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American Reformation
We believe the American church needs reformation. To go forward we must go back. This podcast will explore the theology and practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication and apply those learnings to our post-Christian/secular American culture. American Reformation is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. Follow us at uniteleadership.org. We consult, bring together cohorts of congregations for peer to peer learning, and certify leaders for work in the church and world.
American Reformation
Is Church a Safe Place for Trauma Survivors? with Dr. Janyne McConnaughey
Have you ever wondered how trauma impacts faith and spiritual practices?
On this episode of the American Reformation Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Janyne McConnaughey, a trauma survivor and renowned expert in neuroscience and trauma education. Dr. McConaughey sheds light on her groundbreaking book, "Trauma in the Pews," and shares her personal journey of healing. We discuss the often-overlooked connection between trauma and spirituality and how ministry leaders can better support their communities through a deeper understanding of mental health. This episode is essential for anyone looking to foster a more compassionate and informed church environment.
Dr. McConnaughey dives into her own transformative experiences in therapy, emphasizing the pivotal role of personal effort and divine support in overcoming trauma. She shares how faith served as a cornerstone in her healing process, offering hope to others navigating similar paths. We explore the spiritual battle against shame and the necessity of taking ownership of one's story. By weaving in her personal anecdotes, Dr. McConnaughey illustrates how customized spiritual practices can respect individual histories and needs, providing a roadmap for authentic spiritual growth and healing.
We also tackle the complexities trauma survivors face in traditional church settings, highlighting the importance of a regulated nervous system for true joy and spiritual connection. Dr. McConnaughey provides practical insights on creating safe spaces within the church, drawing from initiatives like those at Christ Greenfield church. This episode is a compelling exploration of how trauma-informed ministry can transform lives, helping individuals see their worthiness and experience genuine joy in worship. Tune in for a conversation that promises to elevate your understanding and approach to supporting trauma survivors in your faith community.
Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman. Here I pray the joy and love of Jesus and Jesus' people who surround you through the ups and downs of life are with you today. Today I get the privilege of hanging out with a sister in Christ that we just met, but I have been influenced, our team has been influenced by her. Let me tell you a little bit about her. This is Dr Janine McConaughey. Influenced by her, let me tell you a little bit about her.
Speaker 1:This is Dr Janine McConaughey. She's a trauma survivor who draws from her lifelong involvement in church ministry. She is a teacher. She teaches in a master's program in ed, master's in ed in neuroscience and trauma. She is a distinguished visiting professor at Tabor College and also the former board president for the Attachment and Trauma Network. And the way I got connected to Janine and she was generous to say yeah, I'll come on and spend some time with you, is because we were impacted by this book Trauma in the Pews, the impact on faith and spiritual practices. So, janine, how are you doing? What a joy to spend time with you today, sister.
Speaker 2:I'm fine. I'm honored to be here. I'm looking forward. You sent me great questions, so I'm really excited to be able to answer them, and this is one of the things I hoped would be the impact of the book, so thank you for making this possible.
Speaker 1:Oh, man, it's a joy. So, before I get into our standard question, I like movies and I'm a fan of Matthew McConaughey. Janine, are you related to Matthew McConaughey in any way? I'm sure people have asked you that question A few times, so actually, he's missing an N in his name. Oh, okay, yeah, you got the right spelling.
Speaker 2:So no, and what happened was when they came into America, they just spelled it any which way. So there's all sorts of versions of it. But I want to trade my N. I'll give him our family N for his money.
Speaker 1:He's a unique dude. He is a unique dude. I listened to his biography book. He's got quite a story. Nonetheless, we're not digging into Matthew's story today. We're digging into Janine's. It's going to be a good time. So the standard opening question is how are you praying for reformation? You've looked at the wider church. You've seen a lot of church trends, especially in mental health. How are you praying for reformation? You've looked at the wider church. You've seen a lot of church trends, especially in mental health. How are you praying for reformation in the American Christian church, janine?
Speaker 2:When I was in my 40s, I knew that I was having mental health concerns and I believed it was a genetic problem, a spiritual problem, all sorts of things, but I did not have the information about trauma. When I began to learn about trauma, I began to make sense to myself and realize what had happened, and so my desire is that the church as a whole, ministry leaders especially, would just do the deep dive into understanding the impact of what trauma does in a life, because we've all experienced it. We've all been impacted by trauma. Sometimes, when I use the word trauma, I get kicked back. No, I don't think I had trauma in my life, but in reality, if you've had a very, very difficult experience that is still impacting you, that's trauma. So my hope and my prayer is that the church would understand that at a deep level in order to serve people better.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why we're talking today. We need help, and trauma is a word that gets just thrown around a lot, so we're going to kind of demystify it today, but before we do that, tell us a story of kind of the why behind writing Trauma in the Pews.
Speaker 2:So this is a book I never meant to write, which is kind of funny because I was writing a different book, which is still sitting out there in the wings.
Speaker 2:You know, along with maybe two or three others, that I've written since then. But what happened was, as I started to understand my own story and I had one of my readers I've published three books before Trauma in the Pews and they're memoirs about my story and I had a reader in South Africa send me an email and say no one ever told me it wasn't a spiritual problem. Send me an email and say no one ever told me it wasn't a spiritual problem. And I went oh wait, no one ever told any of us that this wasn't a spiritual problem.
Speaker 2:And so I had signed up to speak at a conference a trauma conference and religious trauma conference in this case, which is not really what Trauma and Abuse is about, but it pertains to it and I did an entire slideshow to show that what happens when we consider it a spiritual problem. So my publisher, who was working on the other book with me, I said would you just listen to my presentation, cause I don't think it's flowing, I just need some other eyes on it and we've been friends since we were in high school and so she goes, sure, and so she and my my author coach listened to it and when I got done it was pure silence and I was like, oh, it's that bad. And they're like oh, is it that bad?
Speaker 2:And they said no, this is a book, and that's where Trauma and Abuse came from was that we switched gears and we went on the basis of what I had said in that presentation, which is, people are still writing to me about that presentation, and so that's how Trauma and Abuse came about and I realized that I had so a lot my story, my background in education, my years in ministry-related colleges and ministry preparation that it all combined to create what you have in your hands, which is Strong in the Pews.
Speaker 1:So good. So you write out of your story and the vulnerability that you share, you know, in your writing. It just pops off the page. It's so, so sweet, it's so Jesus-centered, so Holy Spirit-filled and hope-filled. A lot of times you read a book like Trauma in the Pews. You give great suggestions for how we can work through and this is the call of Christ right. He meets us in our suffering, in our trauma, and he carries us through. So when people ask you hey, janine, would you tell me your story? And you can spend as long as you want, but how did your story inform writing this book?
Speaker 2:pastor's daughter in the Wesleyan tradition and I needed to be a good girl, right, I needed to be a good little pastor's girl and when you, I was sexually abused in a daycare situation at the age of three, and I did not have a secure attachment with my mother, who also suffered from mental health issues, and so so I did not have the support. My dad was amazing. He saved my life, um, but. But I had behaviors as a result of my traumatic experience, and so I got to the point where I, subconsciously, I'm like I can't. I can't be the person they want me to be, and whatever it is that is causing me to have these behaviors which I'm three, I don't know. I'm not doing this consciously.
Speaker 2:But, it caused me to learn to just push down and forget, repress, subconsciously, what had happened to me, and it also made me very, very vulnerable. So, from the age of three to 23, I had multiple episodes of sexual abuse because I was so dissociated and did not have boundaries. And I did not. Well, how can a child have boundaries? You have no power right. And so when I went to college and was preparing to work in the church which my original goal and in the Wesleyan tradition I could be ordained was to be ordained and when I had a horrific experience my freshman year in college, which I'm very open about and on my sub stack and my blog I tell that story. But I realized that I could not serve in the church and in church-related ministries unless I found some way to live above the impact of what had happened to me. So I repressed again and when I turned I was 61, when it all began to bubble up and surface and even though I had suffered my entire adult life with what I thought were mental health issues, depression, et cetera, it just bubbled to the top and I ended out led to therapy to an amazing therapist by God, absolutely, I have no question, but God led me to this therapist and that began the last 10 years I've been healing, and for three the first three years very intensive and I retired in the process and basically gave up everything.
Speaker 2:So one of the stories I like to tell is that after everything came apart my job, I was living in our RV you know all of this kind of stuff. My husband was trying to take care of me. I was a mess Just saying if you really want to see the impact of trauma, you read my first book. Okay, you, then you, you could really understand it. So, so I, I sat on the therapy couch and I said I said, you know, I just don't have a life anymore.
Speaker 2:I don't have any future. I've given up everything. I'm here, I don't. I've lost my job, I've lost a lot of my friends just walked away from me because I couldn't tell them what was going on. But they didn't know what was wrong with me. Why would I retire at the height of my career, et cetera. And so she said Janine, janine, you do have a future. You just can't see it right now. But I'll hold it for you till you get there. But I'll hold it for you till you get there and it was the most, and that has just been my thing. Yes, I do, and this right here is the future. I could not see that I would be able to be honest and open about my story, that I would understand the impact that it's had on me and continues to have on me in many ways, and that I would be able to find purpose in that and to be able to give other people hope.
Speaker 2:That is it.
Speaker 1:It's so good. We're just getting to know one another. I've been a Lutheran pastor for gosh 17 years now this year and to invite people in all different seasons of life. Nothing lights me up more than seeing people persevere by the Spirit's power, connected to friends who hold their dreams for them while they're away. That's such a great image and then say God still has work for me to do and it's not above or around my pain, it is truly in it. Pick up your cross and follow after me and they'll know you're my disciples by the way. You love and care and empathize with others, and others will be, isn't that? We're all wounded healers?
Speaker 1:I dropped the Henry Nowen quote so much. Like he shouts, god shouts through our pain and our struggles. So thank you, thank you for persevering, and really I thank the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the one who carried you through it and now is using that story in just beautiful ways. But maybe I'll just pause on this for a second. What is it about? I think Satan. There's a satanic attack. He lies to us over and over again and moves us towards shame. If they, if they knew people are going to run away. Talk about the spiritual battle connected to your story, to even get to this point to say it is. It is my trauma, my struggle that's going to help others heal. Anything to say there, janine.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that what I had to come to realize was that the trauma was held inside of me and that the impact it had in the ways that I thought about myself, believed about myself, what I was able to do, what I couldn't do, all of these things were inside me and I was the only one with God's help, yes, but I was the only one who could make a difference in my own life. Nobody else could do that for me, nobody else could know it had to be me. And I think that sometimes, when we talk about being attacked from the outside, well, the impact of trauma needs no other entity to damage Absolutely. It is exactly what trauma does to us and you can heal to the degree that it's possible to heal, and it is no magic wand. It is hard. Work us from the enemy, protect us from. What we're really doing is looking for help outside of the answers that we have inside of us.
Speaker 2:And in Brave, in my first book, I talk about the curriculum and my therapist and I would laugh because I would go, come to therapy and I would say you're not going to believe what happened to me this week. This is just. And I, for instance, not too long ago, and I've spent another whole year healing this year so so I, I was packing, we'd moved recently. I got out, I was looking at my freshman year book from college and out drops a journal. Okay, I had no idea I've carried that, it's my, it's my 50th college, I've carried that thing around in that. I didn't know it was there and that and but it gave me exactly what I needed, that at that moment to move forward in our healing. And I'm I just was like God, really, really you're going to drop this into my life right at this moment with all of the clues that I need to move forward.
Speaker 2:And so in Brave I talk about that. I talk about how God walks beside us in the process. But God cannot do anything to help us heal unless we are willing to take the steps and do the work and when we think the problem is outside of us and we. All we do is ask God to protect us. Then we don't get anywhere. We don't heal that way.
Speaker 1:Well, I think Jesus invites his disciples to take responsibility. I live, I'm a pastor, in a denomination that has an extra emphasis on passive faith. Okay, so you don't do anything to be brought into a right relationship with God. God is the primary actor, the mover. But then, as it relates to our relationship in the world, god does give us His Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit leads us toward self-control and responsibility and this radical ownership of the good and the bad, the ugly of our story. And then we say, in our tradition we would say God is one leading us there, but I'm still taking responsibility to say you know, in our tradition we would say God is one leading us there, but I'm still taking responsibility to say ask, seek, knock. The Lord wants you, he wants all of you.
Speaker 1:But it requires this kind of radical self-responsibility, especially as it relates toward trauma in our story. And yeah, I want to. I'm thinking of some folks in my life right now and I carry my own wounds and I also carry the wounds of many others and secondhand kind of trauma that gets placed upon pastors, right as we do a lot of counseling and every single, just to double down on what you say every single time they are saying no more, no more, like God has more for. For me it is this kind of call for uh, responsibly, and then shaping that, shaping that story and inviting friends into it. It's not like you're alone, but it definitely starts. It definitely starts internal um, that kind of call from the Lord. So thank you for that, that reminder. Would you define trauma? For us? It's a word that gets used quite a bit. How do you define it?
Speaker 2:So I I I'm going to cheat right here because I have a favor.
Speaker 2:Okay, so so the definition I use okay and I'm going to expound on this a little bit is any situation which causes an individual to feel threatened physically or emotionally, feel powerless and or overwhelm the capacity to cope, resulting in lasting adverse effects on the well-being and ability to function. So that's the definition I have in the book. And ability to function. So that's the definition I have in the book. And since then, as I continue to learn and I continue to condense that down because that's a lot of words, but basically we're talking about the event, a traumatic event.
Speaker 2:Trauma is not the event, because the same exact thing can happen to two different people and one ends out being traumatized and then another one does not. Okay, it's the experience of it. Like, did you have support around that? Were you able to look at that as an adult, which a child cannot do. They cannot look at what happened to them as as an adult. Obviously, what, what, what were the circumstances around it? Were you able to get to safety after that? Did you have people?
Speaker 2:Okay, so the experience of the trauma and then the effect, the long-term effect it has on you. So were you? Were you, after a few days, just kind of back to your normal self. Well then, you were, then you were not. It was a traumatic event, but you were not impacted by trauma. Trauma is when I go and sit on the therapy couch at 62 years old and unearth the fact that I was abused at the age of three and I understand all of the ways that that impacted me, my marriage, my relationship with my children, all of the ways I was impacted for a lifetime. That's trauma, okay, and so that kind of expands on it.
Speaker 1:No, that's so good. So it's event experience, it's the circumstances, the people that were involved, right, and then the effect long-term, very, very helpful. So you've talked about childhood quite a bit, talk about how childhood pain and trauma affects participation in spiritual practices and I think I didn't dig into this earlier when you said this. But trauma is not spiritual. You can even go deeper, deeper there.
Speaker 2:Right, and I so, in other words, let me give you. I thought about this when I got your questions this morning. How can I? I mean, I wrote a whole book.
Speaker 1:There's a lot, there's a lot, there's a lot to say.
Speaker 2:I'm coming to a podcast and I'm like I don't know I have I don't know how many words about this, but I'm going to give you and we're going to fit this into an hour, right?
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to do it. We're going to do it.
Speaker 2:So let me give you one of my personal examples. Okay, part of my trauma is all of my trauma is connected in some way with the church. Okay, so it was a church member whose daycare I was at at the age of three. Every, every, every episode of abuse was connected with a church member in some way. So to me. And then, at the same time, the church people were who helped me survive, that loved me, that cared for me, didn't understand me when I go rogue, what is with Janine? So there's the I call it the dark underbelly of it, right, and so so, all all my life I'm impacted by things, and one of those, unfortunately, is my, um, my relationship with the.
Speaker 1:Bible.
Speaker 2:How awkward. Right, I'm a Bible college professor. Right, I'm a Bible college professor and when I pick up my, my Bible, I completely dysregulate. I can hardly. I can. I can do word searches online. I've spoken in chapel, I can study, I can. I can do all sorts of things. I can read devotion, but when I pick up a Bible, it's connected to one of my traumatic experiences.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, so I, and that makes me angry because it robbed me of something that is a great comfort to other people. So so one of the things that that I realized is that we we see reading the Bible as as a sign of spirituality, and if, if someone is not reading their Bible, then we say, well, you must not want to grow spiritually, right, and I'm just like I don't know. I devoted my whole life to serving God and trying to draw close to God. It just was so hard and difficult, and so I said so I have an illustration. So I wrote Trauma in the Pews 2.0. And what happened was I wrote Trauma in the Pews and then all the survivors said, wow, this makes so much sense. What do I do now? How can I do spiritual practices and so on? Substack on my Substack I have, and it's under the paid contact, but anyone who is listening to this and wants to write to me and ask for a free month on my Substack so they can look at that material, I'm more than happy to give that to them. So, anyway, what I did was I specifically said this is, and one of the illustrations that I used was okay, you have a Bible in your house. Everybody reading this has a Bible in their house, okay.
Speaker 2:So when you walk over to that Bible, does it have dust on it? Well, how many times have I been preached at that? If my Bible has dust on it, that means that I'm not trying to come close to God. No, that's not the problem. That is not the problem. So when you pick it up, let's say it doesn't have dust on it, let's say it's worn. I have my dad's Bible. It's got everything underlined and written and everything in it. He loved his Bible and I have that and I treasure it.
Speaker 2:And so when you pick that Bible up, do you feel comforted? Does it comfort you? Do you say this is, this is one of the ways that God gives me strength? Well then, you were not traumatized by the Bible, right? But if you are, if you go and you pick it up and suddenly and one of the things that we have mistaken is trauma is held in the body and it dysregulates your nervous system, it floods you with chemicals that make your stomach roll, make you sweat, make you you know, just all sorts of stuff, right? Well, that is a physical reaction and an impact of trauma and we have mistaken it for conviction. So we say, well, if you pick up your Bible and try to read and you suddenly are disregulated, you're rumbling well, god is convicting you, and that is just not the case for me. That is not it.
Speaker 2:And so what I'm doing for survivors right now is finding ways to do spiritual, help them find ways between I should and I can't and find a middle lane that makes that practice accessible to you. And that's what Trauma in the Pew is 2.0. And I would like to publish it, but I don't know. It was more important for me to get the information out to people than to publish the book, because that takes so much work. So it's on my substack. So that's an example. That's an example of how trauma impacts spiritual practices. And I go through all of Foster's, all of, and you know that.
Speaker 1:Richard Foster's. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I go through every spiritual discipline and talk about how it is, how trauma impacts survivors.
Speaker 1:Have you found in your work like that middle way between should and can't? That's such a good, great handle. It's very diverse, it's very personal, right? People finding that middle way say more there about how personal. I love this because God is very personal with you and your story and he wants to speak to you in such unique personal ways. So go deeper there, janine.
Speaker 2:Well, okay. So let's take prayer, for instance. And I talk about the fact that for survivors, especially childhood, those who experienced childhood trauma and were often shamed horribly because of their behaviors that were related to trauma or whatever, or just because it was a bad home situation, so I can't ask for anything. I tell this in trauma, I cannot ask. My family is just mom, just ask for it. Do you want to drink a water? Just ask. And I'm like, oh, that looks, I think I might be thirsty. That looks like such a good. I wonder what that would feel like to get a drink. I mean, I just do ridiculous things because I can't ask. So can I ask God for anything? Oh God, I'm probably, I know, you probably don't. No, I, you know, I just wind myself all in it, Right?
Speaker 2:So several years ago I started. I started creating visionless, like what would I like my future to look like? Right, and I didn't think of it as a spiritual practice at the time. I thought of as as more of a career. You know, we separate things way too much. We put, oh, this is spiritual over here and this is, this is secular, you know, and you need to be cautious with that. Okay, so, so God sees me writing these vision lists and God said I got it. Janine, Got it. That is your prayer, that is what you're asking for yourself, because you cannot just come to me and ask so before I live in this amazing little cottage in Washington, I have chickens in the backyard. If you hear a rooster crowing, that's my chicken, that's my rooster. His name is Elvis, Okay. So anyway, I have the most beautiful backyard I ever imagined and a year ago we were living in our RV, again due to a lot of circumstances and you know everybody has circumstances. Did you know that?
Speaker 1:I do know that, Janine.
Speaker 2:Right, okay. So anyway, we were in and I was really depressed and I'm like, well, I'm going to make a list, I'm going to make a new list. Well then, I kind of forgot about the list and when I got, when we moved in here, I was trying to weed out my notes and I came across a list and it had every single item was fulfilled by this cottage that our friends offered. So our friends live across the driveway from us. This was a house that was built for his parents before they passed and it is handicap accessible. It has because we're old. My husband fell flat the other day and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're okay, but at least we have a handicap accessible home and we just everything on the list. And so that is that path down the middle, isn't it Okay? I should pray and ask God for my needs. I can ask God for everybody else's needs, no problem, no problem. Of course other people need things, but I can't ask for myself, and then and then so I should, and then I can't.
Speaker 2:And right down the middle of it, is my vision list and I create and I do this all the time because it offers a path. It fulfills the purpose of prayer. I write vision lists for what I hope for my family, without being too specific you can't be too specific on it and and so that's an example of that path.
Speaker 1:So good, um, man, I want to go. Okay, let's, let's pivot just a bit and talk about learning. Yeah, I think, because what happens in the brain? And I'd love for you to just I. I I'm not an expert in neuroscience by any extreme, but I have read a handful of books on it and you kind of you probably read way, way more. But I do know that the trauma center, the amygdala hijack, takes place and fight, flight, freeze, fawn I've heard those F words right when we get to that place. And there's no, because if we can't get to the prefrontal cortex, there's no ability to continue to learn, be creative, connect, be curious, all of those types of things. So tell us the effect of trauma on learning connected to metacognition, memorization and info retrieval. And here's another word. I love this word automaticity.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about that, janine. Super fun, all right. So I do need to say that my PhD is in education, educational leadership, and my emphasis was math education and early childhood. But because I taught at smaller colleges and I had enough math in my background, I ended out teaching math and what I noticed was that I needed to help a lot of. Okay, do you know that math is probably the last class in the world that Bible college students preparing for ministry want to take?
Speaker 1:That was me 25 years ago, janine. So yes, I do realize that.
Speaker 2:So I taught the class that nobody wanted to take. Just so. Good for you, right. But what I realized? I started studying the psychology of mathematics Right, but what I realized, I started studying the psychology of mathematics and I learned all about that during my doctoral program and how people that their past traumas and experiences, you know, impacted, but I didn't understand the neuroscience behind that, right. So.
Speaker 2:So when I retire, you know, and then I'm like, oh my goodness, now I know why I could never learn my math facts. I could not. I can name you John 316, and that is the only number I can name in the entire Bible. I cannot hang on to numbers. I can't remember my address. I cannot remember my phone number. I cannot remember to numbers. I can't remember my address. I cannot remember my phone number, I cannot remember. So because trauma impacts the hippocampus, which puts things into long-term memory, and it hits numbers and things that don't have any way to logically connect together. It hits those very hard.
Speaker 2:So when Google came, could, because I can remember pieces of scripture, right, so I could, I could find it Right. And when I was teaching at a Bible college, I would. I would start the verse and I would be like, okay, let's hear you guys say that and they would, they would quote it. But I couldn't quote it Right, I couldn't memorize. And so, like the idea that you're going to memorize all these scriptures, I cannot, I mean it, it would take. It would take me weeks and months to memorize one single verse.
Speaker 2:It is the hardest thing, and yet I have a phd. Yeah, right and so. But there were many like putting um theories and and the author of the theories together, I had a horrible time, okay, so you asked for the series, and when I saw you ask that question, so that's just to give you a little background how I got there. So metacognition is internalized narratives in your head. So that's what happens in math. Is that you're so busy telling yourself you can't do the math that you can't do the math because of your internalized messages that you are incapable of doing math Right.
Speaker 2:So in spirituality, your message that you're worthless convinces you that you're worthless and that God doesn't care and doesn't want to answer your prayers and all of these kinds of things. So that's your metacognition. It's thinking about what you're thinking about. It's necessary for self-regulation, higher order thinking and problem solving, and trauma just hits it hard. Memorization and information retrieval. I already discussed that one.
Speaker 2:Okay, and it's a hippocampal volume in the brain, so you can tell the structures, you can tell how trauma has impacted, especially if it was during the developmental period, which was my situation, and that's why I talk about the impact of childhood trauma. Most often, even not that the other adult trauma doesn't impact you, but not like developmental trauma. And then automaticity is the immediate retrieval of basic skills and information. It's slow, slow, okay. So if I my math facts, I remember struggling in school with my math facts, you know, and I would, I had all sorts of systems that I figured out because I would have to in my head I would. If I said seven times three, I would have to be like seven, 14, 21. Right, not just seven times three is 21. That just does not happen. So a lot of of times, a lot of times in church they would be like.
Speaker 2:They would just say you know, in john 4, 10, and I'm like no people send me things and they say you know you need to look at the verse this, and they expect me just to know it. I don't know it, I don't know it, and then you feel like such a spiritual failure. That's why I say it's not a spiritual problem. Your brain has been impacted by trauma.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the brain is so, so amazing, isn't it? And I mean scientists. They can't even figure out. I think they know maybe 20% of I've heard that name thrown out for neuroscience. I mean, there's still way more for science to even discover about how fearfully and wonderfully made our brains are and we're not. There's a lot of research in this direction that we're not primarily thinking things right, brains on a stick A lot of books in this regard but that primarily were feeling things. I heard something recent in a neuroscience book. Have you heard of the other half of the church?
Speaker 1:The other half of the church talks about brain science, right and left hand side of the brain, and basically their hypothesis is that we've been speaking to the left hand side of the brain way more than it. So joy, this is the biggest thing for me, joy, joy is the driver of everything, the joy of Jesus. It enters in the right side of the brain, that emotion of joy and that actually can change, heal the left-hand side of the brain over time. Christ community, it's not simple, it's long, it's messy, but we have to understand how our brains work more and we're always asking I'd love to get your take on this we're always asking two different questions who am I? Every single second we're actually asking who am I? And then what type of people are we? So there's the individual identity statements, but then it's the communal question what type of people are we?
Speaker 1:And if, in the church you've heard, we're the type of people who are perfect. We're the type of people who don't expose their flaws. We're the type of people who run and hide in shame. You know, pastors would never say that, but this is groups actually norm themselves based on hiding. We're the type of people who keep everything very surfaced. We're the type of people who have to know all the right answers in order to be known and loved by others.
Speaker 1:And here's my direct affront to that. That is not Jesus. That is frankly not Jesus, the one who fearfully and wonderfully created you, the one who stepped down into our broken reality, the one who smiles over you, the one who is your joy, regardless of what you do or what's been done to you. He cares for you more deeply than you can possibly imagine and he, alone in time, in community, based on confession, based on carrying us through because he does, based on the self-control and the self-responsibility that takes place in our story, he wants to meet us and remind us who we are and then really, what type of people we are. We're wounded healers. We're the broken. We are sinners who have been made saints by Christ. We're people who hold our story and our collective story and offer it up to Jesus, who makes it all make sense, and he's the one who knows all of us.
Speaker 1:So we speak to one another about who we are and I don't know to just kind of land that plane. I don't know to just kind of land that plane. I don't know that the story that the church has been telling about what type of people we are. We're a place. We're just like Jesus he came for the sick, not the well. I don't know if we've been telling that story as well as we will be, not to put shame on us, but not as well as we will be into the future. Any response to that? I know I said a lot, but just what's the Holy Spirit working on you, jeanine?
Speaker 2:So I want to say what do you, from the well of who you believe yourself to be internally either beloved of God or worthless makes the difference in what you project onto other people For sure, okay. So if you have a theology that tells you that you are worthless, that you were born evil, I mean we could exegete all of those verses. Okay, not going to do that today, but if, if, if. What you believe and if you, if you have trauma in your background and you had people who told you you were worthless, then it is very easy to confuse the internal voices that you have adopted as God's voice. And so then you are saying I am giving the word of God to you, when in reality you're giving your own self-loathing to everybody else.
Speaker 2:You have to believe that you are beloved of God in order to help your people to draw closer to God. Otherwise you're in the garden and you're running away from God because you're full of shame and your abusers told you you were worthless. I think one of the most difficult things to heal is a feeling of worthlessness, and I have worked over the last 10 years I have worked with. I mean, when I was a college professor, I saw that people didn't believe that they could succeed at school, that it was their feelings of worthlessness that made them believe that. And I've gotten, I've dragged so many people to graduation I'm just saying Okay.
Speaker 2:So because I'm like, yes, you are, I am not leaving you here. And so I have one. She's amazing. She was on the board with me at ATN. She got teacher of the year in a huge metropolitan school district. But I mean, I walked with her all the way to graduation because and now we understand she and I understand that it was her trauma.
Speaker 2:Okay, so when we are in church we have to be careful that we are not just preaching to confirm to people who have been abused that they're worthless. Your abuser said you were worthless, you believe you're worthless, and I'm going to stand here and tell you they're worthless. Your abuser said you were worthless, you believe you're worthless and I'm going to stand here and tell you we're worthless. And so I don't have.
Speaker 2:And that was one reason that I wrote, because once I started understanding this, I had such a hard time going to church because I was finally like. God created me. He created my body to survive and much of the impact that I'm having is because my body is in survival mode and I need to help my body heal and learn how to self-regulate so I can remain calm and actually learn and actually listen. And then I go to church and every song is about what a sin sinner I was and I'm like no, that does not create a worship experience and and joy. Okay, that's what I wanted to go back to. I want to go back to joy. The only way to experience joy is to have a regulated nervous system.
Speaker 1:True.
Speaker 2:Okay. So when you're out walking your dog and the sun's setting and you've left all the troubles behind and your dog is doing something cute they do other things, but we're not talking about that Okay, dog's doing something adorable and you just are, like all of a sudden you feel joy. You feel this joyful moment that is so hard for trauma survivors to experience. Because you're in that moment, your body is completely regulated, you are calm, you are and you can experience joy.
Speaker 2:A hypervigilant, hyper vigilant, traumatized, dysregulated body cannot feel joy, and so, and so, in worship and I'm getting ready to do worship this week on my sub stack, okay, so I thought it was funny because you mentioned that in particular, when you are in worship service and you're being told that you're unworthy, then there is no joy. You cannot experience joy, and joy comes from knowing that you're beloved, that God created you and that God, the body, is an amazing thing that helps you survive. The problem is, our bodies were created to survive the bear in the woods, and there are no bear in the woods for most of us, and so what happens is we don't have any way to get the trauma out of our body so that it can relax. And so anyway, now I went on a tangent.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, let's go deeper. What words of? Because we got folks that have carried trauma and others who are listening and they're like I don't really know. I mean, my family was healthy and I'm speaking as one and I'm speaking as one. I don't have any primary trauma indicators for me in my story. A healthy family, parents, you know, still married to this day. I've been married for 20 years. I've walked through, we've had some family struggles, to be sure, and some mental health struggles in my family and extended family. So that's why I'm very interested in this.
Speaker 1:But, just personally, it's really really easy for me to self-regulate, to get to joy and to kind of and I could be this is probably confession to say you know, it's as simple as why don't you just get up, get your water, work out, you know, move your body and get in your Bible? You know, I could just say those three. It's not simplistic, but like anytime you talk about your personal rhythms in the morning, like that really, really feeds me, it gets my brain going and that kind of thing. So I just help me as a pastor. Now I'm informed, right, but pretend I'm informed, right, but pretend I'm not. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:So I want to say a word about mourning.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I have. I have suffered with PTSD. Okay, ptsd flashbacks in the night can be visual or they can be emotional. And because a lot of my trauma occurred and because I repressed it all, I would experience all of the emotions of the moment of the trauma, but without any visual. And I would wake all of the emotions of the moment of the trauma, but without any visual, and I would wake. I wake up in the morning. Sometimes I don't know who I am, sometimes I'm coming out of a horror and I wake up like like somebody walked over my grave and morning, like meeting you at nine o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2:It's an accomplishment. Let me just say you're worth it. Okay, I just want to say you're worth it, but I normally don't schedule anything in the morning because sometimes it'll take me a good two hours to pull myself out of where I landed in my sleep. It's better, it's tons better since healing. So that's another one of those. What works for you doesn't mean that it works, and I think that the set of disciplines that we've decided are the ways to grow spiritually, are the things that work for somebody? Sure, and I think that, as a pastor, what I needed pastors to say is hey, if morning is a struggle for you, if you have a difficult morning, let's take the week and figure out when you feel best during the day.
Speaker 1:Love that.
Speaker 2:Let's figure out like kind of map it. You know, I'm feeling really good right now. I'm going to jot a note and that's a moment when I feel really good. What's happening in that moment, what part of the day is it? And then align your spiritual practice with what your body rhythm is, and that's kind of where I'm headed with Trauma and Abuse 2.0. Also, when you were talking about right and left brain left brain is sit and listened, okay. Right brain is how do I explain?
Speaker 2:One of my favorite things I've ever seen was I was attending a church for a while in Colorado Springs and and the fine arts pastor, who they had a pastor for the right side of the brain, okay, and, and she was the worship and fine arts pastor and she would sit to the side and paint a painting during the service and and as and it. It was the most because I could listen with my left brain but I could relax with my and it was just the most integrated right left brain worship experience I've ever had. And so I went to a church once where they had a fine arts kind of like a fine arts night, and people had all of these they were. We didn't even know. All we knew was that people came and sat in the pew and they had jobs during the week, right, and they would show up with their paintings they had done.
Speaker 2:I did a choral reading with everyone and we just had our right brain on display for an entire service. It was the most, it's, my favorite church service of my entire life because I actually felt like, because I'm so, I am I. I survived with my left side of my brain and I diminished the right side of my brain because that that was emotional and I needed to get rid of that and so, um, so at. But but when, when I could, when I could express it, I realized that that I'm doing church is not a good fit for me. It just isn't I. I also am.
Speaker 1:I have back problems sure sitting that long is tough well, it's not the sitting.
Speaker 2:It's like everybody wants me to stand up all the time let's stay seated, and here's the thing about this that's so interesting is that you have a muscle, it's your psoas muscle, and it wraps from your middle back all the way around and connects in your and if you do sports, you know the psoas, okay. So, and, and uh, it is always, uh, it is your fight flight muscle, so it is activated when you're traumatized because you got to get out of there, all right, and, and I store a lot of my trauma in it and a lot of a lot of people who have lower back pain, it's actually their psoas. And so, um, when I went for massage there, she's the massage therapist said oh my gosh, your psoas on your right side is just huge. It's pulling you sideways and it it keeps you off balance. And and when I have to stand in church for long periods of time, I just want to cry, especially if the, especially I can't wear heels and if the auditorium is slanted it, it, it.
Speaker 2:it knocks it like, kicks that in and uh, and so see how interesting it is. It's just absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1:Well, go ahead.
Speaker 2:We need to listen to people.
Speaker 1:We do.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many worship pastors I've said. I noticed at the Olympics that they kept saying if you are able, if you are able to stand, please stand for the flag, whatever it was, or the anthem.
Speaker 1:We say the same.
Speaker 2:If you are able. And I kept going to worship pastors and saying could you please just say if you are able? That's all that I need you to say, because then I don't look like I'm not worshiping, that I'm not, I can't worship, on my back hurts, I can't feel it.
Speaker 1:Right Shout out to our yeah, yeah, we say that. We say that phrase now every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you're, if you're able, because some people on the other side of the extreme like it's not. It's not a worship set, unless I'm standing Right, it's just, we're so funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and either they're there. They connect suffering with worship.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or their backs, don't hurt. Okay, one of the two.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. I uh, when I preach four times on a on a Sunday in our main campus which is a physical thing to be sure, right, and I get to the last service and our worship, our worship pastor gets up and he goes. Yeah, we're all said, and I know, and I know this, our worship, our worship pastor, gets up and he goes. Yeah, we're all said and I know, and I know this, we're going to have two or three songs. I literally Janine go. No, I'm not going to stand, I'm not. I've been standing this whole morning. I got to sit right now, but people look at me like man pastor. I don't know how they look at me, but in the back of my mind I even have that shame indicator. Like people think I'm less of a Jesus guy because I'm not standing Anything more there.
Speaker 2:Denise, what we do and see you do that to yourself.
Speaker 1:Right, right Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do that to ourselves. We feel less than we feel like we're not living up to that expectation. We feel like that, you know, and I get that because every time I'm sitting when everybody else is standing, you know I'm like, oh, they probably think that I'm you know, whatever. And the thing is is you cannot. I did a whole sub stack on.
Speaker 2:I thought I knew what everybody was thinking, you know and so one day I told the therapist I know that you're probably really frustrated with me right now and she was like Janine, you do not know what's in my head. And no, I am not frustrated with you and I went oh my gosh, I walk around believing that I know what's in people's heads all the time, you know. So, yeah, there, you did it. I saw yourself, though I did.
Speaker 1:I did. So the cause? It's the second question. What type of people are we here? We're the type of people that stand and we're told to stand, we're called to do the things that we're supposed to do, and I think it's just. It really damages our walk with the Lord. Whether we've been traumatized or not, we rest in our identity, our rest in our identity in Jesus. And then we're the type of people that spread grace liberally, that hold each other's stories with love and care and concern. We're the type of people that make time to listen. We're the type of people that put the best construction on whatever someone else is doing. That doesn't look like the normal thing we do, because they've got a different story than I do and the Lord wants to teach me something about himself in caring for them, learning from them.
Speaker 1:So maybe final question Janine, you've been so generous and thank you for waking up early, by the way, to be on this, because my green zone is early, early morning.
Speaker 1:After you get up, I got three kids and so we're up like super early right now, getting them all off to high school and uh, and then the the nights are late. I come, I come back tonight after a full day of of doing our church stuff, meetings and whatnot. I coach high school football, uh, which helps me get out in the community, coaching it with my son who's a sophomore, and then, and then flipping the script and getting right back up early at five o'clock uh, tomorrow and it just kind of says, like am I always going to be doing that, janine? No, that's not always going to be my rhythm, it's this rhythm right now. So final question, and you've given a little bit here, but what final words of wisdom would you have for church leaders looking to set up a space where people can come all different types of people can come, and those that have experienced trauma will feel welcome, loved, seen and cared for in their local church.
Speaker 2:Janine, one of the things that I truly, truly, truly, deep in my heart, believed, because the church as a child was supportive to me. They made a lot of. I mean, there was abuse Okay, that's over there and there were mistakes that people made. I self-disclosed once and was told that if I asked for forgiveness, jesus would save me. It was an epic failure, let me just say. And so there are mistakes that people make, but as a whole, I really do believe that the church is a place where, if we would understand how trauma impacts people, we could become the place where people could come and feel safe and and on it.
Speaker 2:I talk to survivors every day. They email me there, I, that's my whole world and they, for the most part, do not feel safe in church, and so I and I. That makes me sad, and so I and I. That makes me sad, um, and that that motivates me to do, to get up this morning and have this conversation, because I don't believe it needs to be that way and the only thing that I've ever seen that changes, because what what a survivor does not want is to be judged.
Speaker 1:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely the most deadly. Deadly thing is that, no matter how dysfunctional we are in any particular moment, we do not want someone to judge us, because that only piles shame. The assumption that if our life is dysfunctional it's because of sin was not true in my case and it is not true in most survivors' cases, even though they sometimes will make choices that are not good choices. I understand that. So I think that and at the end of the book I list five ways that the church can become trauma responsive and, uh and the you know, placing relationships first, unconditionally receiving a story. I have a whole section on can you listen to a story and not try to fix it or call the person to repentance, to just simply accept the story.
Speaker 2:Um, a trauma responsive ministry teaches about trauma. You have to know it deeply, and so, with the Attachment and Trauma Network, we just launched a certification, which is we do a lot with schools, but this is not school-based, it's for anyone, and I participated in developing it because I wanted to be able to offer it to churches, to for church staff, because it goes into the nuts and bolts, the neuroscience of understanding, and so, um, so I can provide the link to that for you with the notes and um and it. It honors healing. So when I got, I spent all this time walking with God and healing and when I got to the end of it I didn't feel like I had done anything spiritual, when in reality my entire healing process was a spiritual journey. And so somehow going to therapy is over here and going to church is spiritual and in reality I came closer to God through therapy than anything that ever happened to me in church. And I need to not separate those two. And a lot of people leave the church because their journey of healing therapeutically is not honored.
Speaker 2:And a trauma responsive ministry is compassion driven and that is what trauma, being trauma informed does is to help you be compassionate. When you, when you're able to say um flip from saying what is wrong with you to what happened to you, that that is the flip that needs to happen in the church is to say, oh my gosh, what happened to you? What I see are struggling. What happened? What happened to you? What I see? You're struggling, what happened, what is it? What is it? Can I be a safe person for you? And maybe you're not. You're going to have to prove yourself right, that you actually are a safe person to share that with, and so that would be my final word.
Speaker 1:I love that, janine. This has been extraordinary. Our church is actually doing and maybe we'll have to stay connected in this because I don't know if churches have ever done a series based on trauma in the pews we're putting a four-week sermon series together, starting in January, based on your work Very exciting. If anybody wants to get that, they can reach out to me. We're not a perfect place but Christ Greenfield, the church I'm blessed to pastor.
Speaker 1:We have cares ministry that is on overdrive right now with mental health, divorce care, cancer companions, grief share all of these different types of groups with all sorts of traumas, led by really, really trauma informed leaders who are making a serious impact. The the, the one of the greatest evangelical opportunities for us is is reaching people. We just had a handful of folks that worshiped with us yesterday for the first time praise be to God who have been going, developing relationships through our grief share ministry and they finally felt safe enough to come and I got to follow up with them. I pray. They felt the joy of Jesus in a community who would receive them with their grief and their trauma. So your work it's kind of wild. Your work has a ripple impact in like a pebble in a pond, it moves out and it touches people, and that's the work of the Holy Spirit, isn't it, janine? It's humbling, isn't it?
Speaker 2:To know that you're working in that way. I'm doing skills right now and anything I can do to support that. In January, show up on video, answer questions, anything I can do to support you in that I'm in the game with you.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it. We will be reaching out.
Speaker 2:It does. And one of the very first months of therapy I was just travailing, it was just not. It was so hard, so incredibly hard, to open up and share my story and unearth it. And, and God said your story will not be wasted. And so when I hear that this is happening, that's just God's answer, that God keeps his promises. God promised that my story would not be wasted and you are proving that to be true. So, thank you, I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 1:Praise be to God. If people want to connect with you, how can they do so, janine it?
Speaker 2:so much Praise. Be to God. If people want to connect with you, how can they do so? Janine, it was so funny, so I actually I trauma the Arizona Trauma Institute. I did an all-day seminar for them and it's available at their website and it's a four-part, I want to say, very inexpensive. It was done for ministry leaders, but in the middle of it I said done for ministry leaders.
Speaker 1:But in the middle of it I said you can just giggle my name. Well, we've giggled some. Today there is power in giggling Google.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's difficult to spell. But, honestly, I have an author page on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm on um, I'm in at LinkedIn, I have, uh, I have, I'm on Substack and I haven't come up with a clever name for my Substack, so it's just my name at this point and uh, and so I'm, I'm, it's very easy. I have a website that's just Janineorg and there's a contact page. I would love to hear from anyone that is listening to this and and wants to ask me a question or say anything. Just you know are people out there.
Speaker 2:Are they alive anyway? But you can contact me through my website, so it's pretty easy to get and I always answer always Well you did and Janine is J-A-N-Y-N-Eorg.
Speaker 1:That may be one of the easiest places. I'm going to start following you on Substack. And you're a gift to me, to the body of Christ. I pray, listener, that whether you're a pastor, whether you're someone who's experienced trauma or just wants to be there as a loving brother or sister in Christ to care for one another, to be, as we've said, a wounded healer, one who is faithful to sit with, cry with, empathize with, but then hold dreams. This is what I'm taking Hold the dream of others that, through the pain and struggle others can be, will be blessed. You're a living testimony to the power and work of God in and through the struggle.
Speaker 1:This side of eternity and here's the beautiful thing, Janine there is going to come a day when trauma, suffering, loss and tears are no more. We're the followers of the crucified and risen one who gave us his spirit and then promised to return Revelation 21,. I saw a new city coming out of heaven, like a bride ordained for her husband, and then I heard sitting on the throne behold, I'm making all things new. So, where our brains have been impacted, we can't even imagine what God has in store for us when we see Jesus face-to-face and experience life in community, and trauma is no more, Tears are no more. It's going to be perfect to be fully human with Christ, others, self and the rest of creation. I can't wait for that day. Janine, you're a gift to me. It's an honor to have spent this time with you and we'll be in touch very, very soon.
Speaker 1:This is the American Reformation Podcast. Sharing is caring, Like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in these conversations and I pray this helped you on your journey with Jesus. We'll see you next week on American Reformation. Thanks, Janine, Thanks.