Hey Tabi!

5 Powerful Steps to Transform Your Healing Journey

• Tabitha • Season 1 • Episode 15

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🔥 Ready to FINALLY Break Free From Your Trauma? LISTEN TO THIS! 🔥

Are you exhausted from feeling stuck, numb, and unable to heal from past hurts? In just about 20 minutes, discover 5 POWERFUL STEPS that can completely transform your healing journey! Trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook reveals practical, life-changing insights into recognizing trauma, creating safety, finding specialized support, and building healthy community and connection—even if you've been hurt before.

You'll learn how to: 

✨ Clearly identify and articulate your trauma experience. 

✨ Recognize hidden signs of trauma's impact on your body and mind. 

✨ Develop REAL safety—physically, emotionally, and relationally. 

✨ Select specialized trauma-informed care (including EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems). 

✨ Embrace healthy community and connection, even after deep relational wounds.

This isn't just another self-help podcast—these proven techniques and insights are backed by extensive professional experience and compassionate wisdom.

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🚨 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.

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Tabitha Westbrook:

Are you tired of feeling stuck, exhausted and haunted by past trauma? What if I told you that in the next roughly 20 minutes, you could uncover five powerful steps that can literally change your healing journey forever? Well, stick around, because your life deserves a breakthrough. 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. Now let's get going. I am super excited that you are here with me on this week's episode of hey Tabby. I could not be more excited to be with you and bring you a little bit more on this topic.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Today, we are going to talk about transforming your healing journey. We are going to talk about the frustration of being stuck and being overwhelmed by the impact of trauma in our lives and I'm going to share with you five different things that you can do that can help your healing process move forward. Some of these might seem super common sense and some may seem like oh gosh, I've never thought about it this way before, but I hope that in these next few minutes you will find some things that will be very helpful for you as you navigate your healing journey. So the first thing might sound super obvious, but for some people it really isn't. The first thing you need to do is recognize and name your experience. Now, for some of you, you're going ma'am, ma'am. I already know my experience. I know what's happened to me, but some people don't. They don't realize that they have been a victim of coercive control, they don't realize that they have been in abusive structures and they don't realize the impact it's having on them in the present moment. It's really not uncommon for someone to sit across from me in my office and say I am just super anxious and I think I just need to learn how to put that behind me. The Bible says do not fear, and I don't understand why I can't do that. And then, as we dive in, we find out there is a trauma history, either currently presently going on for them or in the past, and their reactions make a lot of sense, but they didn't put together that they had had an experience or that something had happened that they needed to name. It really is important to identify it and accurately name it for yourself, because we tend to have a hard time articulating trauma and articulating its impact on us. Being able to get to the place where we say it out loud to another person is incredibly helpful. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to share every single detail of your trauma story or anything like that, but what it does mean is that you need to be able to say, oh, this thing here, this, this really happened, this happened to me.

Tabitha Westbrook:

There are all kinds of symptoms that happen that we sometimes don't realize are trauma related. Emotional overwhelm is one of them, so just feeling constantly overwhelmed and not being able to feel as if you are in a calm space, or always feeling like you have to be, like watching your back or what have you, which is part of hypervigilance, which is where we are constantly looking for danger. We might even feel completely numb and be like dude. I checked out years ago and I don't even know where I went and then also having a hard time, like a really hard time, trusting other people. And I'm not saying by any means that trust should be freely or easily given, but what I am saying is that when you're like really resistant, there is just a good opportunity there to ask yourself why? Why am I resisting trusting, why am I resisting closeness? What's going on there for me? And we might find something in there.

Tabitha Westbrook:

One way to start pressing into the what's really going on is to journal your experiences. You can write down your feelings, write down your experiences, write down the things that feel tied together and that sort of thing. Just try to articulate, put out there what you are experiencing and also knowing that it's okay that it doesn't go in order, you might start writing out something and realize that things are out of order, and that's very common because of how trauma sits in our brain. It kind of sits in the back, on the bottom in the amygdala, and it is a place that we just don't always have chronological order for because it doesn't have the ordering parts of our brain attached to it yet. So it's okay if it's out of order or what have you, and it doesn't have to be perfect, but it can start to give you a little bit of an idea of how would I name this, what would I say about it.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Also, you definitely want to look at your patterns. If something is happening over and over again or you're walking into a situation over and over again that you're like this decidedly not good for me you might be able to find and pick up patterns and those can give you a little bit of a clue to your trauma story and a skilled therapist can even help you disentangle some of those patterns and have a little bit more clarity in that. And then, of course, there is sharing your story, whether that is in a support group, whether that is in a group therapy setting or whether that is in individual therapy. It is very powerful to say here's what's going on. I'm not entirely sure how to disentangle it, I'm not entirely sure how to even make sense of it, but I would love to just tell it, or what parts of it I can tell. And again, you don't have to say all the things. That is something I think when we talk about sharing stories. That can be a bit scary when you're not ready exactly to see your own story and then somebody is like, oh yeah, go share your story. You're like, no, I don't want to, and I totally understand that. So you always get to pick your own pace, but sharing aspects and starting to put your story out there so you can begin to make sense of what's going on for you is really important.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Step two is to understand the impact of the trauma on you, and we have talked about this a little bit in other episodes, but trauma really does impact us physically and spiritually. When we've had a big traumatic event, it rattles us, it rattles all of us. And so if it was a physical trauma, if there was physical aspects of that trauma or if it caused a physical reaction for us, like coercive control as an abuse, you know, coercive control causes physiological changes and things to happen inside of us that it's really important to recognize, and so there are things like autoimmune disorders, anxiety, the effects of chronic stress on our bodies, joint pain all sorts of stuff can happen because of the impact of trauma on us. Again, it also can harm our relationships. It can keep us from really being able to connect deeply and really have the life that we are hoping for. We almost become a little bit of a hermit. At times or at least parts of us do so you might be the social, gregarious butterfly that is out there, and when you are at home, you're really withdrawn. Or even when you're out there, there's only like part of you out there. You're afraid to give your whole self to a situation or to an event and really just be all of who you are, because you're afraid of what will happen if you enter into those spaces, and that is a direct result of trauma.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Our third step, once we know what we're dealing with and how it is affecting us, is to create safety. We can't heal without safety at least some safety. Now, if you're still in a particular situation, perhaps you are in a coercively controlling relationship and you have chosen to stay. Well, you're not going to have perfect safety all the time, and that's OK, we can figure that out and creating safety really is paramount because you really can't heal without safety. We just we won't. We're going to be so busy trying to keep ourselves safe that healing isn't going to be possible. That can be a little bit tricky. If you are still in a destructive situation. It can be really hard to have that felt sense of safety. But there are some things that we can do to help us get there. So when we're in a safe place, our bodies are more open, they're able to change, they're able to shift, they're not constantly in that fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop state. They are able to take in new information.

Tabitha Westbrook:

So if you are choosing to stay in a situation because of a million different reasons and I will just say for folks who are listening that it is a valid choice to stay in a situation and I know some folks might be hearing this and go I mean I can't understand why somebody wouldn't just go. But it isn't always that easy. There are financial considerations, sometimes kid considerations and safety considerations. So you know there are nuanced ways to talk about this and we don't have time in this podcast, but I would encourage you to get additional information and training. But just walking away isn't quite easy.

Tabitha Westbrook:

So sometimes we have to learn to feel as safe as possible in the situation we're in. Sometimes that is going to be healthy boundaries in that relationship or space and things like that. With a healthy boundary, we may limit someone's access to us as much as possible in certain ways, or we may choose to have space and time away from the home or place that we're living. So, for example, if you are in college and you have a really sketchy roommate and you are like I'm just going to go to the library to do some work, that is a great place and a safe place where you can have a little bit of a breather from the environment that you are in. And when you've created a little bit of physical safety, then your body can start to calm down and you can do a little work on things, and you may have to do it in little tiny pieces, and that is okay.

Tabitha Westbrook:

If you're able to get fully away from a destructive situation and have that space to begin to heal, you may need to change things in your environment. For example, I've worked with plenty of women who have gotten out of coercively controlling relationships and those abusive situations, and looking at the same dresser they had for 25 years with their abuser is very dysregulating. Maybe they found pornography in the drawer or something to that effect, and so in that instance it may be really wise to get a new dresser, to have a literal fresh start furniture-wise, in order to start to feel less activated when you are in your own bedroom. Doing little things like that can increase that felt sense of safety. Finding healthy, strong relationships that are safe that can really help that as well and also increase that sense of belonging that so many folks need when they come out of a traumatic experience. And those are a few things that we can do to create safety.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Relational safety after we have been harmed in a relationship is really important to the healing process. And when we are actively looking for which relationships settle in well with my body, then that's really important. And when I say settle in well with my body, then that's really important. And when I say settle in well with my body, I'm talking about the good old vibe check, and it's a little more complicated than that. But we have this system called a neuroceptive system and we've talked about it before on this show, but it's constantly looking for am I safe? Am I safe?

Tabitha Westbrook:

In relationships that have good relational safety, your body feels more settled. Your body feels like, yeah, okay, this is not a bad thing, right, and if we're learning to build new relationships, we do not have to go all in real quick. We can take a slow and steady approach and, frankly, that's usually the one that I recommend. I strongly recommend slow and steady approach and, frankly, that's usually the one that I recommend. I strongly recommend slow and steady approaches to building new relationships when you've had relational harm, because otherwise you might go too quickly, overlook red flags and, as you know, those red flags don't mean it's a carnival. That doesn't just apply to intimate relationships, that also applies to friendships, doesn't just apply to intimate relationships, that also applies to friendships. And we want to be very clear about what we need, what we don't need, what's okay and what's not okay. And when we're coming out of harm it might take a minute to figure that out. And that's okay, that's a totally okay place to be. You also want to learn to check in.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Just because we feel activated doesn't mean a situation is unsafe. It just might feel familiar to something that wasn't so. For example, if you've had significant spiritual abuse, walking into a church might feel extremely activating. Hearing a song that you often sang in your abusive community might also feel extremely activating. In those moments we can choose to use some grounding exercises to bring ourselves back into our bodies and give ourselves a little bit of a reminder hey, we're safe here.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Even if a situation isn't where you want to stay, you don't feel good about it. Let's say you try out a faith community and you're like, not for me, but you also don't want to run out of the room. Then you might ground yourself. But also remember, I don't have to come back. I don't have to come back and I will also tell you you don't have to stay. Sometimes we try things a little bit before we're truly ready and there's nothing wrong with that to see where you're at. So please don't hear that shamefully. But sometimes we say, yeah, I wasn't as ready as I thought, so I'm going to go ahead and set this aside and I'm just going to walk away and I'll try again some other time, and that's a completely valid way to handle things as well.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Another step step number four is get specialized support. It is really helpful to get trauma specialized therapy when you need it. This can be a game changer for people. When you have a therapist across from you who really understands what's going on for you, they can really walk you through that. And some of the kinds of therapy that might be helpful for you are eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR, brain spotting, somatic, experiencing, internal family systems, things like that. Also, a really solid trauma-informed biblical counselor can be very helpful.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Now I know some of you just heard the words biblical and counselor together and may have had a little panic attack because you've had some really tough experiences with unskilled and not trauma-informed biblical counselors. But there are trauma-informed biblical counselors out there. In fact I would say that there is a growing movement amongst some in the biblical counseling space to partner with licensed therapists. I know we do that constantly in our practice where the biblical counselor takes care of an aspect of care and we take care of the clinical aspect of care. And we have partnered with biblical counselors for so long that I actually ended up hiring one that I really like and we all work together for the good of the client. So there is no spiritual bypassing with good biblical counseling. There is no sin detecting with good biblical counseling. I know that's a criticism it often gets. So you can also look for a very highly qualified, well-educated biblical counselor if that is a comfortable space for you. There are ways to know if someone is a good biblical counselor or good licensed counselor, because just because you have one or the other doesn't mean that they're good.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And the first thing I will say is ask questions and as a trauma survivor, it is so hard to ask questions because we're taught we're not allowed. We're not allowed to question our abuser. But asking good questions can be extremely powerful. So where did you get your training? What is your understanding of coercive control, if that's what you're dealing with? What is your understanding of religious abuse or religious trauma? How will you respond to me if I tell you I don't know what I believe right now? And that's a really common one. When someone has been spiritually abused, they really don't know what they believe. What they believe has been upended by the abuse and getting out of the abuse. So if you are a counselor that constantly refers to scripture or is quoting chapter and verse or praying with clients, it could be very off-putting to a client who has been spiritually traumatized. So in our practice, for example, we do not do any of those things unless the client asks us to. We will ask for permission if we want to use a scripture or things of that nature just to make sure that the client feels safe and cared for and that their wishes and needs matter.

Tabitha Westbrook:

If someone is coming to you and saying I don't know what I believe because of what I've been through, then it's really important to honor them, asking the counselor what their understanding is, how much of it they do, what are the outcomes that they see? You know, do people that come to you get better? And this is another thing, right? Because I think that a lot of counselors are really really good, which is wonderful, and some are going to tell you they can do things they can't exactly, and so asking you, how do you see people get better? What does it look like, is really helpful. I can answer that question easily. I know what it looks like when my clients get better. I know what it looks like when my clients are meeting their goals. I know exactly what it looks like because this is what I do all the time and we've actually seen it in our practice.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I know what it's like to be traumatized until you have to walk through that and the scariness of telling your story for the first time, or even if it's the 10th time and it's a new person, oh, so hard. So you really want to understand and feel in your own body how does it feel to talk to this person and ask these questions, and you can even go and do an appointment and say this didn't feel good to me. You might not be ready. They might not be your person. I am a really good trauma therapist and I have an incredible team of trauma therapists and biblical counselors here and we're not for everybody, and that's okay. So if a client gets in front of me or one of my team and says I'm not sure this is a fit, okay, that's awesome. What do you think would be a better fit? It might be something we can adjust, or it might be you're not my person and that's okay, and so then we will help you find your person who is a better fit for you, and we'll do our best to help you find the right fit, because that really does matter. So it's okay to go into a session and say not my person, it's okay. And any good therapist or biblical counselor is not going to be upset. They're going to say I get it and I want you to have what you need. Let me help you get there. Also, I really do want to normalize and just give you some validation that starting therapy whether that is group therapy, whether it is a support group, whether it is one-on-one therapy, whether it is visible counseling is so hard.

Tabitha Westbrook:

It takes enormous courage to pick up the phone or send that email and ask questions and also to come and open yourself up in a therapy session. It's hard and that's okay. Of course it's hard. You've been through a lot. You've been through so many difficult things and they've left a mark and people who you were supposed to be able to trust were proven not trustworthy. I think that's one of the worst things about trauma is that you were supposed to be able to trust whoever harmed you, and you couldn't, unless it was a complete stranger that harmed you. These are usually people that are in your life and in relationship and built relationship, sometimes in order to harm you. That's brutal. So it is absolutely normal that it would be scary to reach out. It's normal that it feels a little bit scary to look at your stuff, especially if you know there's some stuff there.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I know that that was my experience going to therapy for the very first time. I was terrified. I was like I'm not sure. I want to know what all is in here. But I also knew that I didn't want to keep feeling the way I was feeling either, and I just want to give you that understanding and knowing so that when you're feeling your body go oh no, I don't want to do this, that you understand that that is something that happens for so many people. So you're not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. Sure, chest human and that is a beautiful thing. And our final step to just really move us forward on our healing journey is to embrace community and connection. And for those of you whose hearts started beating more quickly because you're like, yeah, community is what kind of did me in, I will tell you it's still a very important aspect.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Not that community, I think. If you have been harmed deeply in community maybe not the one you were in but it can be extremely helpful and life-giving to find a healthy and safe enough community. Now, when I talk about safe enough communities, look, people, sometimes they're going to be people-y. It is what it is and it stinks and I hate it. But we do want to have some grace. What we don't want is a toxic community, a toxic system, a destructive system. What we want is a healthy community where we can be ourselves, even if it's a little messy. People are willing to work through stuff with you. They're not going to lord things over you. They're not going to use position and power to control you. They're not going to use physical power to control you. It's a safe enough community and that can be life-giving. Healthy community also gives you space to experience yourself differently and that is one of the biggest healing things.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I know in my own story that finding community that saw me as me and didn't try to make me someone else and didn't tell me who I was was terrible, but also loved me enough to go hey, that's out of balance you might want to look at. That was vital because I began to experience myself as lovable, as cared for, as a part of something that I belonged to and that was helpful and wonderful and extremely healing. So I would invite you to try to find that. And it may not be a faith community. We have talked about this before and in my book Body and Soul Healed in Whole, I talk about this quite a bit. Sometimes faith communities have to be a later step in our healing because we got so hurt and so you might choose like a meetup group or a group of like interests. So maybe you enjoy cycling, you may find a local cycling group, you may find a hiking group, you might find an art group, a quilting group. I think there are groups out there for just about everything people enjoy doing and that can be a great way to meet healthy, kind people that can be part of your rebuilt community.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And there is something special about being in a survivor community. Support groups are excellent for this. You don't have to over explain your story. They aren't going to go. Yeah, but this, but you know that you're already understood because these are people who have been through similar things. So finding a support group can also really bring supportive relationships as well, and then being truly seen by others and not judged is such a healing place.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I talked about this a little bit in our episode on narrative-focused trauma care and how the power of story can help us. When other people sit with your story and they don't turn their faces away from you, it is an incredibly healing experience and those kinds of groups can be absolutely vital for that. So we've got five really powerful steps here and, just to remind you, we have to recognize and name our experience of trauma. We need to understand how that trauma has impacted us. We need to do our best to create safety both inside our own bodies really comes from having a very good, you know, present moment, mindfulness, grounding, practice Whatever you find is best for you to just help you have that internal sense of calm and groundedness and regulation. Then we talked about finding specialized support, whether that is a therapist or a support group, and just knowing it is going to be hard to take that step, but it can be so worth it. And we ended with the importance of community and connection. We came into this world looking for others, looking for us. That is a quote from Kurt Thompson. It is so true, particularly if we had trauma as a young kiddo. We have attachment issues. The people who were supposed to care for us did not, and that is something that only community can help us heal. I hope that these things are really helpful.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I will invite you to think about what is one of these steps I can take today for myself to change my experience and to begin to heal. When you come up with that step, I would like to invite you to write it down and make sure that you do it. Put it on your calendar. It doesn't have to be huge. It can be the tiniest little slice, but even the tiniest step moves you forward and I believe that you can absolutely do that. Like we say in our introduction, trauma does not have to eat your lunch forever, and I believe that you can absolutely do that. Like we say in our introduction, trauma does not have to eat your lunch forever, and I know that there are going to be some of you who are listening who feel like, man, it has eaten my lunch, my breakfast, my dinner. Might have eaten like just everything in the fridge, to be honest with you and I hear you and to get that, but it doesn't have to be that way. It is possible to heal one step at a time, one moment at a time.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Thank you so much for listening to this week's hey Tabby. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. I will see you again here next week. 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.

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