry, where providentially during COVID, we started doing talks on mental health.

And so we go through cognitive behavioral therapy and the major steps.

So it's a beautiful, I mean, I'm biased, but it's a beautiful series of taking science, cognitive behavioral therapy, which is an evidence-based practice, but seeing how it stems from the Bible and using biblical principles for healing.

I'll allude to some things, but let's jump right into step 1 in the healing journey is to kneel.

And I love this psalm where it says, search my heart, oh God, and know my heart.

It's asking God to reveal your own heart to you.

You cannot understand yourself in your own accord.

A lot of times we jump to self-help books and we jump to reels and other things that give us education about mental health.

But the first step that is absolutely crucial and necessary is asking God and his Holy Spirit to reveal your own heart to you.

And what are the prerequisites to coming?

If you think about coming to therapy, you have to first recognize that you have a problem.

You can't go to God and just say, I want healing.

You need to recognize, I have a problem, and I need help.

I love the comparison of Acts 2 and Acts 7.

They both have a similar phrase that says, they're pierced to the heart.

But in Acts chapter 2, 1 group is pierced to the heart and they say, what must we do to be baptized?

Does anyone know in Acts chapter 7 what happens to those people who are pierced to the heart?

They closed their ears and they didn't want to hear.

He could say, hey, by the way, you hurting that 1 person or you're struggling in relationships, that's trauma.

But you could walk away like this, or you can say, God, what must I do to be healed?

You may go to God saying, God, do I need healing?

But sometimes God comes to you, kind of like with Adam and Eve, where are you?

He approaches us, Or like the man in the pool of Bethesda.

He went to the man and says, do you want to be made whole?

And you have to answer that question because God cannot impose healing.

Are there experiences, whether people or things that have come up in your life, that you've had that God has shown you that you need healing?

Let's say a relationship didn't work and you immediately start blaming the other person.

God, is there something that I did in that relationship that is a reflection of my underlying trauma?

Or, oh, that pastor, that pastor did something that I didn't like.

Or how come I have problems with almost every pastor that comes to the church, is asking God, maybe God is sending you those people or experiences as a way to say, hello, you are struggling, you need healing.

You can use thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.

This is using a cognitive behavioral model to understand, how is my daily functioning?

Just that's an often, that's a question that clinicians often ask or to assess, is there any struggles, any mental health struggles?

Am I constantly struggling at school regardless of my schoolwork or my school load?

Am I struggling at work, at church, at home, my relationships?

Am I constantly struggling to get up in the morning?

Am I waking up every morning saying, ugh?

Am I constantly having negative thoughts about myself or others?

This happens a lot within the church where we're like, I'm struggling with my screen addiction.

And you say, okay, I just need to do better.

Oh, well, just this 1 time or just whatever the reason is.

Is that, I'm not saying it is, but can that be a fruit of an underlying root of trauma?

Am I constantly avoiding things, my feelings and other things through screen time or other addictions?

This also includes the addiction of ministry.

I always like to mention that because a lot of people engage in nonstop overworking in ministry as a way to run away from their trauma.

Now, it's beautiful that a lot of people are healed to some degree and then they're so excited to be healed that they want to go into ministry and share that with others.

But sometimes we are actually running away from our trauma by engaging in addictions, including ministry.

And then what's the trend of my thoughts?

Are they predominantly negative, irrational, etc.?

And that's why we needed the first session to really talk about what is trauma, whether again, Type B of something bad happening to you, or even Type A, reflect on your childhood.

I have so many clients who show up and I ask them, how was your childhood?

Bible Buts & Bandaids: How to Apply God’s Word for Trauma Healing 1

I know that lunch is running a little late, and people are trickling in.

But find your seats, and then we're going to get started and pick up where we left off.

Dearly Father, we thank you so much for the many blessings of our experience here at GYC thus far, and we pray that these seminars can be an ongoing blessing.

So continue to open our hearts, our minds, and continue to help us in our healing journey, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

All righty, if you missed last session, we are picking up from where we left off.

But don't worry, hopefully it's still a blessing to you.

So we talked about the impact statement, right, what we write about of why the trauma happened to understand what is the meaning that we've given the trauma.

So it's not about the trauma itself, it's really the meaning that we've given it and finding those incorrect negative beliefs, right, those stuck points, those beliefs that keep us stuck in trauma.

And then we talked about the importance of writing and not avoiding the trauma itself, the memory itself, to process it.

Our brain naturally will process it, but oftentimes we allow things to get in the way of that.

And then the last major component, and this is really the main element of the therapy, is ABC sheets, is learning to then challenge those stuck points.

So we find it, we start to process it, but we really need to challenge it.

And there was someone who came up to me during a break, and they asked a really good question that I wanted to just mention briefly.

They had talked a little bit about whether or not the details of the trauma really matter, Because some people might exaggerate some of their details, or maybe they don't remember it correctly.

And oftentimes, as human beings, we like to debate about those details.

Now, this is where it's important to come before the Lord as the God of truth to reveal those things, but it's not our job as human beings to correct other people's narratives.

It's important for the Spirit to correct it for us.

And if you're genuine about wanting that healing, God will reveal those things to you.

But really what matters the most if you say, oh, I think it happened to me for, you know, 5 years, but my family member said that it only happened for 2 years.

It's not about the details, it's about still the meaning you've given it.

So a lot of people try to go to their family members and find out what happened.

It's not about what happened, it's the meaning you give it.

And that's why the ABC sheets are so important to really challenge and find what is true.

So the 2 main components of ABC sheets are these 2 here, understanding the relationship between events, thoughts, and feelings, which we'll briefly cover, but then also changing the meaning and rewriting the narrative of your trauma.

If you're familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy, this is a structure taken from that.

You see that there's an event, a belief, and then a consequence.

And oftentimes we think events causes how we feel and how we behave.

But you notice that it's not he made me mad or that trauma impacted me in a certain way, it's filtered through our interpretation, our thoughts, our beliefs.

And knowing that then gives us the empowerment to know maybe I can't change the activating event, but I can change my response to it.

And my feelings and the consequences, the behaviors I engage in, are a result of my beliefs.

And so down here, it starts to get people into the habit of looking at their thoughts and asking, are the thoughts realistic or helpful?

Sometimes they're realistic, but not necessarily helpful to dwell on.

If you think about this, this is similar to Philippians 4.8, which starts off by saying, brethren, whatsoever things are?

The first thing is determining whether or not our thoughts are true, but then it goes on to describe things that are lovely, pure, and so forth, because that's also the element of whether or not the thoughts are helpful.

So you might say, yes, that person hurt me, and that's true, and you need to acknowledge that truth, but is it necessarily helpful to dwell on it?

And then the second part here, what can I tell myself on such occasions in the future?

Now, these can be applied both to the trauma itself, and this is what we do focus on, but also it can apply to any everyday life events.

So even triggers, you say something happens to you and you get really upset, you can write down what happened, what were my thoughts, and the consequence of feeling really upset.

So in therapy we have clients do this at least 1 on a set point of their trauma, And then the other sheets that they do, at least 1 a day, is just on a general event, because we also want to provide a skill, not just a one-time heal from trauma, but an overall changing of a mindset.

Right, Romans 12 says, be transformed, how?

God wants to teach us how to have helpful and truthful thoughts.

The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.

And I think it's so powerful, this quote, and even it contradicts a little bit of what the author says in this book, where other treatments, and I'm not gonna, I wish I had time to go into other trauma treatments.

Other trauma treatments tend to focus a lot on just the memory itself.

And you need to process it, and you need to, There's other things that they use, sensory things to help you process it.

But they never address the incorrect cognitions.

And if you never address those incorrect cognitions of the memory itself, but then also in general, the way your mindset, You cannot heal.

And that's why I love cognitive processing therapy because it focuses on these lies.

And we know, where do those lies come from?

In John 8 it says very clearly that he is the author, he's the father of all lies.

And we'll talk a little bit more about this when we talk about the great controversy in relation to mental health.

But we don't realize that what's really underneath all the trauma and these lies, it's not just an earthly experience.

It's a cosmic conflict that's going on where Satan wants us to believe these lies.

Then what we do is we take that ABC model and slowly as they get into the habit of changing their thoughts, we make it quite complicated.

So if you notice, there's still the ABC, but we add a D, disputation, challenging the thoughts, by looking at the evidence for and against.

So for example, if you were to say, I am to blame.

I'll use the case I used earlier, the woman who was about 70, and she was like, I am to blame for the abuse.

It's okay, what's the evidence that you have for that?

Now, oftentimes we just jump to the evidence against, right?

But there's something in us that believes it.

And we first need to acknowledge what that is before we jump to why it's wrong.

Sometimes people say, well, it's because I feel that way.

Or maybe because I was told it was my fault.

So and so told me that, oh because you didn't fight back or in this case, my client, her older sister the brother tried to do it to the older sister and the older sister pushed him off made a whole hassle about it And so the older sister told her, it's your fault.

It's because you were quiet type, you were weak and other things.

And so we had to look at that as evidence for and say, is your sister a reliable source in order to tell you that you are to blame?

And then we'd go through other evidence to say, you know, a lot of times we have to look at things outside of ourselves.

Would you tell another child that they were to blame for a rape?

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Series

Bible Buts & Band-aids: How to Apply God’s Word for Trauma Healing

Kneel, Reveal, and Heal: The Journey of Trauma Recovery

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

Parts

Conceal and Seal: The Invisible Wounds of Trauma

28m

Kneel, Reveal, and Heal: The Journey of Trauma Recovery

57m

Bible Buts & Bandaids: How to Apply God’s Word for Trauma Healing 1

1h 3m

Bible Buts & Bandaids: How to Apply God’s Word for Trauma Healing 2

44m

Questions for Healing: How the Bible Answers the “Whys” of Trauma

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine