Hey Tabi!

Healing from Sexual Trauma: The Truth Christian Women Are Afraid to Talk About

• Tabitha • Season 1 • Episode 14

Share episode

What happens when your deepest wounds are intertwined with your body, your faith, and your sexuality—the very things intended to foster joy, life, and connection? Today, we're courageously confronting the silence surrounding sexual trauma within Christian spaces.

Tabitha Westbrook sits down with her friend & colleague, Colleen Ramser, to discuss her new book Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control.


In this episode, Colleen and Tabi discuss:

  • Sexual trauma is widespread but rarely discussed in church settings, leaving many Christian women without language to process their experiences
  • Purity culture has created harmful frameworks around sexuality, making women responsible for men's behavior and limiting honest conversations
  • Understanding trauma responses like reenactments helps shift the question from "what is wrong with you?" to "what happened to you?"
  • Scripture on marital sexuality has often been distorted, while true biblical intimacy involves mutual submission, consent, and honoring boundaries
  • Healing involves breaking "curses and vows" formed during trauma and building new neural pathways aligned with God's truth
  • Arousal templates developed during trauma explain why survivors may be drawn to harmful sexual patterns, but these can be rewired
  • The book offers hope for both single and married Christians that sexual healing is possible regardless of relationship status


Find Body & Soul, Healed & Whole at all major retailers or visit tabithawestbrook.com for direct links to purchase the book.

Connect with Colleen Ramser here - https://colleenramser.com/

Wanna say hi? Send a text!

🎧 Subscribe to Hey Tabi for more expert conversations on trauma, faith, and healing.

Order Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control

📩 Connect with Tabitha:
💻 Tabitha's Website - www.tabithawestbrook.com
📲 Tabitha's Instagram - www.instagram.com/tabithathecounselor
🎙️ Podcast Homepage - https://heytabi.buzzsprout.com

💻 The Journey & The Process Website - www.thejourneyandtheprocess.com
📲 The Journey & The Process Instagram - www.instagram.com/_tjatp

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel & watch podcast episodes there

👍 If this episode resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and share to help others who need this information!

🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

Need to know how to find a great therapist? Read this...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud, with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here and we are not. Take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope.

Speaker 1:

Now let's get going. What happens when your deepest wounds are tied to your body, your faith and your sexuality the very things meant to give life joy and connection? Today we're going to break the silence and we are going to talk about sexual trauma in Christian spaces. We're going to talk about my new book, body and Soul, Healed and Whole An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, abuse and Coercive Control. And I'm not by myself. I am with somebody pretty awesome, so I'm going to let her introduce herself.

Speaker 2:

I am with somebody pretty awesome, so I'm going to let her introduce herself. My name is Colleen Ramster. I'm a good friend of Tabby's and I'm really excited about her book. We both do very similar work, and so I was super excited to get to interview her on her podcast.

Speaker 1:

Was it? Michael Scott said oh, how the turntables have turned or something, I don't know it was that was a really bad, bad quote from the office.

Speaker 2:

I butchered that badly. I love the office, but it has been overtaken by. This Is Us now. That is my new favorite. Tell your listeners a little bit about your book, just to give them a little taste of what you've been doing. For gosh, how long has it been Like what? Two years.

Speaker 1:

Two years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've had the privilege of seeing the book baby in the belly. I've had the privilege of seeing it start to come alive to the point that it is now. So it's just been a great privilege to be able to do that. Tell me a little bit about the book.

Speaker 1:

So the book really is meant to be an invitational guide. So many women have had their sexuality just shattered, whether that was through childhood molestation, whether that was through some sort of assault or harm during teenagerdom, young adulthood, adulthood, adulthood or even in an abusive relationship.

Speaker 1:

I don't know that many women get out of this earth without having some sort of sexual harm done and a lot of Christian women just don't know what to do with that and it's not really talked about in the church, and a lot of Christian women just don't know what to do with that and it's not really talked about in the church. So this truly is a very invitational, very embodied, very much not preachy not to take two verses and call me in the morning book on healing and, first of all, understanding what happened and what happens to your body in that place, what happens to your soul, and then what an embodied healing looks like and how to walk forward with an intact or completely new sexuality or a sexuality in the first place, when you're like gosh, I didn't even have one, because bad things happen so young, right, I mean, this book is monumental, honestly, because there really isn't any language for this in the church.

Speaker 2:

I've read your book and it is like this in the church. I've read your book and it is like nobody is talking about this. I hear about it in my office as a therapist and I hear women feeling like they don't know where to go. Like, how do I talk about some of this? What feels like shameful things that are coming up in my thoughts and in my body after I have experienced sexual assault or sexual abuse. So can you tell the listeners a little bit about what some of the language that you really bring to light, maybe a few of them that seem to be like non-existent in the church, or just talk a little bit about, like, how there is no language, what that's like.

Speaker 1:

It is really hard to have direct conversations, I think, about sex in the church, particularly if you're a woman. I think there are some places for men, maybe a little bit, but definitely not really for women. So we really start with some vocabulary in a lot of ways, of words that are often overly sexualized and then disentangling that from just purely sexual discussion, like arousal or sensuality. You know those are words that are much bigger than just about sex and they end up getting pigeonholed and it's a shame because there's such goodness in them, and then just talking about the hard things directly out loud with our actual lips and really giving people language around harm.

Speaker 1:

What happened to you, what happens now because of what happened to you. So, really talking about ways that we respond when we've been harmed, and helping women have a different way to say oh my gosh, these are the words. These are the words that make sense, and I think that's been one of the most interesting things, as people have read it is I am hearing. These are the words I needed to hear.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know how to say what happened Right, and there's some listeners that are like blushing right now. They're like, oh, you've said this, you said that, but there's so many other women who are just like gosh just reduces a lot of the shame, helps them to feel like I'm not alone in this. There was a couple of areas, too, where you talked a little bit about purity culture, just how that relates, and how everything just causes people to recoil or cringe or blush, or we can't talk about that. Tell us a little bit about purity culture and how that's impacted a lot of the work that you do with victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think part of the reason people blush is because of purity culture. We have been told we aren't allowed to utter these words, which is just not true. There's nowhere in the Bible that says thou shalt not talk about sex, and the Bible itself talks about it quite a bit. It talks about morality in terms of that. It talks about healthy sexuality in places which I don't think people often realize, and so purity culture kind of messed that up for us, and I think it started off well. I'm sure that it was well intended, but it was not well executed, much like the Pharisees, and so adding rules and regulations and things like that actually only served to allow for abuse.

Speaker 1:

So by saying that women are the arbiters of men's sexuality, then you say that women are essentially an object and we're responsible for someone else's heart and sin, which is not what God says. But when you're in that place, then you're like well, I'm not allowed to talk about it, I'm not supposed to think about sex until I am married, and then I'm supposed to think about it as often as my spouse thinks about it and do it as often as my spouse says that they want to do it.

Speaker 1:

And then what do you do if you're single and you have feelings and the church didn't even talk about that, because if you're single you're not supposed to have feelings, but that is also not how we're created. So really putting aside things that are not of the Lord and being able to say we can have an absolutely God honoring discussion that is frank and direct about sex for women and being very safe in those spaces and also not demeaning men in those spaces there are destructive men I mean, that is a big portion of what I do and there is harmful things that have happened. But not all men are that way and if we reduce all men down to their sexuality, then we have done them a disservice.

Speaker 1:

But I'm also not minimizing harm either, you know there are men who have taken the mantle from purity culture that says, once you're married, your wife will be your absolute sexual everything, and they have a distortion because it's pornified right. It really the way that that's languaged to young men very often is she'll be your personal porn star. First of all, pornography is immoral and it is not helpful. It is adultery. Second, also, that is not what a woman's role is. That's not what the Lord calls her. That is not how the Lord speaks of women. And so you've then put this thing on a woman that opens up the ability to be abused, because if she's supposed to be your everything, and then we've distorted scripture like submission and things like that, then we are opening things up to stuff like marital rape, and I know for some people you went when I said I want to go there.

Speaker 2:

I definitely that's. That was gonna be the next. It's got purity culture which is like on one side of the spectrum which is very don't do this, don't do this, that, don't say that. You know, keep yourself, don't, don't kiss, don't. You know, everybody has their personal convictions when it comes to, you know, touch and things like that. But then you have the other end of the spectrum. When you get married it's like this your body is mine sexually. And can you open up to the listeners a little bit more on what's in your book, which is just priceless, really talking about marriage and how this stuff can show up in marriage, which I know, for some people are like what and other people are like, oh my gosh, that's exactly what I've been thinking and feeling.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So, in the book Body and Soul, healed and Whole. One of the things that I really do look at is disentangling the spiritual abuse that often is present as well. My definition of spiritual abuse is taking someone's good and right of those things and use only part of them, which is really terrible, hermeneutics frankly and say well, you know, you must submit to me. But the Bible doesn't say we submit in all things. First we submit to Jesus, then we submit to each other, and submission is always voluntary. It's never forced. When it becomes forced, it's subjugation. That's slavery. That's a whole different thing and also not okay with Jesus, and you know that. First Corinthian scripture you know well your body belongs to me, yes, and your body belongs to me. It was a game changer in the ancient world, because women didn't ever hear that. And Jesus said this is how this works, right, and so that means that I could say to my spouse I don't want your body on my body.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had heard you say that once and I was like, yes, because it really is almost this mutual yielding. Instead of like mutual, like give your whole self, it's this mutual sort of like yielding to the other in terms of you know, where are they If your spouse is unable to do something sexually, or maybe they can't at that evening. I want to delve into that a little bit, just even peeling back the layer of what this more practically looks like. It's one thing to be disappointed that your spouse can't do something, maybe because maybe they have a history of trauma and you know that they're not able to do something sexually because of something that was done to them. But there's a line you know, like your spouse is not your just object to make do things. So can you speak to that for people who maybe are in situations that don't know where that line is?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we are not guaranteed sex, and when I say sex I mean intercourse, right, and somehow along the way we have decided this is the end all be all of the relationship. It is an aspect of a healthy relationship, but it is not the aspect of intimacy. There are so many other aspects of intimacy and there are other aspects of touch that are not just intercourse and are not just certain sexual touch. We can expand that and really look at intimacy in a different way. And so if you have someone who is unable or unwilling to do something because it is uncomfortable, it hits a trauma space or maybe it's just like that's not their jam. We're actually allowed to have preferences in the bedroom. It's the craziest thing.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, we should be able to honor that for our spouses. There are plenty of other things in an honoring, physically intimate relationship that can in fact be done, and that's an important aspect. What if your spouse got cancer and physically could not do something because of cancer treatment? Why would we vilify that and say, well, now I'm not getting what I need. You know, where is the understanding of intimacy and care and kindness and loving your wife's body like you love your own, which is actually in the Bible, and you're supposed to love your wife like you love your own body, and you're also supposed to love her like Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, which was death, by the way and those are things that are really important to remember. And when you're honoring each other because, again, it's mutual when you're honoring each other's limits and men have sexual harm too, you know there may be something that a man can't do because of a physical issue or because of their own trauma, and that is okay as well. So how are we entering in with each other?

Speaker 1:

and giving that care and that kindness and an invitation to more than just as Sam Joelman puts it the practice of sex, and entering into the poetics where the heart is at.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, it's like we you know we've talked about this before Like we really have a very low view of marriage and sex and how we view it. It's just objectification more than this really beautiful thing. It it's just objectification more than this really beautiful thing. So I'm curious, like now, thinking about, maybe, listeners who have gone through this, or even the single women. We haven't even we didn't even touch on that, but what are some of the hopeful things that you offer in the book in terms of change? Someone's sitting there and they're like, oh my gosh, this is me, and now you've given language. Can you give the listeners a little bit more about, like, how you help them through this?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so understanding some of your body responses, some of your behavioral responses even, is such an important thing, because it really is a tough space when you're like I don't know why I am drawn to this thing, or you know no-transcript. So there are things that I would say, are probably not in people's best interest.

Speaker 2:

But also no matter what trauma has done to the body Exactly.

Speaker 1:

But what I'm not going to do is say you know what? You're just a sinner. Go like, say, five Hail Marys or whatever you know, or go play more, read more yeah cast your anxiety.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean these are great verses, but there's just a lot more nuance and complexity that when someone's experienced trauma like one thing you mentioned in your book is reenactments and as a trauma therapist as well, I really appreciated that, because nobody's talking about that in the church. Can you maybe elaborate on that a little bit for listeners? They might go oh my gosh, that's me. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we do things to try to figure out what happened to us and try to resolve it. You know, the body keeps the score and anytime someone says to me that, oh, it's just a matter of will, no, it isn't. We are whole people. There is a component of will, there is a component of our thinky thinky brains, you know, and not just our feely feely brains. Right, we do want everything online. You know, we're not just like making feely feely choices and not thinky thinking them.

Speaker 2:

But at the same time. I want to record that and listen to that every morning.

Speaker 1:

Yes. So when we have these spaces of not knowing what to do because something happens maybe it happened when we were very young, or it happened so repeatedly and so egregiously that we just are trying to figure it out that we may go and do something outside of our values that is an attempt to resolve the trauma itself.

Speaker 1:

So, for an example I give in body and soul healed in whole, is that you walk into a bar and you maybe you had been raped by someone and you walk into a bar and then you start going home with guys, but not sleeping with them, or even maybe sometimes you do sleep with them, but you want to make sure you have the control and the choice. This isn't a conscious thing. You're not like. This is what I'm going to do to attempt to resolve the trauma that is residing in my body.

Speaker 1:

It is this urge that you can't quite understand. And then shame follows behind because you're like what is wrong with me? And the better question is what happened to you? And really going at that from that place and then beginning to understand the behaviors themselves, like what are you trying to accomplish? And this is where a good trauma therapist who understands these dynamics can really help out of just helping you disentangle that and then make shifts.

Speaker 1:

So when you feel that like I need to go do this because I'm trying to fix this thing, you go yeah, that, yeah, that doesn't fix the thing.

Speaker 2:

It's not going to fix being raped it just doesn't.

Speaker 1:

But I can surf the urge, I can do a number of things. I can notice what's happening in my body. I can honor my body's desire to resolve it, even though this is definitely not the best, healthiest, most adaptive way, right, right, and really press into that. And those are places where, when we stop just shaming people, we open up to real healing. You know, I've had many churches at times tell me, but you don't know what they're doing, and I'm like, oh, I do, they told me in my office, but what I'm inviting them to is a different path, right, and as I invite them into that path, as we process the trauma in their bodies, using somatic interventions and things that are really that bottom up, your feely feelys, to your thinky thinkies, then we are going to have a much different outcome.

Speaker 2:

Typically, yeah, and I love that. What happened to you and I started to think about and what did you not get to do in the middle of your trauma and that's the essence of reenactment is this constant trying to revisit it, to be able to fight where you didn't get, to run away where you didn't get to all these different somatic yes, yes, and so you also offer in the book you get at it a little bit with like curses and vows and how trauma impacts our body, but what you're inviting them to instead, can you highlight that in terms of some hopefulness for listeners?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when we talk about curses and vows, what we mean are when someone speaks something over you. That is not what God says about you. In order to stay safe, we often will have to act as if that is true, and then we begin to believe that it is, and that's when we make a vow I'm going to say this is true about me and walk from this place, because to not do so in an abuse situation is far too dangerous, and I believe that I am what is spoken over me.

Speaker 1:

So if I am damaged, goods or a whore or worthless, I begin to say that is my identity, instead of what God says about me, which is I am a daughter of a King, I'm a Royal priesthood, a Holy nation, which is a very different paradigm. Right, and until we start recognizing we have made vows and breaking them, then it is very difficult to shift how we function in the world.

Speaker 1:

But when we say I'm going to choose and it is, I'm going to say something that is simple but it is always not easy. So, and you know as a fellow therapist, simple but not easy, it's like wow, that's a really simple concept and really hard to do, but we start inviting our ourselves to experience ourselves differently, that I am going to practice a little bit of opposite action. I'm going to act as if I believe I am the daughter of a king.

Speaker 1:

I know that the Bible says it. I don't feel it, because the lie feels very true, but I am going to act as if it is true and I'm going to function in that way. So that means I might set a boundary in a relationship, I might end a relationship, I might decide not to walk into an enactment, I might do a lot of things differently and I'm going to invite my body into a different place because my body is not used to that.

Speaker 1:

My brain is not used to that, and so we're building essentially resilience right. You and I've talked about pendulation.

Speaker 2:

We go in a little out a little. In a little out a little.

Speaker 1:

And so we're going in a little to go. This feels really difficult and really hard, even though I know it's a simple concept, and I'm going to go in a little and try this, and then I'm going to come out a little and breathe and go okay, that's what I did today, and then I'm going to keep doing it and eventually it becomes how we function.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And then our pathways build and through the Holy Spirit in us, we start to believe what the Lord says, because we're also experiencing ourselves differently A lot of times, especially for folks who've been deeply abused. We find that they really almost come home to themselves and start to see who it is that the Lord created them to be, and it is beautiful.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you offer so much hope in this book and now we're not even touching on all the different topics that you cover in there, but I did want to talk about one more topic. If we have some time, absolutely Okay, because you do talk a little bit about, I think is just mind blowing. Information is arousal templates and how people can create these templates in their body that get connected to things or anything that's sexual. Can you talk a little bit about that, what that is and then how it shows up for a lot of people?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so. Let's talk about what an arousal template is.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if anybody who's listening besides, like you and I at this point have thought about what turns me on and why. How did I get there? And that is a great question. Because we all have an arousal template and we have them outside of just sex and we talk about that in body and soul, healed and whole, but we also have them related to sex. So how do we get these things woven together that have us having these sexual feelings? And when it has been woven in with harm and violence, we might find ourselves drawn to those things. We may find ourselves drawn to violence and sex. We want it. You know, quote unquote rough. In some way we want to feel physical pain with it, because that is a turn on, because that was woven in during our harm. And so what fires together, wires together.

Speaker 1:

So if you have an orgasm in the midst of harm, and it happens enough times with some other elements. We start to become drawn to that and that can really mess people up, because when they get out of harm they're like why do I still feel this way? Why am I drawn to pornography? Why do I need these things to feel arousal? And it's because it got woven into the arousal template and we can disentangle that. So if you're sitting there going, well, that explains a few things that I've never wanted to say out loud.

Speaker 2:

It's so powerful for people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and there's a way out, and that's the pieces. You're like, man, this isn't what I want it to stay with, and we can. There's a way out, and that's the pieces. You're like, man, this isn't what I want it to stay with, and we can. There's, there are things you can do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, what are some last hopeful words you'd like to offer to someone who just stumbled across this and they're like wow, that's me. What would you like to offer to them as an encouragement moving forward, obviously to get the book for sure and read it? I think you are such a smart, smart, very smart person who has a lot of acronyms behind your name, so this is a very well done book. I'll just say that as a little caveat. Now it's your turn.

Speaker 1:

I will say that, whether you're married or single, there are things here for you. I know that my single sisters often are overlooked and say well, I can't even talk about sex, I'm not allowed to have sex. Talk about sex and it's like, well, no, you have sexual desires, we should actually talk about them. And if there's sexual brokenness.

Speaker 1:

It can be healed. Whether you're single or married, you do not have to have a relationship, and there are ways to wrestle with desire as a single woman that we talk about in the book and delve into because it's important. So I would say that, no matter where you are on your journey and some folks may be listening to this and go, I don't even think I can say the S word out loud- and that is honestly where I started in my own story.

Speaker 1:

I remember in grad school taking a human sexuality class because I knew I couldn't say the words at that point in time and so that was like me going Lord, help. And that was my first journey into being able to try to say these words out loud. And then the Lord just did all kinds of healing. But it really was powerful to learn that it was okay to say the words. It was okay to talk about things.

Speaker 1:

It was okay to question and ask the Lord some things, and so, no matter where you are in your journey, whether you're like I'm not ready to talk about it or you're like I really need to talk about it, I think this book is for you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love too in the book how you interweave lots of parts of your story. It's such a vulnerable act to do that and I know that so many people will appreciate that because you are talking from like literal experience of walking this out, and I really appreciated that a lot. So where can they get your book? It's coming out April 1st, right, so go get it. It's a wonderful book. I've read it and I'm thankful to get to interview you about it.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much. And Body and Soul, healed and Whole, is available at every retailer. So, whichever your retailer of choice is, your purveyor of book purchasing, you can get that book and I have them all linked on the tabofthewestbrookcom website so you can go to the body and soul page and it will all be right there for you, and also link to it in our show notes. And I'm really excited that you got to interview me. It's a strange thing on your own podcast to be interviewed by someone else, but I can't think of anybody I'd rather have do it. So I'm really glad that we got to do that together today. It's super fun.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for being here with me, and we will also have Colleen's information in the show notes because, honestly, she's amazing and you should know her. So thanks for hanging out with me today and I will see everybody on next week's hey Tabby. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrookcom, forward slash hey Tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Tabitha Westbrook, LMFT-S, LCMCH-QS, LPC-S, CSAT, CCTP, CCTCP

Host
Head Shot

Colleen Ramser

Guest