How Does God Heal Complex Trauma?

EP 142 | How Does God Heal Complex Trauma?

[00:00:00] INTRODUCTION

“You, right here, right now, you are who I love. And I love you completely.” 

And this went on for a couple of years, like regularly. When I was in Adoration, for example, and I'll be, you know, doing my whole spiel about, “I'm not good enough, I'm not loving enough”, and I'll hear this message.

[00:00:18] And this message just couldn't land. It couldn't land in me. I would hear it. I would believe - I believe that it was God who was saying it, but I couldn't receive it.

- - - -

[00:00:32] Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.

[00:01:04] CONTEXT OF VIDEO
 
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Becoming Me podcast. So, someone left a really interesting, a really good question, in the comments section of one of my recent videos. And I thought that that question was so good that I really should do a video to explore what this person was asking. 

[00:01:26] So, a recent video that I did on how healing of complex trauma transforms our image of God really received a lot of views and a lot of comments and sharings and questions. It's been incredible, really, reading the comments that you guys have been leaving on this particular video. 

[00:01:47] I honestly had no idea that there were so many of you, or so many people, who were interested in that intersection between healing of complex trauma in our lives and how that connects with our relationship with God. And I've been pondering that, and I suppose it makes sense because usually these are very different fields or different areas that are normally categorised into different sections, right? Like with relationship with God into faith or religion, and complex trauma into maybe in psychology and therapy. And while there are resources out there, really good resources out there, that speak in the context where these two things intersect, like trauma and relationship with God, I suppose that, well, maybe a lot of you don't yet know what those resources are and maybe you stumbled on my video and that's why you responded the way that you did, like with so much delight and gratitude.

[00:02:56] It was really very overwhelming for me and has given me a lot to ponder regarding even the direction that I'm called to take in the evolution of, I guess, the content that I'm creating, okay. Because my content evolves together with my own journey. It evolves with me. So anyway, today's conversation is going to be around a question that someone left on that video that I did about how healing of complex trauma transforms our image of God.

[00:03:28] VIEWER'S QUESTION

So this was the question:

“Can healing of complex trauma happen through a personal encounter with God where He reveals His true nature to us?”

[00:03:41] So I think in that video that I did, uh, well, I covered quite a bit of ground in terms of like, how particular kinds of complex trauma can distort our image of God, and how healing of trauma changes our image of God.

[00:03:59] I didn't really talk about how that healing happens or how healing of complex trauma happens and where God comes into it. So this question, I think it's, is meant to address that gap or, what it is, what it was, that I didn't address in that first video. And I just thought this was such an excellent question and one that requires some nuance in responding to that I had responded that I will create a, you know, a video to talk about this question and so this is that video. I hope if you're the person who asked this question that you don't miss this video.

[00:04:37] So, I want to frame, kind of like, that question into a larger topic, which is kind of like, “how does God heal complex trauma? Or where does God fit in, in the healing of our complex trauma?”. Speaking as a person of faith, someone with a relationship with God, someone with a growing relationship with God. When we enter into even the, you know, the healing journey, the integration journey, there is always this question at the back of my mind, or the back of our minds: “Where is God in this?”

[00:05:18] Right? Because if God is in all things, how is God present in the healing of my complex trauma? So we're gonna take a bit of, um, look at how I would respond to this question, right?

[00:05:33] PRE-RESPONSE NOTES ON INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE AND COMPLEX TRAUMA

So again, I want to remind you, just a couple of notes — 

Whenever I share on, you know, on this medium, the first thing to remember is always that it is the perspective, or it's coming from the perspective, of the interior integration journey. Okay, so it's always from the perspective of someone on this journey, trying to heal, become more whole, you know, trying to grow closer to God in that process, becoming more human, more alive. So it never totally prioritises any particular subject. So my videos are often very interdisciplinary because when you are coming from that perspective of lived experience, well, you can't categorise our lived experience into any one box, right? So it's kind of like where everything connects. So my sharings always come from this perspective of the interior integration journey, and it's coming from my personal experience.

[00:06:32] So in no way, am I suggesting that this is the only way things can happen. I'm just sharing what I have experienced, what I have learned, what has been helpful to me. And to the extent that this is helpful to you or it illuminates something for you, that's great. But if it confuses you or it doesn't help you at all, please always, always feel at complete liberty to discard or just, you know, just ignore what doesn't help you, alright?

[00:07:01] So the second thing to note before I really launch into today's conversation is that when we speak about complex trauma and the healing of complex trauma, we are thinking about the areas that need healing right. 

[00:07:14] And, those areas would include first, the sense of self. So survivors of complex trauma often, we don't have that sense of self. We don't know who we are. So that's something that needs healing, right? 

[00:07:26] We often will need healing in the area of emotional regulation because survivors of complex trauma, well, we, we, often swing between just being dissociated and numbing out, you know, uh, in, in flight, right? Whether it's with business or addictions or any number of things. Or, we will experience often very overwhelming emotions that we feel like we have no control over, that we have no mastery, or no.. 

[00:07:56] The right word really in this, situation, in this case, it would be regulation, right? It's not so much that we control our emotions, uh, as if they are something apart from us. But if we had a good relationship with our emotions, if we had developed the ability to regulate our emotions, then feelings wouldn't be so scary to us. But for many complex trauma survivors, one of the consequences of that trauma is that we never learned to develop that ability to regulate our emotions because we're disconnected from ourselves. That was probably never modelled to us, right? So that's another area that needs healing. 

[00:08:34] And then thirdly, we also need healing in our ability to develop securely attached relationships, like mature, healthy, authentic relationships, right. And so what that makes sense is connected with the sense of self, because if we don't have a sense of self and we don't know how to regulate our emotions, we often find ourselves powerless and unable to develop mature, authentic, secure relationships with anyone. Whether it's with God, with other people, or even with ourselves. Oh, I want to say in some sense, maybe especially with ourselves.

[00:09:12] SHORT RESPONSE: ONE DIMENSION OF HEALING

So back to that question, right. 

“Can healing of complex trauma happen through a personal encounter with God where He reveals His true nature to us?”

[00:09:24] Now I'm going to understand this question as asking, okay, so I'm going to kind of like say this is what I hear for this question, right:

Can God heal our complex trauma through like direct, a direct unmediated, you know, encounter with Him, like between us and Him, right? Where He reveals His true nature, which is the loving God, the merciful God, right? Could God heal our complex trauma that way? Right? 

[00:09:56] The short answer to this question, for me, would be: 

Yes, God definitely can heal complex trauma through personal encounters with us that way, like through prayer or mystical experiences, spiritual experiences, where we, we encounter God in a very direct and unmediated way, and we feel like we see something new about who He is that is different from the image of God that we had.

[00:10:24] And yet while that is true, and yet that also still only addresses one aspect, one dimension of our healing, our healing from complex trauma. So this is where it gets a little bit more nuanced, or, a lot more nuanced, right?

[00:10:40] EXTENDED RESPONSE: OTHER DIMENSIONS OF HEALING

There are many facets to this. And I wanted to share this verse that came to mind when I, when I looked at this question, when I was thinking about a question that was asked, and this is from the first letter of St. John, Chapter 4, Verse 20.

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.” - Jn 4:20

[00:11:11] Now, to be very honest, I used to struggle with this verse. The reason being that my human relationships were so broken, so unsatisfactory, and so problematic often, right? That it was so just depressing for me to think that if I cannot love my brother and sister, like another human person, a neighbour, that I'll be lying if I said I love God. Because in my particular journey, God was or at least with the person of Jesus, right, when I was a teenager, was kind of like the first safer relationship that I had. It was safer than any other human relationships I had, right? 

[00:12:03] So I just want to say in the context of lived experience, you know, that's very possible. Some of us may find that even if our relationship with God is distorted somehow, that that still may be, for some of us, a better or safer relationship in some ways, than the human relationships that we have. Okay, because like I said earlier, if we are survivors of complex trauma, we will struggle to have healthy relationships, right? 

[00:12:34] So it isn't that my relationship with God was very healthy. Like I began to realise much later on that it was also still very insecure. But even with that insecurity, my relationship with God was already a much bigger source of hope and grace and love compared to many of the other relationships that I had in my life. Okay. But still there is a truth that is being reflected in this verse. And this is why I wanted to share this verse. 

[00:13:08] In that, the fullness of our relationship with God also cannot happen apart from our relationship with other people, and apart from our relationship with ourselves, right? So while in one sense it is possible to distinguish between relationship with God, relationship with other people, and relationship with ourselves, yet, all of these relationships, they are interconnected, right?

[00:13:36] So complex trauma impacts all of them. 
It impacts our relationship with God. 
It impacts our relationship with ourselves. 
It impacts our relationship, our relationships with our neighbours, with other people, with creation, with everything else actually. 

[00:13:53] And all these three kinds of relationships, they also influence one another. So if we want to talk about real healing of complex trauma, we need to consider all three kinds of relationships, right? 

[00:14:10] Healing would not be complete or really wouldn't be holistically addressed if we only think of one or two of these relationships, okay? So that's something I want to put out there for us to remember, and remember also what healing is.

[00:14:31] WHAT HEALING IS

So the definition of healing that I used in an earlier video is that healing happens when we experience authentic love and attunement.

Okay. Because it is precisely the lack of love and the lack of attunement that often causes us to experience trauma. That isolation and loneliness of not being seen, not being heard, in our younger days, in our childhood and youth especially, that prevented us from developing a sense of self, right? That prevented us from maturing in our ability to regulate our emotions. And that prevented us from learning how to actually really connect with someone outside of us, outside of ourselves. Right.

[00:15:15] So when we experience authentic love and attunement, then that kind of rewrites the story in our nervous system, right? Because trauma has a real imprint in our bodies. It's not just an emotional thing. There is actually a physical, biological impact in our bodies. That's another point that it's so, was so new to me. 

[00:15:37] And I think for a lot of us, for whom faith, religion, and spirituality has been a very big part of our upbringing in our lives, this is something that takes us a bit of time to wrap our heads around. That even that spirituality, our relationship with God, there is actually a physical, biological dimension of that in our bodies. Okay. And that's just because that's the way God created us in being human. It just being, you know, one of this is something that I think we share with other animals, our nervous system, right? A lot of our biology is shared with other animals. But as human, who are created really with a capacity to love and be loved for whom relationality is such a big part of our being. That is something that does not exist apart from our nervous systems and our bodies. And when we are too used to just thinking about love in spiritual terms, because we know love is so important, right, in our, in our faith, what we miss out on is that we can't love if we don't have that physical, biological healing in our bodies.

[00:16:59] When trauma has impacted us, there is a real, there is something like material that has been altered in our bodies that needs to be addressed in order for us to actually restore our capacity to be in relationship, right? So authentic love has a physical impact in our bodies, too. And healing of complex trauma will always have that dimension, that material dimension, of something that heals our nervous system.

[00:17:33] HEALING THROUGH DIRECT ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD

So how does God heal my complex trauma?

The first way would be through direct, unmediated encounters with God. Okay so for example, like in prayer, maybe you have this overwhelming sense of God's presence, of love, of being loved by God, or in Ignatian contemplation. Through the contemplation of scriptures, you have a very powerful encounter with Christ in the scriptures and gospels. And, and that reveals something to you about God that is healing in your relationship with God, for example.

[00:18:11] So these are like, what I would call like mystical experiences, right? They are direct, unmediated, it doesn't go through anybody else. It's just, you know, in a sense, it's just you and God. And that, yes, that has been a part of my experiences of healing in my trauma. Right. 

But that's just one of them, and God doesn't just use that.

[00:18:35] HEALING THROUGH SAFE RELATIONSHIPS WITH CREATION

Another way that God has been healing me in my trauma is through safe relationships with other creatures. Okay. So here I didn't even just put other humans, because if you've watched some of my earlier videos or listened to my earlier episodes, you know that nature has been also a source of healing for me. And in particular, Miko - who is my um, it's a little toy poodle that we adopted, a rescue dog that was adopted - that she has been not just a companion but an incredible model actually, of, of trust, of safety and, you know, of unconditional love for me.

[00:19:19] And that relationship with my dog has also been a source of healing for me. And God is present, very, very present in that relationship I have with my dog. Because, so often in prayer as well, or even in that moment when I'm spending time with my dog, whether it's a positive experience or a negative experience, for example, when she's ill and now that she's really old, uh, she kind of like gets unwell a bit more often.. but through all these experiences with my dog, I often glean some new truth, new insight about attunement, about love, even in my own experience of attuning to her and recognizing or experiencing how she receives my attunement to her. Something about that heals my nervous system and something about that always reveals God's face to me.

[00:20:12] You know, it's like any experience of genuine love will remind me that this is God, right? And this is God, more than all the broken experiences I had in my dysfunctional relationships growing up, for example. That that which I used to think reflected God because that's what I knew of relationships, that's actually not true. As in, that's not really who God is. Those are like very broken, distorted reflections of who God is and what love is. And these safe, authentic relationships, experiences of attunement, right, including with my dog or with my husband, who is the other most central anchor of a safe, secure relationship in my life. Not perfect, but safe and secure and growing in security has been that relationship I had with my husband. These relationships, these safe relationships with other creatures, have been a huge source of healing of my body. Right so, and this is where that verse I shared earlier really makes sense to me.

[00:21:27] Loving an invisible God is possible and it's not that it's not real. Even those, what I call like mystical experiences in prayer with God does have an impact in my body as well. But there's something somehow that is reached only through relationships with other creatures. And if you ask me I just believe that God chooses to make it that way okay, that this is it's part of His design, not just for us but for creation, for the cosmos, this interrelatedness. 

[00:22:03] So because suffering and trauma comes through the interrelatedness, through broken relationships, with others. Healing also needs to happen through the interconnectedness and interrelationship with other creatures. So there's this very important dimension of healing that happens through safe relationships with other creatures.

[00:22:24] HEALING THE RELATIONSHIP WITH ONESELF

And the third way that I would say, healing happens or healing of complex trauma happens is through God helping me heal my relationship with myself. And really that, okay, so that's the point that I would like to spend a little bit more time talking about in this video. Because I think when we, when we are thinking of how our image of God needs healing, we often think that it's just about our relationship with God. 

[00:23:07] What we often miss out is that in order for that relationship with God to actually be intimate, for us to even be able to receive God's love for us, our relationship with ourself needs to be in place. And without that, for some reason, we just cannot experience, really experience in its fullness, God's presence to us. 

[00:23:38] So why is it that that relationship with God requires us to have an intact relationship with ourself? Let me share with you a couple of examples, okay, in my own experience and what I've understood from that about the importance of my relationship with myself.

[00:24:02] IMPACT OF COMPLEX TRAUMA ON THE RELATIONSHIP WITH SELF, PRAYER, AND TRUST

So I think one question that gets asked a lot, like I was asked a lot when I was in ministry in the parish by a lot of young people, or even not so young people.. would be: How do I know that what I'm experiencing, let's say in prayer, if I feel like God is saying something to me, how do I know it's God and it's not me, right? How do I know I'm not just imagining things? How do I know, um, if it's trustworthy? 

[00:24:32] So I just want to say the fact that we ask that question or that we frame that question that particular way already reflects the lack of trust that we have in what could come from ourselves.

[00:24:46] Okay, think about it for a moment. When we ask, “how do I know this is really God speaking to me and that I'm not just imagining things, or that it's not just my thoughts”, right, really this is a question about discernment, right? Like and, it's valid. It's valid, of course. Whatever experience we have still needs to be processed in discernment. Even genuine, like mystical prayer experiences, still need to be discerned, need to be kind of like pondered further, and, broken open further, in, together with the Lord.

[00:25:22]  But what I'm saying is that I think a lot of us, we assume right off the cuff that if this insight or inspiration or vision, you know, whatever that comes to me in prayer, if it's coming from me, then it's not trustworthy. “God can't be speaking to me through that.” And that if it is God, there is almost like this presupposition, it's very subtle, okay, and maybe very, very subtle, that “if it's an experience from God, if it's really God, then it has to be something outside of me, apart from me, separate from me, right, because God is other.”

[00:26:03] And He is. I mean, God is not, you know, God is distinct from us. But at the same time, God is very much within us, right? So this is getting into tricky territory in a sense like it's mystery and it's really hard to use language to experience this. There are a lot of paradoxes and mysteries when we come, when it comes to talking about relationship with God. 

[00:26:26] Okay. So God is really, really, I mean, He transcends us. He's very transcendent, He's beyond us, but He's also very immanent and He is within us. And when, and when God draws close to us, how, how can He relate to us except through the person, the body, the being that He has given us through our thoughts, right? But also through our imaginations, through our emotions, through our physical sensations. All of that is through all those aspects of us that God comes close to us and impresses Himself upon us and speaks to us.

[00:27:05] So when we have complex trauma, remember one of the impacts, one of the results or the consequences of that is that we don't have a sense of self. And most of us, I'll say all of us, complex trauma survivors have very low trust in ourselves. 

[00:27:19] So it's like by default, we tend to doubt what we think, or what we intuit, or we really doubt our intuitions, right, before we heal. It's like we may have a gut feeling, we may have a sense of something, and it's almost like immediately it might be suppressed and go like, you know, uh, and we try to logic ourselves out, right? So in complex trauma survivors, we often have this separation between our intellect and our nervous system.

[00:27:52] Those of you who may be learning a bit more about like, the nervous system, about polyvagal theory, you may have heard that, you know, our brains, like our, the brain in our head, and senses, is connected through the nervous system to our gut, through our hearts, our lungs, our gut. And that our gut actually sends signals up to the brain. Right, so in a sense, you can say the whole brain isn't just the brain in our head, it's our whole nervous system. Right. 

[00:28:22] So when it comes to knowing things, it cannot just be knowing with our intellect or the brain in our head, so to speak. It requires our whole body and an attunement with our whole body. And for those of us who are complex trauma survivors, usually that is broken, that relationship is broken. And that's a big part, a big reason, a big part of the reason why we feel like we're not at home to ourselves. Okay, we don't have that inner connection within ourselves.

[00:28:56] Now that, so that's an issue, because even when we have, let's say, powerful encounters with God who tries to reveal Himself to us or He communicates Himself to us, we will experience that it's very.. It doesn't land

[00:29:16] HOW A BROKEN RELATIONSHIP WITH SELF IMPACTS RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Okay, so one example would be.. For me, for years and years and years, decades, really, I have this perfectionism because I'm never good enough. And so when it comes to pursuing holiness, like it comes to my faith. I always felt like I need to be striving to be holier, to be more loving, more, more, more. I need to always be more. I’m never enough. Right? And there's so much pain that comes from that because I'm always evaluating and judging myself in my interactions with other people, uh, in my prayer life, in my disciplines, et cetera, And I'm always falling short. 

[00:29:56] So apart from going to Confession, in my prayers I'm always you know bringing this pain to God, like, “I'm so sorry. I feel like, you know, I wish I was better. I wish I was more loving. I'm so sorry I can't be more loving. You love me so much, Lord. Why is it that I can't love you back? Why is it that I can't show my love for you through loving others?” I'm always, you know, criticising myself in prayer with God. Like, I'm criticising myself to Him. I'm apologising to Him constantly about how I'm not good enough.

[00:30:30] And there's often this response that would come back that I, I would hear in prayer and I did believe was from God, right? And there was this period in my life where even for a couple of years, this message will keep coming back. And that is, I would feel God saying to me, “Ann, you do realise that I love you completely and perfectly as you are now, right now, and not a future, more ideal, more perfect, more holy version of you, right?”

[00:30:58] What He's saying to me is, “It is the You now, Ann, right at this moment, with all your imperfections and limitations and whatever it is that you think about yourself, this is the You that I love perfectly. I don't love a future, better version of you more than I love you now. Because that's impossible, because that future, there, there is no future, more idealised version of You. You, right here, right now, you are who I love. And I love You completely.”

[00:31:33] And this went on for a couple of years, like regularly. When I was in Adoration, for example, and I'll be, you know, doing my whole spiel about I'm not good enough, I'm not loving enough, and I'll hear this message. And this message just couldn't land. It couldn't land in me. I would hear it. I would believe, I believe that it was God who was saying it, but I couldn't receive it. It's like, it didn't really make any difference to me. The next day and the next day, and the next day, I would still be beating myself up, right, about not being good enough.

[00:32:07] And it was only later on, you know, many things that shifted, and I realised what was missing was something apart from my relationship with God. It was I didn't have a relationship with myself.

[00:32:23] Now, my entire podcast, Becoming Me, is about that journey of me discovering that I didn't have a relationship with myself. That I needed to have a relationship with myself, that God was trying to show me that without a relationship with myself, I also couldn't have a closer and more intimate relationship with Him. Because even when, even while He was trying to reveal to me who He was, even while He was trying to, to love me, I couldn't receive that love. 

[00:32:52] So the problem wasn't that He wasn't loving me. The problem was I didn't know how to let Him love me. Something in me, you could say like in the apparatus, in the apparatus that is my being, something is broken, right? That something that is needed for me to really be able to receive love, to relish in it, to bask in, in God's love was missing, was broken. So even though there were real, genuine experiences of God's love, and I wouldn't say I didn't receive anything at all, I did, but it's like so much of it was blocked out, right? 

[00:33:31] Imagine, I don't know, imagine, you know, you're trying to pour water into a glass, right. But there is like a, there's like a, there's like a lid covering half the glass. I mean, you could be pouring, you know, a huge flask of water into that glass, and most of the water would not land in that glass because maybe it would be pouring everywhere else. And that was kind of the way it was when it came to my relationship with God.

[00:33:59] So that's when I began to realise that In order to have this relationship with God, I needed to address the broken relationship I had with myself. And that's where so much of the literature on trauma is so helpful because it tells us about that interior or internal relationship we have within ourself, right? Whether it's about our inner child being wounded and reparenting our inner child or how our parts work, for example, like Internal Family Systems, understanding that we have been fragmented.

[00:34:36] Our sense of self is fragmented and there's no harmony. And we just have no sense of that true self. What we often experience are different parts of ourselves that have taken over our lives in order to try and keep us safe because of our experiences of dysfunction and toxicity in our relationships, in our family of origin or our communities, for example. Many different, you know, parts of our internal self have broken off and fragmented and tried to help, but in that process, we just, we don't have something to stand on. We don't know who the real Me is.

So in restoring that, God will restore our sense of self.

[00:35:25] GOD'S PRESENCE, AND INTERCONNECTEDNESS IN THE DIMENSIONS OF HEALING

But you see, when it comes to that relationship with our Self, it's not something that can be healed without our real participation. I'll say even our relationship with God can't really be healed without our participation. 

[00:35:39] But when it comes to our relationship within ourself or with ourselves, in a very special, distinct way, there is a lot that has to happen, you could say, with God, kind of, like, in the background. He's there. God is there. None of, none of any of this healing of complex trauma, uh, if you ask me, can happen without God's presence and without His grace, right?

[00:36:01] But when we are talking about our relationship with God, like in spirituality, God is in the forefront, right? He's like the main focus. 

[00:36:10] But when we are talking about our relationship with ourselves and repairing that relationship, God is not the main focus. He doesn't want to be the main focus when it comes to this dimension of healing. It's like He's in the background, He's facilitating this process. 

[00:36:26] It's almost like we toggle between, we toggle between learning about love through our encounters with Him, through our encounters with other creatures, like I mentioned earlier, through safe relationships with others. And all that also informs us as we rebuild our relationship with ourselves.

[00:36:47] But when you look at it from another perspective, we have to rebuild this relationship with ourselves before we can go further in intimacy with God and with other creatures. So that's what I mean by all three kinds of relationships are really interlinked and they influence one another. It’s really quite complex, right? 

[00:37:12] And, and this is a huge reason why when we are looking for resources for healing, it can often feel like, yeah, it, you know, it helps, but then it helps in one area, but it feels like a lot of stuff is still missing, right? 

[00:37:29] Like if you go with spirituality, spirituality, it heals somewhat, but it's not enough. If you just go with like, uh, psychology and counselling and therapy, and it's that relationship with our bodies, with our nervous system, with ourselves internally, is very helpful, but that, we also feel like something's missing, like where, where's God in this, right? And if we have really good healthy relationships with others and we feel loved there, but we are not able to make that connection with our relationship with ourselves, or with our relationship with God, it also will feel like something's missing because we..

[00:38:05] I think to be fully human and to be really alive - It is to really be able to love and be loved in all these three dimensions. Which is why the, the two greatest commandments that Jesus says, you know, we're meant to, to obey. I mean, like all the laws and commandments can be summarised in the two greatest commandments, which is to love God, right, with all our strength, all our mind, with everything that we have, to love God and then to love our neighbour as ourself. And the Self is important as well, somehow in these three kinds of relationships together, we become whole and we learn to give of ourselves more wholly as well. Like wholly, as in w-h-o-l-l-y. More wholly.

[00:38:52] RESPONSE SUMMARY
 
So if we go back to the question that started this episode, 
“Does God or can God heal our complex trauma through personal encounters with Him where He reveals like, His real nature, His true nature?”

[00:39:07] Yes, that is a part of it. But, it's not the only part of it because God also wants to heal our trauma, complex trauma, through our relationship with other creatures, and through our relationship with ourselves, through healing in all those dimensions.

[00:39:24] CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
 
So I hope that has given you some new insight, new things to ponder, there may be more questions that you have and that's good. I think having more questions is always good. As long as we don't get obsessed with finding the answers right now. So this journey, this interior integration journey, it's just, it's so, it's so rich and so deep and so complex. 

[00:39:49] I really want to remind you and urge you all who are on this journey to be very patient with yourself, to be patient with God. There is so much that we can't make happen in this journey. You know, a big part of making this journey is learning to wait in an active way and then to begin to identify where our agency is and rediscover our agency, where we have choice and, and growing in that freedom to take action for ourselves in this journey. But then at the same time to wait when the ball's not in our court and we just sometimes just have to wait for things to happen, for things to evolve, for situations to change. It's just really rich this whole this whole journey.

[00:40:40] PODCAST PLANS AND UPDATES

So that's it for today's video, today's conversation. And I just want to say that this is also the last planned video I have for 2024. And if you're listening to this episode on the Becoming Me podcast, this is also the last episode for Season 9. Again, I'll be taking a break as I usually do at the end of the year and this break is also going to be a little bit more different because I happen to be in a season of discernment, deeper discernment.

[00:41:11] A lot of things seem to be happening. New connections are being made. Consolidation is being made. I feel like now, it's been four years since I started the Becoming Me podcast. I've grown in these last four years and integrated a lot of new things into my understanding, into my experience in these four years. And in the most recent couple of months, through different signs, including the responses that I've been receiving from those of you who have experienced complex trauma and who are yearning for a healed relationship with God. 

[00:41:51] It's made me realise, you know, that maybe I, that God is probably saying something to me about a new or a clearer focus in, in the content that I put out, in some of these areas, right? Addressing what the experience is like as someone recovering from complex trauma, how that impacts our relationship with God, maybe with the church, with other people. What is it like, how is that connected with our relationship with our families of origin? Because a big part of healing is it doesn't happen in a vacuum, right? We have to deal with very real pain that often still is present in our lives because there are relationships that we haven't, or we don't want to just cut off.

[00:42:39] So there's a lot of nitty gritty messy stuff that happens when we're on this journey and I'm gonna be maybe thinking a little bit more, waiting and discerning how it is that God wants me to put all this together. Right because I know you guys are out there.

[00:43:00] I don't know who it is that I'm meant to speak to whenever I do these episodes. I just do it and trust that God knows who it's meant for right, but I'm always listening: what is it that He wants me to say, what is it, where is it that He wants me to go? Because really all of this, all of this, it's only possible because God's leading me on on this journey myself. 

[00:43:28] So I wish you a very restful end of the year if that is at all possible. I just want to remind you especially if you are someone with complex trauma and relationship with family is very complicated, to be gentle with yourself, to give yourself more permission than you usually are willing to give, to have space and distance from that which traumatises you, re-traumatizes you or re-trigger or triggers you.

[00:44:04] There are many ways to go about that. It isn't always just one or zero. But even if this year, what you need is just a very clear boundary, what's one or zero, I really hope that you will give yourself permission to do what it is that you need to continue this journey because it's for the long haul. It's for the long haul. 

[00:44:27] And one very helpful tip I can give from that I've learned in my own journey is, as a complex trauma survivor, we often absolutize things. We think, for example, that if I need distance from, let's say, my parents or whoever it is that's, that's hurting me, that it has to be absolute and complete, forever and ever. I think we just often go into this black and white thinking. It's part of coping with, in an unsafe environment. But, just remember, whatever decisions we make is, it just needs to be right for us right now. 

[00:45:03] Even spiritual discernment is it's always about the decision before us right now, okay? With God, there is always hope. With God, the road is never completely at a dead end, but we don't need to think that far. Most of us have more than enough to cope with right now.

[00:45:22] So please remember that God is with you right now. That He has more space than you can imagine. And I hope that you can experience some of that spaciousness. And give yourself that permission to do what you need to be safe right now, and to just leave the rest in God's hands.

Yeah, so that's it. I look forward to the next time I speak again to you. Goodbye

[00:45:55] OUTRO

Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

If you like what you hear on this podcast, would like to receive a monthly written reflection from me as well as be updated on my latest content and offers, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter Begin Again. You can find the link to do that in the show notes. 

Until the next episode, happy becoming!