Hey Tabi!

Why Hope Isn't An Outcome, It's an Anchor

• Tabitha • Season 2 • Episode 22

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What if everything you’ve been taught about hope is backwards?
In this powerful episode of Hey Tabi, trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook sits down with Dr. Jenny Bayless of Fuller Seminary to talk about why hope isn’t an outcome you chase, but an anchor you hold onto when life feels unbearably heavy.

If you’ve ever felt betrayed by hope, overwhelmed by suffering, or exhausted by Christian clichés that make your pain feel minimized, this conversation is for you.

We dive deep into:
 ✨ Why survivors often shudder at the word “hope”
✨ The difference between wishful thinking and true, grounded hope
✨ How trauma, abuse, and betrayal shape your ability to hope
✨ Why hope requires touching pain—not ignoring it
✨ What the Bible actually means by hope
✨ How to rebuild your internal sense of safety, agency, and intuition
✨ Hope that doesn’t depend on outcomes, miracles, or circumstances
✨ How to walk with God when your world has fallen apart
✨ How clinicians can hold hope well for clients who cannot hold it yet

Dr. Bayless brings her expertise in trauma, spiritual integration, EMDR, and addiction recovery into a compassionate, soul-level conversation that survivors desperately need but rarely hear.

If you’ve been hurt by the church…
If you’ve prayed and fasted and still didn’t get the outcome you begged for…
If hope feels dangerous or even cruel…

You are not al

Wanna say hi? Send a text!

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

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

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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.

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SPEAKER_00:

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 to intersect with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here, and we are not tapers and calmly 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. Welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tappy, and I am super excited to have a friend here with me. This is Dr. Jenny Bayless. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist and the program chair of Fuller Theological Seminary's Marriage and Family Therapy Graduate Program at the Arizona Regional Campus. Her clinical experiences include working at the Meadows, which is an inpatient treatment center for trauma and addiction, as well as working with couples and individuals in a group private practice. She's a certified sex addiction therapist, and we love that here because you know I am too. And she's also trained in EMDR. Again, we love that here because I am too. And emotionally focused therapy. Jenny and I get along quite well. She specializes in trauma healing work and addressing spiritual traumas and spiritual integration. She received her Doctor of Ministry in Grief and Trauma, which is such a cool doctorate. Grief and Trauma Therapy from Primus University of Theology and her Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy from Fuller Theological Seminary. So Jenny is amazing. I am so excited that she is here with us. So welcome.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, Tabitha. I'm so excited to be here and to connect with you more. I think there are some people that when you meet them, there's sort of an instant resonance where you feel like you're connected on a soul level, even if you don't know each other very well. And I felt that with you when I met you at the restore conference. And then again when we reunited at the ITAP Symposium. So it's a joy to be with you on your podcast today. And I'm excited to talk about hope. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Hope is a four-letter word with actually four letters, but like when I say it that way, a lot of times people think of it as profanity, especially if you are a survivor of trauma. When I heard you speak on hope at Restore, I was like, more people need to hear this. It's so good. So tell me about hope. And we had talked a little bit before we started recording about trying to find a definition of hope. So let's start there. How would you describe it?

SPEAKER_01:

It's so hard for me to um, you know, I think I keep trying to find some sort of nice, succinct working definition. And nothing settles because I feel like it doesn't quite capture. And I actually think that's the point. I think that's what people shudder at is an oversimplified definition of hope because it gives us connotation like something's missing. Oh, well, if you just had hope, if you had this thing, then you'd be okay. And hope is both a noun, it's also a verb, it's relational, it's a person, so it cannot be reduced to one specific thing. So I'll just tell you how I conceptualize hope for myself. I think of it as a way of seeing. So I envision like hope goggles, and so this hope vision allows me to see more realities and greater truths than my eyes can see without it. The hope vision also requires that I see and touch pain, or else it's I don't believe it's hope anymore. I think it's wishful thinking, it has to be anchored in reality. And so I think of hope, my hope lens, as a way of seeing more that gives power and agency and healing. That's actually very real, but it's not tied to a particular outcome, it's actually more anchored in who I am and God's infinite, constant, eternal presence within me and within all of his creation. That's not a simple definition, but that's how I am thinking about hope.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that, and I love that it is anchored in reality. I think that is where so many survivors have a hard time. Okay, they're like, you don't know the pain that I'm standing in, or the darkness, or this black cloud that I feel like follows me. And so, how can I have hope? You know, because they do separate it out from the current moment, and it's supposed to be this thing, this other, and it is and it isn't. So when you hear that, tell me what you start thinking about.

SPEAKER_01:

I think about how something that I just believe is the only way to transform pain is to touch the wound. And I think that's what Jesus shows us. His resurrected body has scars, and he put out his hands, his arms, and invited those who he saw to touch them, to touch those scars. And hope was burst out of that scar. And so I have so much compassion. I think that's the first thing that comes out for me around I think that initial feeling that can come up for survivors and around feeling like this thing called hope is unattainable or has betrayed them. I can't I can't hope again. I hoped before. That's what got me into this mess. That hope was a lie. And yet, again, I think we have to rethink how we're understanding hope and to say, well, when we look at the reality of our pain, and when hope invites us to actually touch that wound, be present to it, to grieve and to lament, then there's often something that's beautiful that's born of that place when we see each other, when we tell our stories to one another, and are able to say, I see you. I also see your strengths, I see things that you can't see in yourself right now. And that starts to birth these buds of okay, maybe it's not about forcing the circumstances to be different, but knowing no matter what happens, I will be okay. I can be okay. It's a recentering within oneself, and so I that's what comes up for me, Tabitha. Both compassion for probably the hope that has betrayed and the hope that is disappointed, and the hope that feels so out of reach. And I also feel hopeful that okay, don't give up. We can hold it for one another, too. Of when we are relational and vulnerable in safe spaces, there can be something beautiful that's birthed from that that goes beyond what a person can dream or imagine.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. One of the things that, gosh, there's so much here. One of the things that you said, you know, initially was like hope not being in an outcome, but being within you. And you just really went back to that here now of hope being something in us, regardless of, in some ways, what's happening around us. And I think as a clinician, and you probably see this too, that we come in with people who have said, I hoped in a thing. I hoped in my marriage changing and it exploded. I hoped in my child being healed and that didn't happen. I hoped in fill in the blank, right? And so, where is God? You know, because the circumstances didn't go that way. So talk about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

This, what you're talking about right now, Tabata, I think is one of the reasons I'm so obsessed with trying to dig deeper into hope and understand. I grew up as a pastor's daughter, I grew up in the church, and there was so much about that experience for me that was helpful, beneficial, and also that I am teasing out now. And so thinking about especially early times in my life and my early professional career, personal situations and professional situations where I just tried so hard to will a type of outcome that would be evidence of my faith and hope of well, God, you say that nothing is impossible for you. And so I'd pray, I'd get everybody around me to pray, I'd fast, I'd go to the mountains, I'd I would just take out every single spiritual tool that I could possibly think of to try to bring life to a heart situation to try to remove pain. And I felt crushed when I couldn't. When I was 19, my dad got really sick. He developed chronic pain and something called akathesia, which is a movement disorder that can often be triggered by psychotropic drugs. And it sent him into kind of a horror show for the next three years. And as a 19-year-old, I felt so helpless and powerless. I was going to college out of state, and so I'd call my mom and I would just hear just the pain in her voice. So she would tell me about the blessing stars in the night sky that God would give her. To make his pain go away. Hence the fasting and the praying and the getting everyone else to pray. And one time I called him up that I was like trying to exhort him like, what are your spiritual gifts? And it doesn't matter if you're in pain, you can be have purposeful work, anyways. Or thinking, how can I force joy, force light into that dark space? Well, as a daughter, I was like, Oh, my dad loves when he gets to hear stories of his daughter's success. So I made sure to graduate sumakum laude from my college in the honors program, and you know, that gave a temporary dopamine high to a proud father, and then it changed nothing. And so I had to learn this radical surrender, and it's such a painful process because it's so confusing, it's so confusing, and I think just embracing that, like I remember crying out to God and being like, You say that look at the lilies of the fields, and if God cares for them and he cares so much more for us, won't he take care of you so well too? It just felt like, well, I'm looking around and I'm not seeing what I'm not seeing cared for lilies. It feels that way, or it would feel arbitrary, like, well, it seems like this person has a miracle story, and this person, their story just leads to death. And it's hard to make sense of. We are constantly trying to make sense of things, we are meaning-making creatures, it helps us to feel safer when we can make sense of. We want to know the why. And so I think a big piece is having to put down that understanding the why, and starting with the what the what is this is incredibly painful and heartbreaking, and being present to that, and that there's this invitation to grief and to lament and to presence that has to happen first, and then what can be found often in that place is the peace that transcends understanding. And so I had a client who said, you know, I do not have hope that my earthly relationship with my father will be healthy or change. That is not something I have hope about anymore. But I do have hope that no matter what happens or the status of our relationship in this lifetime, I'm okay. I can be okay. That is liberating, and that's the type of hope that I'm talking about here, and I think we're talking about that is so needed. It has to move away from a really well-intentioned 19-year-old trying to will an outcome out of desperation and love for her dad. Like I have so much great love and compassion for who I was and what I was trying to do. And that exhausted me. And I was getting burnt out and angry and cynical. I felt betrayed. I felt like it wasn't working, something must be wrong with me. And instead, I had to learn how to surrender and sit and look inward and just connect with my own agency and power within who God created me to be and wrestle with the this feels unfair. And no, I'm held in that place, and that's okay. Be mad, be pissed, be like be real. That's welcome. It's so welcome, despite messages we receive around anger and in the church often. And finding that my hope was not anchored to the outcome of whether my dad was sick or well, it was anchored to a God who says he's making all things new. And that's where the lens has to come in because I can't just see what I'm seeing around. It just looks like chaos. We have to fight to see how all things are being made new. And I think our site for that, Tabitha, is so often in the personal stories. It's the you said, Oh, I'm hearing amazing stories, right? And your face lit up, and I could just see like it's a treasure and like how special that is to you. As I don't even know what those stories are, I just know they're treasures to your heart of people's pain connecting with feeling seen and really having hope. And I think that's the places we see all things new coming in. Sorry, I'm a preacher's daughter, so now I'm just I I love it.

SPEAKER_00:

I love it. And also, I'm a preacher's daughter, so like go. I love it. I love it also when we can dive into those deep waters because what I'm hearing, one of my favorite concepts is dialectics, two things that are opposite and can be synthesized. And I'm hearing the tension of the spiritual disciplines that are good, right? Praying, fasting, reading the Bible, encouraging others to pray, praying for things. It says, boldly come before the throne of grace and just ask God, right? And the tension of we may not get what we want. You know, we may not get what we are, you know, and hope it's like love. It's one of those words that can mean everything or nothing, depending on the context, right? So I might be hoping in an outcome or hoping for an outcome, but what am I hoping in? You know, and I think those might be a little bit different. How would you think about that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I love what you said about the dialectics. Because I feel like so much of life is actually learning to embrace paradox. And I really believe that hope requires that we stand in the tension of personal agency and divine mystery. I think that's where we have to stand. And it's a tension because there is personal responsibility and agency and choice, and we are not nearly as in control as we like to think we are. And so I think uh embracing that paradox. And the other thing I think that comes up for me, Tabitha, as I'm hearing you share, because I think, okay, well, how do we embrace it, right? For me, I think that starts with really having an attunement with our personal intuition and the place of just God's presence and spirit within. We are told that we have his spirit, we are told that we have the mind of Christ. That's incredibly powerful. And I think so often the noise of everything around us is so loud that we lose sight and sense of that deeper knowing. And so turning down the volume of all the outside noises and learning to turn up the volume of our own deep intuition, that place of knowing. It's hard almost to describe in words like, how do I know it's my intuition, or just not all thoughts are helpful, not all feelings are helpful. And yeah, we usually know, like when somebody says something, it just feels intuitive. There's usually a feeling of peace there. It feels like a deeper knowing, it feels like it comes from a deeper place, like down in the gut. No, a lot of the science and the neuroscience that's coming out also supports that. And yeah, we'll hear it. Like, I'll feel it for myself while our hearts clients say, like, I'll say, okay, so I that's the lie. Like, what's the truth? Or what do you want the truth to be? Like, what do you think? Let's check in with your intuition. Like the message I'm getting from my intuition is it's actually I'm actually gonna be okay. I don't I don't know if I can feel the truth of that yet, but there's some part of me that does. And usually when I ask, where do you notice that in your body? They'll say it's like deep down in here. And so I think as we tune in, that's where there's this anchor spot, that's where there is this piece that can help the chaos to look different, to feel different, and it also gives us wisdom and discernment of what is helpful for us to see and hear, and where there's healthy boundaries and limits because our minds were never created to take in all that we have access to see, especially in now our day with technology. And so it takes wisdom to know what we need to look at that we don't want to look at. What does it mean to not be an avoidance? And how do we also not become flooded in the chaos, which tends to just cause us to freeze and shut down and overwhelm, anyways? So that's really where I want to encourage. I think it's a practice of tuning in to God's spirit within and our own intuition created by him.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And that's a skill. It's an actual skill. You know, what we're talking about from a theological perspective, if we want to put it in nerdy terms, is the now and the not yet. So that should sound really familiar to a lot of folks who have been in the Christian walk for a while. And you don't just get away from the noise. You can't just go, and now today, this is what I'm gonna do. You know, if you've never done it before, you have to learn. And if you've been told through abusive situations that you're not able to hear from God or you don't know how to, or you have learned to doubt your intuition because of abuse or deep harm in a relationship, you may have to relearn it. And that's okay. One of the things I tell a lot of my clients is get out in nature. There's a ton of data out there that nature, first of all, by itself is very healing and helpful, and it is automatically going to reduce some noise because you're not gonna have as many screens or inputs and things like that. So I've had clients go to wherever they're comfortable in terms of going out in nature. Like there are people who are like, I am not going for a walk in the woods. The bugs and the bears are frightening, or you know, and they're just they're not like outdoorsy humans. And it's like you can go to a park with paved trails, like there's a lot of options here. And so I just encourage them to find what fits for them and bring something like a playlist that has like binaural music on it or certain frequencies, because God has created us really fun and really cool in terms of the somatic things that can help us engage. And so listening to some of that music and just taking a few minutes. And if it's scary because when we slow down, stuff starts talking, you know, our bodies start telling us what's going on and our minds may go lots of places, but to do that from a place of compassion and kindness to self and to say, I might have a lot of things that come up, and if I feel overwhelmed by it, I'm gonna take some breaths, I'm gonna look at a tree or a lake or a flower or something, and just give my attention to that for a minute, right? And let everything start to slow down. And you might be able to do that for 60 seconds one day, and then as you practice it, you're gonna be able to do it for longer periods of time. And then you will start to hear the presence of God that lives within you in your actual physical body. You know, he does say we are indwelled, that is all of us, and start to have that experience, and it doesn't have to be perfect. God knows what we're made of, and he's so gentle and kind as he enters in.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Oh, I love it. We're getting into how trauma is stored in the body and how holistic healing. I think that's aware. I mean, I'm in Arizona, and so there's a mountain that is like nine minutes from my house. It's about a three and a half mile trail. And from the time I was young, we'd go there and I call it my thinking mountain. And I told my husband, I'm like, if you don't, if you ever don't really know where I am, I'm probably on my thinking mountain. And so a couple weeks ago, actually, he asked me what I wanted to do on a Saturday. I'm like, I just feel like I need to go outside and smell a rock. Think you're smelling the desert sage. I don't think it's the rocks. It's just being in that space, Tabitha. And you're so right, because what is so heartbreaking with some of the injuries that trauma causes, especially when it's relational trauma. So somebody that was trusted that was supposed to be someone safe is actually the inflictor of harm. It destroys typically that sense of confidence in oneself and ability to hear oneself. And it can be so confusing. And I think that something I've noticed both in my own life and as I've journeyed with other people in with my clients and in different spaces, is there's a very natural tendency for us to want to rush the process or to be really judgmental and harsh with ourselves. Or I'll hear, like, oh man, I was doing good and now I'm doing bad, or I'm going backwards. And that's not how that works. It's not, it's part of the journey of honoring our body in what's coming up, and I think really recognizing what might feel like small minute wins. You said there might just be capacity to be still with oneself for 60 seconds and celebrate that. That's huge. That's building a new muscle, that's building a new neuropathway, that's allowing greater connection. And so often, the especially those relational injuries, there's years often of messages and and a reinforcement of oh no, don't listen to yourself. You can't trust your own intuition. Oh, your desires are deceitful. You can't trust yourself, trust this authority, let them usurp anything coming up for yourself. This external source of your knowledge and everything you need to be okay. And that is so dangerous. And I think part of the conversation you and I had after Restore was I think for us who end up becoming clinicians or helpers or leaders, it's burst out of a genuine place to help, right? Like, of course, we want to welcome people through healing. I hope, I hope that's what is name. I hope that for a lot of people, right? But I'll give the benefit of the doubt. Like, I think that's genuinely what brings us into this space. And we have to be careful not reenact that power dynamic of I am now in a place of authority. Let me tell you what to do to heal. And I learned that I used to try and source people's hope. That's what I thought was the good Christ-like thing to do. Jesus healed, Jesus saved, he multiplied, he fed, he did all these things, be like Christ. I misunderstood that to mean that I was to source people's hope. And so when that wasn't, I mean, it was just exhausting. And also just didn't work. Like I said with my dad, I couldn't source his hope. I was not the source of it. I'm just one of the sheep, not the shepherd. And so at first, I just thought, oh, it's because I don't, I'm not trained well enough. I don't have the right hope tool. So, you know, you got your master's, and then you get your doctorate, and then you go to all these trainings, and you have all these acronyms after your day because one of these trainings will revolutionize the healing process and it will give me the hope tool that I've been missing all along. And then you come to find out, like it all kind of starts to sound a little bit the same, and that I was confusing my role of trying to be the source of people's hope, which is actually really dangerous, because then if I'm trying to force feed you hope, Tabitha, I'm denying your power and agency all over again, even with good intentions, as opposed to being a hope holder. So I think about it like I have this flashlight, and I'm going to shine this light on what I see in you and through you and around you. And I'm just gonna continue to tell you what I see until you can connect with the hope that is already present within you, the worthiness and value that's already present within you, the resources that are already present within you. Because trauma does not make a person broken, it's an injury, so there needs to be healing, and yet oftentimes it's not seen. Oh no, I have this within me, and so I've literally said, I know you can't feel or see hope for yourself right now. That's okay. I'm going to shine my flashlight and I'm just gonna hold it for you until you can hold it for yourself. It's not gonna be for me. I'm not the source. You are, but you don't know that yet. And so when we reflect to each other what we see and we celebrate, 60 seconds? Are you kidding me? You sat with yourself for 60 seconds. That's awesome. And most people are like, Okay, I Wasn't going to give myself a medal for that. Like we they miss it. People miss, and that's where that non-judgmental kindness needs to come in. The Bible says it's his kindness that leads us to repentance. What's repentance? It's a returning to ourselves.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Repentance means returning to ourselves. So that's really something that I think is important to my heart that I just wanted to express here is we can have well-intentioned desires to bring hope to people. But to be really careful that we're not operating out of a source, which only reinforces a message of something is missing in you, but rather doing the opposite, which only reinforces, oh, I can learn to tune in with myself. And that's where so much freedom comes, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00:

I agree completely. Like as therapists, I think our job in so many ways is to give away our power, right? Is to give it to the client to say, this is your space. This is a place where you have a voice and autonomy, especially when it's been taken away through traumatic experiences and abuse. But our role is hope holder in some ways and hope shiner lighter honor, which is not a word, but it is now. And I've told clients, I'm gonna hold hope for you until you hold it for you. And then we'll hold it together, you know? And that's the main goal is for them to see who they are, who they really are, not who they've been told that they are, not who they might believe that they are, because of a million different reasons, but who they really are in Christ. And that's one of my favorite things about EMDR is you're taking, and this is how I distill it down for believers a lot. You're taking all of the things that are not true about you that God did not say, and we're moving you toward all the things that are true about you and God actually did say. And that's the essence of the negative cognition to the positive cognition in EMDR, in my opinion. And we're saying, like you are standing in darkness and you can't see the light, but I'm gonna hold the light. I'm gonna show you where the light is, who the light is, and I'm gonna help you walk there until you can walk there on your own. We're going together. And that is one of the beauties of the therapeutic relationship, is that we are walking with our clients out of the valley of the shadow of death, realistically. And it's one of the beauties of healthy community. And for people who've been harmed in community, particularly faith-based communities, that's scary. Like, what do you mean you want me to be in the in community? And I hope they don't call themselves Christians. Because goodness gracious, like those are some scary people sometimes. And yes, some of them are. That's realistic, but not all of them. And some are very good people. I remember a million years ago a friend of mine saying, because I was definitely very Pollyanna, if you're a Christian, then you must be a wonderful human because that's how you're supposed to be, right? And I had no understanding of wolves. And I remember my friend telling me, Tabitha, sheep have sharp teeth sometimes. And then having some of those experiences where it was like, oh yes, yes, they do. And some of them aren't actually sheep. Oh goodness. And so that can make somebody really scared to step back into community and to put themselves out there and to be vulnerable because they don't want to get bitten again. And that makes so much sense. And I love to normalize that for my clients. Like, of course you feel that way. How could you not? And how can we learn how to heal the broken bits so that our people picker is a little bit better, right? Because sometimes our people picker gets broken and learn different boundaries. Cause sometimes in the church, we're not taught good boundaries. We're not taught healthy authority. We're not taught healthy pushing back against wicked authority. We're not taught some of those things or to ask good questions of the person in the pulpit. And so we can learn to do that and learn to find communities that are safer. And it look, nobody's going to be perfect. People be peoply sometimes. And even really wonderful people can do things that hurt your feelings and that hurt you and you have to work through them. I think that's another piece of hope for the younger generation in particular, is the difference between someone who is wicked and you have to have a very tight boundary, and someone who hurt your feelings but isn't wicked and you can work through that.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Right. Absolutely. And I think that's an important distinction that can be especially hard to differentiate when you're in the beginning, more of the beginning stages of the healing process from a severe injury. And I think just normalizing too. So what boundaries and safety is gonna look like in those first six months in that first year is likely different than once there's been some grounding and some stabilization on board and that reconnection with the intuition and God's spirit within, which can help a lot with that discernment. I think about how a lot of there's not a lot of research right now on religious trauma, and yet there's a growing body of research around partner betrayal trauma, which really is kind of the same thing. Because again, you're talking about a safe person or system or a leader that was supposed to be a source of support and safety that becomes a source of pain injury and deceit. And so the partner betrayal trauma research just shows that over 70% of partners who have experienced betrayal trauma experience symptoms parallel with PTSD. And that's significant. That's over the PTSD, over 70%. And so one of the phrases we say a lot, and I'm sure you've heard it, is we look for reliable behavior over time. Yes. Reliable behavior over time. And I think that as humans, we get caught in the pendulum swings, right? Every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. That is just how we tend to live and react. So it makes sense that there can be starting in this place of well, no, you just we just have to forgive. It doesn't matter what it is, you just have to forgive. And if I'm looking for reliable behavior over time, am I not forgiving? Or this pendulum swing into you guys are all wolves. I am safest alone. So I so much compassion for where those places are coming from, but being able to notice okay, wow, I have a really strong protective part because it felt completely underprotected before. And so, what does it look like to have even a small group of a safe other? Of course, I'm biased a good therapist. Get with a good therapist, have that support. But when a nice way of testing and tracking when you're evaluating for safety, it's not looking for perfect behavior every time over time, but the reliable, it's good enough. Something doesn't have to hit 100% of the time for it to be reliable, but it better be more than 30. Right. So if somebody is saying, yes, if somebody is saying consistently, maybe it has nothing, it feels like it has nothing to do with things. It's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna come and I'm gonna help prepare the coffee for the morning worship time, and they tend to flake a lot, or they tend to just in general say a lot of things that their actions don't match. That's a good indication that for whatever reason, they're probably not somebody who can be a source of reliability and safety.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And so to pay attention to that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I will say, and you alluded to this, forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. I can forgive someone and put them in the hands of a living God and let God be the adjudicator. I don't have to be. That doesn't mean I have to be their friend, and it doesn't mean I have to be in relationship with them. That may not be wise, especially if there isn't real repentance and a shift in heart behavior over time. And when you see a shift in heart behavior over time, it is evident, it becomes evident. So in destructive relationships, for example, one of the things I hear often from destructive men in particular, because that's a population I work with, is well, if I can't talk to her, how is she gonna know? And I'm like, well, you're gonna adhere to boundaries for one thing, you're gonna stop bellyaching about the fact you can't talk to her, you're gonna be sad, right? Because sin has consequences and we can be sad about that. But you're not going to be, you know, how much longer, right? You're not gonna be putting a timeline on it. You're going to see that there is real harm. And if they are never able to get past the harm because it's so bad, then you are going to love them well enough to leave them alone. And that is actually evidence of heart change. And amongst other things, that's just one example. And so you will see consistency over time. You will see deference to the autonomy of another over time. So a pastor that doesn't lord over can be talked to. I have a buddy of mine, he is a wonderful friend and pastor. If I were to hear a sermon of his and been like, dude, what was that? That I've questioned. And I were to call him up and be like, hey man, I got a question about that. He's gonna be like, oh, okay. And he's either gonna explain it and be like, oh, this is what I was thinking. Oh, I didn't say that very well, or I'm gonna be like, oh, okay, I just totally heard that through my own lens or whatever. And we're gonna work through it. And he's not gonna be offended that I had a question. He's not going to say, you're not bowing to my authority and you're making it difficult to be a pastor or any other of the things that get pulled out in that space, right? And he's going to hear it with humility. And he's going to, if he messes something up, go, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And it's not just going to be like lip service, I'm sorry, pretty words, I'm sorry. It's going to be, and I don't do that again. And that is one of the indicators is can you just be you? Are you perceived as too much if you ask questions? And this is particularly true of I think our sisters in the church, because that can be a very, and I'm not saying this doesn't happen to men, but I hear it more from women that if you bring something up, if you assert your voice, then you're called aggressive or difficult or divisive when you're really not. Or I've been called the Jezebel spirit once or twice, which is ridiculous. And it's not even hermeneutically correct, quite frankly, which is very obnoxious. You're gonna exegete the Bible, do it correctly. Good hermeneutics, man. But all of those things give you information about where a system is, and that doesn't mean you can't stay in it. Sometimes we stay in it to try to change systems because God hasn't told us to leave. There, there's that. But going back to hope, the hope isn't in the system, right? The hope's in God. Correct.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct. I love what you said there, Tabitha. I think oh, it just brings up so much for me. I want to add my exclamation point to what you just said about the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. And I think that oftentimes we're not taught about boundaries or understand what boundaries are within church spaces, and also just understanding that boundaries are about safety, it's not about control. So, with any good tool, it can be weaponized. And like I said, we go into extremes. Like, this is my boundary. We're just avoiding that, but that being said, for me personally, I had to do some disentangling in my life with boundaries feeling selfish, boundaries feeling like I'm not willing to go the second mile. I'm not willing to be Christ-like. Instead of learning boundaries are actually an essential way that I am honoring my humanness and my limits for my safety, for my well-being, and even honoring when God is asking me to not try to be all things to all people. And so boundaries are a really important piece of this. And so paying attention to how our boundaries are honored or not honored is a really important indicator. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is a difference between toxic shame and I'll say like healthy embarrassment or like a gift of a type of shame. Because what I've seen is when there's a discovery, sometimes the person who was acting out or created the injury, they can appear very remorseful. And yet there's also a discernment of whether they are operating out of a toxic shame of like they were discovered and now they're terrified of losing the connections and the people around them, but they're still not entering into the real pain of the person that they have harmed. They're flooded with their own feelings of shame and insecurity. And then it still looks like drawing people to rescue them and make them feel okay and better. And so I was talking with somebody who's walking through early journey of being a betrayed, of experiencing a partner betrayal injury. And the person who had had inflicted this injury had reached out and wanted to apologize. And she said, I am not ready for that conversation. In part, she wasn't seeing repentance, she wasn't seeing that person get into their own work, but rather bling out of their toxic shame into trying to make everything okay very quickly so they wouldn't have to feel the pain. So when she set that boundary and said, No, I'm not ready for that conversation, he sent her the apology text, anyways. Well, I just need you to know what is it really about? And at first, that was a little confusing. And I said, that is a boundary violation. You said no, that was about that person. That is about that person, and that's an indication that there's that toxic shame. And I think about, I believe it's the Apostle Paul differentiates godly sorrow versus worldly sorrow. Godly sorrow leads us to a repentance, a returning to ourselves, brokenhearted before the Lord. And that's actually what leads to life. Very powerful. Worldly sorrow, and I'm going to tag that into this like toxic shame leads to death because shame is a form of death. It's a cutting off of who we actually are and the truth of who God said we were and are and who we are meant to be. Shame always produces death, toxic shame always produces death. So it's very common for after discovery there to be a lot of toxic shame. And I just want to say in this space, too, that you might hear the apology and be like, well, okay, I think I'm supposed to forgive. And that can be brought forward too soon in the process. And oftentimes we need to discern between the toxic shame and if it's coming out of a place of grounded reality, of I am now entering into the pain that my actions and behaviors caused. And it feels different. We just feel it different. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And a difference in that, even in that scenario, would be, I want to apologize to you. And the person saying, I'm not ready. I'm not ready for that. And they will notice the betrayer would notice in them all of the feelings, right? Because that might not feel good. But instead of doing it anyway, they're going to get curious about the big feelings. And then they're going to call their therapist and say, I don't know what's going on. Sometimes we don't, right? When we're wrestling with feelings, they might be new and they might say, This feels really awful. And I feel like I need to do something. There's the urge, right? I always encourage people to look at their tubes, their thoughts, urges, behaviors, emotions, and sensations. And so they might get real with their tubes and go, there's a strong urge here to send it anyway. But I know that violating that boundary is unloving. They said no. And no means no. It's a complete sentence. You don't need anything else with that. And so then they can take that discomfort to their therapist and wrestle through what's happening for them and work through resolution of what's happening in their heart with it. And that is a difference in that scenario going well or not going well. And that gives an indicator about where real repentance is at. Because sometimes betrayers want to keep their shadow kingdom and they don't know yet how to give it up or they really love it. And this is another thing. And this might be hard for survivors who are listening to understand is that there is a grief in giving up the Shadow Kingdom because it has been a source of comfort, control, power, a million different things. Yeah. And so to say, I'm going to dismantle it and tear it down is scary. Now that doesn't mean that you have to stay and wait for them to do it either, right? This is that tension, right? The tension of the both, and if they can go do their work, and that doesn't mean you have to stick around and wait and see if they do, right? That can be between them and Jesus because it's their walk. And so that's a tricky place when in your heart, because who gets into a relationship and is like, I'd like it to explode and end in betrayal and abuse. And that sounds like super fun. Nobody. So a lot of betrayed partners are hopeful that their partner's going to change. And I think that's another place to just dive us back into hope of what are you hoping in? It is okay to hope for change. It is okay to pray for change. It is okay to fast. It is okay to do all of those things, but to be open hand with the outcome.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And to focus on what that looks like for our own. So that I see a lot of hope for those who if I have watched people who have been betrayed walk through a hard, honest journey and say, Jenny, I can't believe I'm saying this now, but I'm at a place where I mean the grief still hits me, but I feel calm. I feel like I know myself better than I've ever. And I think I actually do feel some of that hope again. And I've walked with the betrayer who has thought there's no way forward. I that shadow side is too much of me. It's caused too much damage, but who has been willing to do the real work? And I love how you talked about how there is a grief component that can come up because I think we need to understand that it's the function of the behavior. Like you said, no one enters a marriage thinking, I want to destroy and create a lot of pain or relationship or connection, even if it's even if we're not talking about marriage, it's not the heart's desire, it's a way of coping and trying to control. And so it can a lot of times those strategies are very ancient and old and were learned as young kids, and then they evolve. And so it's a toxin, it's a tumor, it has to be addressed, and yet it can feel really scary as there is this truly looking at that shadow kingdom and saying, okay, I learned for a long time that this brought me protection, and now I have to walk a different route, but that means I have to cut this off, and that feels terrifying. And yet I've seen just the beauty and the hope that's come for through that. And yet we can't do that work for someone else. And so I think just encouraging the person who is a survivor who has experienced that pain, just like you said, it is beautiful to give prayers of hope and wanting there to be change, and yet fixing one's eyes on Jesus in front of you and within you, and not trying to do that work for the other person, letting their choices and their behaviors be their own, and then reliable behavior over time can show you in the future. And yet, that also might mean that the healthiest thing is to not walk together in any kind of relationship, but still to pursue that freedom of heart through forgiveness, which is not the same as we talked about before, as reconciliation. And so I think just being able having there can be a lot of pain and grief for having to let go of I so badly wanted them to choose a different path, but I can't do that work for them. I have to do the work for myself.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that applies to both addictive behaviors and abusive behaviors. And so one of the things I say often is all addiction is abusive because you are harming another person, right? Betrayal trauma, as we said, is awful. It can cause PTSD. And there's a difference between someone who is abusive in their behavior in their addiction and someone who is a coercive controller. Those are two different things. And there's overlap because some of the behaviors might be the same, particularly around process addiction, like sex addiction. The way they fundamentally see the other party is as property, not as a person. And I think that's just a good distinction to make because I know for so many people, and this is one of the reasons I actually became a CSAT, was I got really tired of pastors telling me, well, they're just addicted. And I'm like, well, that's not what the science says, but okay. And so I was like, well, I'll just go get my CSAT, then I'll have more street cred so I can have these conversations, which is literally why I got it. And I love it. I'm so glad that I did. And I look at that and I look at the men I've worked with who are addicted but not coercively controlling, they're not what I would call an abuser. They have been abusive and their heart is broken and they are hurting over the pain that they cause their partner. So even if we have to break through denial and work out their three circles and all of the things, there's a different vibe, if you will. The heart is very different. And in someone who's a coercive controller who's like, well, they owe me sex and they owe me this, and I can ask them to make pornography. And I can't get, why are you saying this? This is ridiculous. Of course I'll die if I don't have sex every 72 hours. And some of the other things that I have heard out loud of people's lips where I'm like, wow, that's that's an interesting take that is not in the Bible. And so it's a very different heart where you have to deal with entitlement in a different way than you would if I'm walking with someone who is not coercively controlling but is abusive in their addiction. And that can be profoundly tricky for the betrayed partner because they don't often know where the other person is because they can say pretty words and maybe they're giving them a carrot when it's like they're doing this thing. I asked them to do the dishes for 73 years and now they're finally doing it. Everything is fine now. And it's it's not fine. And so it can be really hard for a betrayed partner to know which way is up.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Absolutely. And I think that's why it's so important to slow things down and take a step back and really just like we talked about before when you said getting out into nature and really attuning back to one's own self, God within that sight of his protection, because space will often help with clarifying what you're looking at. And you can usually feel the difference. I mean, you can feel when there's a genuine repentance versus this controlling manipulative, though it's usually really hard to tell the difference at first, especially when, like you said, there's been so much pain around maybe feelings of neglect or what's been absent. So when it seems like it's showing up, it feels so good. Of course it does. Of course it does. And there's that desire to hope in an outcome. They're changing, this is happening. I don't know, maybe, but unhooking our hope from a particular outcome, yes, and again anchor it like hooking it into what are fundamental truths, what are fundamental truths? And for me, my fundamental truths that makes the chaotic world feel a little less scary and dark is I just believe that creator God is good and that he's infinite, which means mathematically, goodness is infinite and is the greater reality when he says, I'm making all things new. And you're talking about paradox. Jesus, he embraces the ultimate, he is the ultimate both and both God and man. Both God and man. That just baffles my brain, and so he wept and he lamented, and he had to leave people and spend time alone. He had to go, he was in lonely, desolate places, he was on mountaintops praying, he also enjoyed good food and left her with those that the religious leaders thought he should not have been. He violated so many of the religious norms and shoulds. And so I think I just want to bring back like that center of I think as we're talking about what's up and what's down, and it gets so confusing. It's this anchoring back into what is the fundamental truth, and how do I hold the both and both grief and gift? And that means spending some time in the lament. I mean, like, this is not where I thought my life would be. I like parts language, I think it's really helpful. A part of me feels really embarrassed. Like, how did I end up here? A part of me feels like it's my fault, and I'm just so deeply disappointed. And hanging out in that space. And this is not the end of the story, the story's not written. And what is also true I have my breath today, I have life today. Sometimes it's just enough to say, I got out of bed today and I brushed my teeth. And I'm doing the next right thing. And so when we can hold the both, and sometimes we need to spend a little bit more time in the grief, and sometimes we need to get out of that and bring some healthy containment to, and say, Okay, I'm gonna do something that makes me laugh, even though I don't feel like doing that. And so over time there gets to be this recalibration and healing, and it's just really beautiful because Revelation 21 5 Behold, I am making all things new, and that is a monument. For me, that re-anchors me again and again when I'm looking around and I'm like, Are you sure? Are you sure? And it's a practice and it's a daily thing, and there's grace and there's compassion, but it's also really powerful.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And that is a great place for us to land this plane. And what I'm thinking about when you said that behold, I am making all things new, my brain initially went to that is a perfect breath prayer. Because I'm a fan of breath prayers. I think that they are so good because our breath can be very regulating. It can really help us calm some of what's going on inside our physiology and also anchor us in truth. And I remember a story that I heard from Bob Goff, like, I don't know, it's been a billion years now. But he talks about setting anchor. And you can just throw an anchor out there, but if it's not hooked into anything, you're still going to get tossed around a bit in the waves. It's going to move your boat. But if you set your anchor, it stays and the waves can come and go, and the tide will go in and out, and you will not go with it, which is what we are going for here. And so behold, I am making all things new as a breath prayer, is a great way to set your anchor because you're going to sit with that, you're going to savor it, you're going to breathe into it, and you're going to let your body feel a little something of it. And even if it's imperfect, right? We see imperfectly the side of heaven, the side of Eden. But we can reorient to it. So if I was going to lead someone in a breath of prayer, it would be breathing in through behold and breathing out nice and slow, for I am making all things new. And so I would just encourage the listeners, if you haven't tried that, give that one a try. And Jenny, thank you so much for being here. This has been such a delight as I knew it would be. I have been dying for this conversation. Thank you so much for hanging out with us.

SPEAKER_01:

That's beautiful, Tabitha. I am just soaking in that breath prayer right now as I'm hearing you speak it out loud. I can feel my nervous system drawing in the behold and breathing through my whole body. I am making all things new. And that's just really anchoring for me today. So it's been such a joy and a privilege for me. And I look forward to a continuation.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much. And thank you guys for being here with us on this week's Hey Tabby. And we will for sure see you next time. 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 C I, and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

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