Hey Tabi!

Getting Trauma Informed Help Online - How to Spot Red and Green Flags

• Tabitha • Season 2 • Episode 18

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Online trauma help online can be powerful, but it can also be dangerous if you don’t know what to look for.

In this episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook, unpacks how to find good, trauma-informed help online that’s actually safe & how to spot red flags that could cause further harm.

Many survivors of abuse or trauma seek online counseling, coaching, or groups for support, but not all helpers are trained or trauma-informed. Tabitha shares what genuine, safe, healing spaces look like (rooted in evidence-based trauma care), and what kinds of online “help” can actually replicate coercive control or even spiritual abuse.

You’ll learn:

✅ What trauma-informed actually means
🙏 How real faith integration differs from spiritual bypassing
🚩 Red flags to watch out for in online Christian therapy or coaching spaces
💡 Questions to consider before trusting an online helper
🌿 What true safety and compassion look like in online spaces

If you’ve ever wondered how to tell the difference between helpful and harmful “healing” online, this episode will give you clarity, confidence, & peace.

Resources Mentioned:

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At The Journey and The Process we strive to help you heal. Our therapists are trauma specialists who use evidence-based tools like EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems to help you heal - mind, soul, and body. Reach out today to start your healing journey. https://thejourneyandtheprocess.com/

 This book is for every Christian woman who has been harmed sexually, whether that happened in childhood, adulthood, or even within your coercive controlling marriage, and you're longing to feel safe in your body again. We talk about the hard stuff, shame, desire, faith, and even questions like, is this sin or is this trauma?

You don't have to untangle it alone. Body & Soul, Healed & Whole is for you. Get a copy here today - https://a.co/d/8Jo3Z4V

🎧 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

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👍 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_00:

I get asked for referrals all the time. And many people don't live near someone who truly understands complex trauma or abuse and coercive control recovery. Online therapy and coaching can be absolutely life-changing, but not all help online is actually helpful. Today we're going to talk about how to find a truly faith-friendly, trauma-informed support person online while avoiding spiritual bypassing, victim blaming, or coercive messaging disguised as healing. 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 taking two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook, and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, and 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. Welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tabby. I am so glad that you are here. So we are going to talk about how do I find somebody who's online? Because maybe I live in a very rural place, or maybe I don't have anybody very close to me, or the closest person is far away. How do I know what to look for online? How do I find what I need? And we are going to talk about all of that. Therapy, coaching, and healing communities are growing. And that is a beautiful thing. In 2020, I think we saw like an explosion in online availability because people kind of had to figure that out. I know personally I had been doing online work for forever since I began therapy, actually, because I had worked in an industry that was global. And so it was really easy for me to offer secure ways of working with clients remotely. And I've been doing that since about 2015, but I know that I was a bit of an early adopter in that way. And we really didn't see a huge increase until I'd say around 2020. And there are Facebook groups, there are all kinds of places that you can get help healing from trauma, finding other like-minded people who are also in the healing process, finding out information about spiritual abuse and coercive control and all kinds of things. And so there's some real positives to this. We can access information much more easily. We can find people that have our same faith that we can connect with or that have been through something in our same denomination or faith system. And we can find like-minded people that way. We also can have a global reach. Personally, I am connected to people in all kinds of different countries, which is wonderful. And it has given us the ability to really have resources that maybe just 10 years ago we would not have had. So we want to make sure that we are not engaging in spaces that are not going to be healthy for us. And I want to help you learn how to find the good spaces and not end up in the spaces that are not so great. So some healers can use coercive control. And I really hate that. They create dependency because there is a power imbalance, right? There is more power in the person who says that they're an expert than there is in the person who's coming to get help. And that's something that as a clinician and as a coach myself, I want to be extremely careful about. I spend a lot of time giving my power away. I want my client to hold the keys. I want my client to hold the power. I don't want to be the one calling the shots or any of those things because that's not healthy. Your voice was already taken from you in abuse or in harm. And I want to help you get it back. So I'm always super careful about that. But not everybody is. And some coaches or therapists will try to create dependency. They'll use shame, they'll demand allegiance and those kinds of things. And that is really, really not good. That is putting you in a position much like the abuse that you're coming out of. And a lot of times for a survivor, we feel it as normal because it's what we know. And so this person is saying, Oh, I get it. And they're doing things to help you feel like they do, in fact, get it. But when it comes down to brass tacks, what they're doing is actually building the blocks of control. And you do not want that. You are getting out of control and we don't want that. They also can do things like create bitterness. Oh, the church as a whole is terrible. Look, there are some great churches and great pastors out there. Does the big sea church have some problems? Absolutely. But is it every church and our churches trying to grow? Like, yeah, it's not every church and there are churches trying to grow. There are churches who will say, yeah, we didn't get it right because we didn't know different. And then we went and gotten trained. And that is huge, right? So you don't want someone who is peddling anger and bitterness to get you to do their program. That's not ideal. Here are some red flags that you can look for. First of all, overpromising instant healing or spiritual deliverance. While God can absolutely do things instantly without question, it's not very often that I see that, to be honest. It is very often a process as we disentangle theology from things that were harmful as we disentangle our pain, as we work through our pain, and as we really have to process what happened. And so saying, like, hey, this is going to be instant, or in 90 days, you'll feel XYZ, that's not ethical. That's not wise. You'll never see in our advertising that like this is a guarantee because nothing is guaranteed. Now, do we have some things that are going to be really helpful for you? Of course we do. But again, your process is your process. And sometimes I hate to say this that sometimes things get harder before they get better because you're learning to retool. And that is a tough place. It's sort of like surgery, right? You go into surgery. I'm just going to use a hysterectomy because I know so many of our female audience members have experienced this. Your body is not doing great. So you go in and get this hysterectomy. And sometimes it's worse before it gets better because when you come out of surgery, your body still has to heal. It has to learn a new way of being, it has to learn new hormones, it has to learn a bunch of things and also heal in the process. So for many women, it is about a six-week recovery in total. And the first couple of weeks, you're pretty much laid out. And that is because it's a major deal. So imagine years of complex trauma, right? It's not going to be a snap your fingers, Burger King my way right away kind of deal. It's going to take time. I know that that's hard. When you're in pain and you're like, please, God, I just want to heal. I want this to be better. Then it can feel really tough to have to walk through the process. And so when someone's saying, I have this perfect system to help you heal in 90 days, of course you want that. Of course you do. And I would just say, really look at what they're promising and see if it's realistic. And it might not be. And I would say then save your time, money, and energy. You don't want to enter into that. Anything that discourages therapy, medication, or medical care. Now, I am not saying everybody should be on medication by any means, but it can be really helpful when there is a need for it, honestly. And so there's nothing wrong with taking medication to help you out. This is a decision you and your doctor need to make. And so any program that's saying you don't have to do this is probably not wise. I'd want to know why they're saying it, where their data is at, things like that. So again, really look at the claims that they're making and see if they are realistic. Using religious language to silence your pain, that is spiritual bypassing, right? So saying you just need to forgive and forget, it is your unforgiveness that is holding you back. And look, some of that could potentially be true. There could be some issues with unforgiveness, but that also doesn't mean that we forget. It doesn't mean that we reconcile. There's a lot of things in there that we would need to unpack. I have so many questions. So we want to be really mindful that it's not a quick fix or a spiritual bypass. So when you're looking at it again, asking, what is it they're selling? What is it they're saying to me? Does this make sense? Also be mindful of anyone that claims authority as a prophet. That can be interesting. I'd want to know more about that. And I'm not saying that we don't prophesy at times. I mean, it says, you know, in the Bible that your sons and daughters will prophesy. And I 100% believe that to be true. However, what are they saying? What are they promising? Are they setting themselves up as the Lord's anointed you can't speak against? Again, it's really easy to slide back into a high control space when that is what you've known. Because it's familiar to your body. So it feels like, oh, this is totally fine. But I really want to encourage you, check it out. Check the claims. Be sure. The other words I would say be really careful about are trauma specialist. How do I know? You can look at my bio or any bio of anybody on my staff and see exactly why we would be called trauma specialized. We have taken all of the classes. We continue to take classes to stay up to date. We take tons of continuing education. I can't even tell you how many hours at this point I personally have with regard to continuing education in trauma specifically. At this point, it's in the hundreds of hours, and that's the same for my team. And we don't want to say we're trauma specialists because we took a class and heard the word trauma, right? Unfortunately, there are some people out there that that is how they hang out their shingle. So, how do you know that they have the training that they say they do? There should be a bio, they should be able to give you information. Like I can tell you ad nauseum, all of the classes and things I've taken, and my team can do the same. So that is something that you really need to ask questions about or look for evidence of when you're looking at a website. Also, anything that is shaming or violates boundaries for you. If someone is pushing across your boundaries, that's a problem. If you're saying, like, hey, I can't do a session at 9 p.m. and they had promised you sessions at like no later than 6 p.m. And they're saying, well, no, now it's got to be nine, then that's a problem. Also, anything that is shaming you now, look, we struggle with shame often as survivors. So the questions being asked may not be shaming of you, even if they bring up shame. So this is a little bit tricky, I know, when you're trying to figure things out. But when we're talking about shaming questions, it would be that minimizing, denying, and blaming that you might be all too familiar with. We want to be reminded that the core of any abusive situation is power and control. And so we want to make sure that when you're entering into a therapeutic or coaching situation or a group, that that is not the case. Now, if you're going into a support group, you're going to want to look at how it's run, how it's facilitated, how do we make sure the members are safe enough? You can't always guarantee perfect safety. It just doesn't work that way. You know, people are people and sometimes they be people-y, but we want to make sure that it is a safe enough environment and that it is well led. So any group that our team leads and is a part of, we are always making sure that the members are, first of all, assessed to make sure they're ready. Because sometimes people aren't ready for a group and that's okay. That's nothing wrong with them. It just means that's not the right fit. And so we only want people who are really ready and for whom it's a good fit, right? And then when we're leading the group, we want to make sure that no one's overdominating, that everybody has a chance to share, that safety is created as much as possible in the group and that sort of thing. So you should look for things like that. Unmoderated groups are unwise, especially in the trauma space, because again, there are going to be people that try to take advantage. There are going to be people that might enter in to be harmful. And there are people who are just in that stage of healing where maybe they're not quite ready to be in an unmoderated group because they're struggling with their own stuff. And again, that's not a bad thing. It just means they need a little more support, and that's not terrible. So I just want to remind you of those things. Always look for is the leader helping you walk in your autonomy, your power, the wisdom that God has given you. And are they trying to help you learn how to like walk in that for real, as opposed to let me tell you what to do and creating something that isn't healthy? So, what does help actually look like? Well, safety first, right? This should be a trustworthy helper that prioritizes your safety. Informed consent, which means you know exactly what you are getting into. In any group, there should be some kind of here are the rules. Do you agree to them? In any sort of therapeutic or coaching relationship, the exact same thing in our practice. If you're a therapy client, you get a whole host of informed consent documents that tell you all kinds of things from how much will this cost to who are we and how often our appointments to what's the cancellation policy, all of those things are in there. In our coaching clients, you get almost the exact same thing, except it's tailored to coaching. So you should always get complete information. There's always compassion over control. Healing is invitational, it is not forced. I know that if you have been listening to Hey Tabby for any length of time, I am a big fan of invitation and invitational language because again, as a victim of abuse, as a victim of spiritual abuse or coercive control or domestic abuse, or anyone that's been traumatized, your voice gets taken. And it's an invitation, and you get to say yes or no to invitations. And so that is what we want to do is invite you into places, and that's where healthy coaching and therapy and groups are really at. So when we talk about faith integrated, a green flag is that it's faith integrated, not faith imposed. So what that means is that everybody has a different flavor sometimes of their faith. Everybody is in a different space in their walk. And if you have been really hurt, you may be wrestling with some things. And that is an area where the leader or facilitator or therapist or coach needs to really lean in softly and really just respect your belief, not with an eye scripture, not use it to spiritually bypass or minimize, not use it to be harmful in any way, but to really let you be where you are in the wrestle. We run a group called Restore, and it is for folks who have had their faith deeply harmed and want to restore a relationship with God, but do not want it to be take two verses and call me in the morning. And we are so gentle in that group because of how tender people are. And we want to be really mindful of that. So while faith may be a part of something, it is not a forced thing. And it is not something where you have to believe exactly like your facilitator, your therapist, your coach, the group itself. And that is really important that you are okay to be where you are and to wrestle through what you need to wrestle through. I will also say a really good therapist or coach or group is going to encourage somatic practices. We get disconnected from our bodies when we are traumatized. It's just so obvious in the research, so obvious in everyone that I've ever worked with. And so we want to encourage you to step back into your body again in an invitational way, but using things like breath work or grounding, gentle body connection, gentle body movements. All of those things are places where we are going to gently invite you into a space to reconnect. And if there is anything that is a group or coach or therapist that isn't taking that into consideration, particularly because trauma lives in ourselves, then it might not be the right group for you or the right person to work with for your healing. Healing happens in the community. So you want to be with a coach or therapist or group that is encouraging healthy community. So your coach or therapist should help you a learn what healthy community looks like if you're not sure, because man, when we've been hurt, sometimes we do not know. And also help you find ideas to connect with a healthy community. If you're in a support group, it should be modeling healthy community. It should be leaning into what is healthy and what you need. You also should really understand the difference between therapy and coaching. They are not the same thing. And we have an article on our website that talks about the difference between therapy and coaching. And I will link that in the show notes so that you can understand it a little bit better because you don't want to think you are getting therapy and then you get into a coaching relationship. And you don't want to get into a therapeutic relationship thinking it's going to be coaching, right? If you're like, I really need this and not this, then you want to find the right person for you. And a good therapist or coach is going to really help you unpack that to make sure the right fit for you. So here is a few just checklist items to help you assess when you are looking online for resources. First, do they list verifiable credentials? Are they licensed? Are they certified? What do we got here? And if someone is a therapist who is doing coaching, as long as they have a good understanding of the difference between the two, you don't necessarily need a specific coaching credential. But you do want to ask some questions around like how do you know the difference? And are you going to accidentally be doing therapy when you should be doing coaching? Like, you need to make sure that's working properly. Do they use evidence-based things? So things like EMDR, brain spotting, internal family systems, any type of intervention, you know, or tool, right? That is going to be based in something that we know works. And you can ask questions about that. How do you know that this works? Where's your evidence for it? What training? That kind of thing. Are there spaces inclusive and respectful? You should feel as emotionally safe as you can. And look, I know that in itself is a journey, but it should be set up for as much emotional safety as possible. So you're not being shamed if you are divorced or if you've had sexual trauma or if you doubt something and have to wrestle, or if you're not sure how you feel about God. None of that should bring shame. Not in these spaces. You should absolutely be able to be where you are. Now the goal is to heal. And so there will be some encouragement to heal, obviously. And that is not always pleasant. It can feel very uncomfortable, but it shouldn't be a place where you don't feel like you can do the wrestle. And do they encourage boundaries and choice? Any therapist, coach, or group that you are in absolutely should encourage these things and should hold good boundaries with you and should also encourage good boundaries in a group setting. It's really important. Are there trigger warnings or safety guidance, right? So depending on what the situation is, what kind of group it is, you know, there needs to be some sort of like, hey, we want to keep this group safe and this is what that looks like, or hey, we're going to talk about hard things you may find yourself activated. Here are ways to take care of yourself in that space. We do this very often when we are doing the Call to Peace Ministries faith-based domestic abuse advocacy training. We are often reminding people that this might be activating. We are offering grounding exercises throughout the course of the training to help people really stay in their bodies and be able to stay present and to keep it as safe as possible for a difficult topic. And that is really important. You should see that in any group place. You should see that with any therapy or coaching relationship where your body is taken into consideration and your therapist or coaches checking in with you and seeing how you're doing and not moving faster than your nervous system can go. I will just remind you that healing is possible. I know some days that feels so like it's not even truth, right? Oh gosh, it can be so hard. But it is possible with the right help. There are lots of resources out there that are very, very good. Hopefully, this will help you find the ones that fit better for you and fit in a way that you can honor your faith and also honor your healing and not get caught up again in a space where maybe it's not healthy because your body's used to unhealthy and you didn't catch a red flag. So hopefully this will help you catch your red flags, find all the green flags, and get what you need. So I want to encourage you to take a few minutes this week to really look at who is speaking into your healing journey. Where are you putting your feet in online spaces that is helpful? And where is it not helpful? And you might find, hey, I'm in all helpful places. This is amazing. You might find, like, oh, maybe I'm not. Oh gosh. Oh my goodness. If you're not familiar with my book, Body and Soul, Healed and Whole, we have a digital companion guide that goes along with it. I will also put a link down in the description as well. And there are a couple questions that this might help you out as you are looking at where you are. One question is, how has shame shown up in your healing journey? And look for places that shame might be being fostered. And again, as survivors, we struggle with shame. We really do. And so look at who's heaping shame on you. It might be yourself. I might just say that. But if you're in an online space where you're feeling shamed, you might want to evaluate it. Is this something that I am experiencing because of my own story? Is this a shaming environment? It's a good question to ask. And then where have you felt truly seen and safe? And spend more time in those places, honestly. So if there is a group that you are part of where you just feel really cared for and really safe, then that is absolutely a place that you want to put your feet more often. I hope this episode is helpful. It's meant to be pretty practical and helping you find good spaces online for you to spend time and to work toward healing. If we can help you in terms of coaching or counseling, we will have a link down in the show notes as well so that you can reach out to us. Or you can head over to www.thejourneyandheprocess.com and connect with us there. Thanks again for being with me on Hey Tabby. It has been a pleasure to be with you, and I'll see you again 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 tabithawestbrook.com forward slash hey tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I, and you can grab it there. Look forward to seeing you next time.

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

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