Past Trauma, Deep Healing: Debra Fileta

Hey, before we get started today, let's talk small groups. Yes, because everyone at this time of year starts thinking, what small group material should I use? Yeah, we've led hundreds of groups and you got to have great material and Family Life has you covered. We have great, great material.

The art of marriage, vertical marriage, you name it, we got it. And it's on sale the month of August. You go to familylife.com slash shop and it's 25% off. And let me just say thank you to all the small group leaders. You are making a difference. Keep going.

Again, that's familylife.com slash shop and get 25% off right now. Thoughts lead to feelings and feelings lead to behavior. So if I'm starting to control things, over control, okay, everybody needs to do this or that or else we're not going to be safe or somebody's going to get hurt. Going into my anxious spiel, okay, what's going on here? I'm feeling anxious. This is a signal. God wants me to respond to this anxiety.

How do I respond best when I believe truth? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com.

This is Family Life Today. So here we are. I'm 22.

You're 19. We're sitting at the Weekend to Remember, Family Life's Weekend to Remember marriage getaway two weeks before our wedding. And listeners have heard us say this, but I don't think they've, they understand the depth of our, how do you say it?

Niativity? The depth of our, we were so naive that we, Debra Falate is with us, a counselor, a therapist, a podcaster, an author, speaker, you're everything. A mother, a wife. And I just want to ask you, Debra, as we get into this. So we're sitting there and there's like a thousand people at this conference. This is our first ever marriage conference. We're getting married in two weeks. They told us, you got to go to this before you get married.

And the whole weekend, now we speak for this weekend, right? But the whole weekend, we sort of sat there thinking, we don't need this. We love each other so much.

We love Jesus so much. We're going into ministry. We sort of looked around the room like, wow, these people must not love each other like we do because they're struggling and they're taking notes. And we were so naive because if you would have been able to do a scan of these two people, Dave and Ann, sitting there, you as a therapist would have said, these two are going to struggle.

Sexual abuse in her background, two alcoholic parents in my background, divorce, adultery. We're bringing all that into our marriage and we had no idea. We thought you follow Jesus. It's all buried in the past.

It's all covered up. He's healed us. He heals you and you just move right into your new life and your new future. And now you can help everyone else. Yeah. And so as we were sitting there now, I'm like, oh my goodness, we should have been taking notes like crazy because we, of all people, really needed this.

You deal with people all the time that probably have the same kind of, we're just, we don't know what we don't know, right? Right. And let me just affirm, Jesus did heal you, right?

He did. He took away all of our sins. Even then, you healed. It's just that healing happens in layers. There's layers.

Okay. Next level, next level, next level, next level until we get to heaven. And so some of us though are stuck in that superficial healing where we've healed just a couple things. We feel our soul, right?

Where we know we're going to heaven, but there's more layers that God is inviting us to. And sometimes it takes marriage to blow up in our face or another relationship or a life problem or an addiction or depression and anxiety for us to realize, oh, I've got more healing to do. That's a good way to say it. I remember when we were in seminary and we were taking classes to learn how to counsel people. This is three years later. Three years later and we did our family tree. We got into all of our own personal paths and it was the first time that I started dealing with any of the sexual abuse. And I really thought when we were, and I would cry every night as I started going back into the past of what had happened and realizations. But I really thought, okay, Lord, thank you. Thank you for healing me. And then a couple of years later, something new popped up. And then when we had kids, another area popped up. And I remember thinking, I thought you healed me, but I felt God nudged into me through his Holy Spirit. Like, Ann, I'm giving you, I love you so much. And you're going to see areas that need to be healed along the way.

And don't push back on that. I am healing you. I'm healing you, but isn't it kind of mean to not just bombard you?

I was like, do it all at once. But we get, as we talked about yesterday, sore spots. When I was parenting, like, oh, that triggered me or that hurt me. And it was almost God's loving hand of saying, that's because I want you to look deeper into this new area. And if you haven't listened to the last two days with Deborah Faleta, go back and listen. Because we've gone deep and it's been great and beautiful.

We're talking about her book, Reset. The subtitle is Powerful Habits to Own Your Thoughts, Understand Your Feelings, and Change Your Life. And we've been saying, we all have these areas that we think, I want to change, I want to change, I want to change, but we feel stuck. So that's where we've been the last few days.

So let's talk today about childhood wounds. You know, it's interesting, we've kind of gone on a journey. We've kind of progressed through each episode. The first episode, we kind of talked about these behaviors on the outside. Why do we do what we do?

Why do we struggle with these external behaviors in our personal life or in our marriage, right? The second time, we talked about these sore spots and how some of the reason we do what we do is because we've got these wounds. It's not actually about the fact that Dave didn't squeeze the sponge out.

It's not actually about the fact that, you know, Dave is going out tonight and he ends up being late and Ann feels upset. Underneath that is a sore spot. I feel unseen. Underneath that is a sore spot of, I don't feel good enough.

So I have to go do all this stuff, right? And that's a wonderful layer to get to. Here's what's really going on.

Here's my real vulnerabilities. But then the deepest layer is where do they come from? Where do they come from? Where do these sore spots come from? So that I can begin facing them and healing them.

And many times, these sore spots are actually coming from things we picked up along the way. Where do these belief systems that lead to these thoughts come from? From our childhood.

Our childhood. It's funny because I really think that talking about your inner child feels so like, unChristian for some people. An inner child sounds like Freud.

But there's so much power and truth to realizing that God wants to heal every part of us. God doesn't see you as a 36 year old, Ann. I'm guessing that's your age. Yes, of course that's what it is.

I'm 38. Exactly. He sees you in every stage of development because God stands outside of time. He sees your six year old self, your 16 year old self, your 60 year old self.

Can you imagine that? He sees me in all of those stages. As I was writing Reset, talking through, okay, what do I want to put in this book? I'm a counselor and I want to put every lesson in this book that's going to help people. I want to save them money by reading this first before you come see us. This will give you a primer.

This is so much of what you need to know. And I'm a planner. You guys, if I brag and tell you that it took me 16 days to write my next book, most people would be like, you're lying, right?

Because it usually takes a lot longer to write a book. But that's my style. I sit down.

That's our style too. I love it. The Holy Spirit just comes and I'm like, my hands just go. But God interrupted my plans. I remember this day so clearly I sat down to write and I just felt the Spirit say, I need you to write about childhood wounds. And I'm like, I don't know if they're ready for this.

I don't know. Sometimes Christians need to ease into this stuff. But I just felt so clearly, chapter 14, like a child. And as I started writing it out, I started to weep.

I literally started to weep, thinking about all of the people who are reading that are functioning as adults, out of a place of childhood hurts. And then I thought about that verse, that, you know, each chapter has a verse that kind of correlates with it. And this one was where Jesus says, let the little children come to me. You know, the disciples were like, he's busy.

He's got a lot going on. Get these children away. And Jesus is like, no, let them come to me. And I thought about for the first time, not the little children in that scene. You know, sometimes I think about all these little kids and how cute that must have been and how much Jesus loves the little children. And I didn't think about my kids who I normally think about.

Oh, Jesus loves kids. I thought about myself, my eight-year-old self, struggling with anxiety, struggling to believe that things are going to be okay. Life is so unpredictable.

What's going to happen next? What if something bad happens? My insecurities, my fears. And I imagine Jesus saying, come to me. There's a place for your childhood here at my feet. And I want to heal that part of you that tends to function out of control because you're scared of something bad happening. And so I think about myself. I think about you as a child. You know, you talk about your childhood history.

You think about Dave as a child with your alcoholic parents. And I think we need to have compassion for that side of us. Sometimes we look at that little kid and we're like, they didn't know better.

What a shame. But Jesus views us with compassion. And he's like, I want to help you heal. You didn't get the chance to heal your eight-year-old self. You didn't know any better, Dave.

You didn't know any better, Ann, in the middle of sexual abuse. But now I want to help you go back and heal. And when we do, it changes everything. I'm sad that I didn't start that journey until I was 50.

You know what I mean? It's like I just drove and drove and drove hard. And I sort of, you know, had the athlete's mentality like, oh, your childhood, it's in the past.

Right. You know, the old is gone, the new has come, not understanding everything you just said. And the journey I started in my 50s probably was like, oh my goodness, I got to go back there. And I got to understand and try and see how I'm shaped today by those wounds. And it was life changing. It was a healing to do it. And I said to my counselor, I was sitting there, I was like, I should have done this in my 30s.

And he just looked at me and he goes, you're doing it now. And I think we don't know better. And not only that, I do think unknowingly, sometimes Christian culture keeps us from going there because we want to believe that Jesus can heal it all and he can, but it's like he wants to invite us on this journey with him. In that chapter in Reset, one of the things I have you do is I say, you know, if you could imagine your childhood self today, out of a place of woundedness, maybe your most broken, afraid child, what's that child living inside of you that has a tendency to come out and try to take control? Like I said, for me, it's that little eight year old anxious girl who's like, I got to control this. I got to control this. I would like to ask and I would like to ask those who are listening, what is that childhood version that comes out in you?

You mean now? If you could just pinpoint your most vulnerable place as a child, how old would you be? And what were you, what thoughts and beliefs and fears were you struggling with in that season? I know what mine is, and that it would be control as well. Just because with abuse, with sexual abuse, things are done to you. I didn't use my voice and to protect myself now, I think I become more controlling. I control the situations I'm in so that I won't be hurt, especially I saw it as a high schooler. So that when I had a lot of boyfriends, but I also knew that I was going to control the situation and control them, because I wasn't going to have another man control me. And so I hurt them. I used my sexuality to tempt them, but I controlled everything.

What I said, what I did, and I did not let them get close to me because I had a wall of protection. So you watched that play out. When you think about that hurt child, like what stage and age comes to mind for you? Like starting at four.

Wow. So you think of this little four, five, six year old girl. It's interesting because I went through some inner healing kind of things with a friend of mine. And she said, I want you to go back to the first time that you really felt shame, because that's one of the places where I was stuck.

Just shame, I just it was bleeding into every area of my life. And so she asked, she even prayed, Lord, Holy Spirit, will you show Ian that first time that shame really became prominent in her life. And I could picture me as a four year old, I knew where I was, I knew what was happening in that situation of some abuse. And then she had me, she said, I want you to tell Jesus, confess to him the truth of the lie that you came to believe in that situation. And I said it out loud, I told God exactly what I was feeling, the lie that kind of took seed and started to germinate and start to grow. And man, I sobbed through that whole thing, because that little place, that one incident, and there were many after that, I needed God to heal it.

I needed to see even where he was in it. And think about that. If you don't take the time to heal, that little, scared, shame filled child who just wants control comes out all over the place, as a teen, as a young adult, in your marriage. Well, Debra, I'll even say this. We had one of our sons with us this last week. And I asked him, what are the areas that were hard for you with me as your mom? And he's so kind, like he's super kind and loving. And he's done the work. He's done the work.

So he understands what we're asking. And he said, Mom, man, you were just intense. And I think that intensity was that control piece. 100%.

100%. And just amazing. You know, we don't even realize. And the thing about it is, it's not like that child disappears once and for all. We need to have compassion. When that little eight year old girl comes up every now and again, she doesn't come up as much anymore.

Because now that I've healed her, I am a Holy Spirit filled adult woman of God with power and control. What took you to those feelings that you had as an eight year old? I would say anxiety coming up. Like, why do I feel so anxious? Why am I on high alert about things that aren't that crazy? It's not life threatening.

High alert, for example, when I would travel to leave my kids, all the bad things that could happen. It's like this little girl is like afraid all these bad things could happen. What could happen? Could the house burn down? Could somebody choke? Could this happen? You know, and I was that way as a little kid, because I'd seen things happen around me that were dangerous, unsafe.

And so that little girl would come back up. And I could give in to that and just hype up my nervous system and be anxious. And, you know, there, I remember one time it got so bad that I was like, I'm quitting ministry. I'm not even gonna do this anymore. I am done.

Because it's just so much emotional turmoil until I, the more I healed. Yeah. Take us through that.

What did that look like then? Well, thank God. You know, being a counselor is so convenient. It is so convenient to your personal life. Most of us who have been healed become counselors because we're like, how can we not share this? Right? How can we not help people? But to recognize this is a signal.

Okay. What's going on here? I'm feeling anxious. Is this real? Is this rooted in my trauma?

Yes, it's not rooted in truth. And to really learn to slow down my nervous system response and cling to truth and heal that little girl through counseling, through different seasons of counseling that I went through myself and inner work that I have done. The Lord has walked me through so much of my own journey. And now that little girl doesn't come out much anymore. I can kind of keep her in her cute little, I love you. I appreciate you. I have compassion for you.

But you don't rule what I say, do, don't do anymore. And I don't know if you've done this too, Debra, but when she does flare back up, a sore spot or a trigger is what we've been talking about, especially yesterday. Then with that, if she flares up, give us your little, now that you've done the work, you've done the healing.

If she flares up, what do you do right then? I remember the formula that thoughts lead to feelings, and feelings lead to behavior. So if I'm starting to control things, over control, okay, everybody needs to do this or that, or else we're not going to be safe or somebody's going to get hurt. Going into my anxious spiel, okay, what's going on here? I'm feeling anxious. This is a signal. God wants me to respond to this anxiety.

How do I respond best? When I believe truth. Lord, you're in control. Lord, my life is in your hands. Lord, my kids' lives are in your hands. You have been with me. You know, I cling to the truth of God's word. And God's word. Constantly, the truth of God's word is my plumb line versus my trauma.

And here's where it gets tricky for me. Trauma can get perpetuated. So you know that little eight-year-old girl who was afraid something bad's going to happen?

Well, guess what? Later in my adult life, something bad did happen. I went through a traumatic miscarriage, where I almost lost my life. I was hemorrhaging, minutes away from dying, had to get rushed into emergency surgery.

I was all alone. And so it's like the enemy takes that belief, something bad can happen. See? Something bad will happen. You've got to be on high alert.

You've got to be in control. And trauma upon trauma upon trauma almost solidifies some of these unhealthy belief systems that we have. And then leads us to this very anxious, scared place. God did not intend for us to land there. That was not his path for our life. We just followed the wrong belief systems based on trauma.

And so this is why it's so simple. Whether you're a counselor, a pastor, a prisoner, somewhere in between, we can all fall into these things if we're not aware and continuously just asking the Lord to search our hearts and help us do the work. And don't you love, like I love that the Holy Spirit, that Jesus, the Father is always with us.

We can talk to him anytime. I'm usually in the night when something will come up and I can't sleep because I'm worrying about it. I'm trying to think, how can I fix this or control this? And I love Philippians 4, 6. Don't be anxious about anything. And I have to visually see myself in front of Jesus. Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything. In prayer and supplication, let your requests be known to God. So I tell him, Lord, this is what I'm feeling. This is what I'm afraid of.

These are my greatest fears. And then it says, and then the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind. Heart and mind in Christ Jesus. And I don't know about you, but that, and I visually then see myself handing him all the things that I'm trying to control, that I'm scared of, my kids, the future. And I actually see Jesus in my mind because I'm just very visual. I see him take it.

And then I take a big breath and I can go to sleep. But that has become a practice that takes some self-control. Well, that's why this book is 31 Practices. We have to practice, you know, after the childhood practice, I guide you through another practice to help you look for patterns. What are some of the patterns that you've struggled with?

And then we go through the next step where we actually write out the trauma thoughts, and then we write out truth thoughts. And it's like, it's a little bit of work at a time, but I'm still curious. Yeah, me too. I was going to ask Dave too. Wait, wait, wait. How did you all of a sudden come back to me? You're curious about what? Your little boy.

We never got to your answer. When you think of your childhood wounds and your wounding as a kid, like what age comes up? What stage? For me, seven years old. That's when my dad left. And I had two older brothers and a sister, but 10 years older.

10, 12, and 14 years old. So I was sort of the little boy and I had a little brother. And long story short is, so we move my mom, myself, and my little brother to Ohio from New Jersey, because that's where her parents were. Of course, I didn't understand then, but she needed help.

She's a single mom now in the sixties when there weren't a lot of single moms. And a couple months after the move, my brother dies of leukemia. His brother was their younger brother, five and a half. My little brother. So, dad's gone. We're in another state.

I don't know anybody. Yeah. So I think my trauma is I avoid pain at all costs. That's a lot of pain to deal with at once. And so your body starts putting it all on mute. Like, I don't really want to deal with this.

Yeah. My mom even said every year, he died in October around Halloween. Every October for like five years, I got really sick. I couldn't get out of bed.

Like, uh, you know, throat, ear and thing. But they said every year it was like the, it was like the day he died. You had this physical thing. You did.

Yeah, I did. But Debra, nobody ever talked about it. Never. Think about that. Never talked about it.

That inability and not because you weren't able, but because nobody taught you to express everything that was going on inside of you, how you feel, all your fears, abandonment, he left and now he left. And you don't even have help processing all of that. It's all getting stored in your body. Right. And it probably peaks around the heaviest grief season. And so your body's like, okay, if you're not going to deal with this, I'm going to have to deal with it. And we're just going to be down for the count for a couple days. And mom was like, you're not allowed to talk about it.

She never talked about it. It's like, we went to the funeral and next day life went on. And I think, again, I never process any of this, but I think I just decided I'm going to go make my life work. I'm good at sports. I'm good at music.

Let's get in a band and be at every sport. I mean, I was the kid, even as a 10, 11 year old, my mom's driving me from a band practice to a baseball practice. And that's how we live our life now. It's like, you know, I never processed. So maybe that seven year old's belief system, if your little child is like, I am not safe. Your little child is probably thinking I don't have the luxury. I don't have the permission to process what I feel. I don't have the permission. So you kind of live with that theme for many, many years.

And I think I projected it too. I don't want you to process either. If I don't have permission, like that's not what we do. You know, you just suck it up and go, life will work, you know, and you don't even think about the pain. And anyway, it's not about us, but I think there's, you know, better than any of us, there's so many people have similar stories. Well, this is helpful to people because sometimes people don't know how to, how does this apply to me?

And hearing other people kind of map it out. Oh, you're a little anxious girl. You're a little shame-filled girl.

You're, you're a little boy that feels like he doesn't have permission to feel. This helps people because then they can recognize that inside of themselves and maybe see the patterns that are coming up as they're living their life and doing things that they don't want to do. And how do we get out of this? Cause this is what I see happens so often is instead of looking in the mirror and say, okay, I've got emotional sore spots, triggers, let's deal with it. I think what we do in marriage is we go, you gotta change. If she will change, then we'll be good. If he'll change, then we're good. Which is ironic because that's the thing we have the least amount of control over.

That's like gambling. I can't trust that you're going to change. I have power over the ingredients that I am bringing to the table. And if I change my ingredients, it has the power to change the whole recipe. So that's all that I can do. And that's what I'm going to do fully and see what happens. And I'm going to trust God with your portion. That doesn't mean we don't say what we need. It doesn't mean we don't share when we're hurt and be vulnerable, but realizing that the deep healing work that we're responsible for is ours. One of the things I'm wondering if we could do as an assignment for everyone listening is one of the things Dave and I did, we did a timeline. I love that.

I will talk you through how to do that and reset as well. Oh, good. Good.

If I make some patterns. Give us a little application. How could we do that if we have like, you know, 30 seconds? Yeah. How could we do that?

Okay. So Debra is going to walk us through how to make a timeline for personal lasting change here in just a second. But first I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Debra Faleta on Family Life Today. Debra has written a book called Reset, and the subtitle is Powerful Habits to Own Your Thoughts, Understand Your Feelings, and Change Your Life. Sound like something that you might need?

It sounds like something that I definitely need. Well, you can get your copy by going online to familylifetoday.com in the show notes, or feel free to call us at 800-358-6329. You can give us a call at that number to request your copy. Again, the number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And as you're getting ready for small groups coming up in the fall, I know we're still in the middle of August, but fall is right around the corner, we wanted to let you know that all of our Family Life workbooks are now 25% off for the month of August. You can go to the show notes at familylifetoday.com, look around, and pick out what'll be best for you.

But all of our Family Life workbooks are 25% off until the end of this month. Okay, here's Debra to walk us through developing our own personal timeline that we might see lasting change in our lives. Think about the most significant things that have impacted you in your life, specifically sore spots, like things that made you feel inadequate, whatever your sore spot is, anxiety, control, depression, feeling like I'm not good enough. Look through your life. What are the difficult experiences that maybe affirmed that unhealthy belief?

You're unseen, you're unloved, you'll never amount to anything. What are the things that affirmed that belief? And start writing them down and even journaling through them, like why did that affirm that belief? And start even thinking outside of the box, what's God's truth want to speak in to that belief system?

Because again, if we want to change our behavior, it's thoughts that begin to change, and then they change our feelings, and then those changed feelings begin to change what we do on the outside. That's so good. Thank you. Debra, this has been so good. I hope everybody will read this book and all of your books, honestly. Thank you for all you've done.

Thank you for having me. And you're coming back for the next one. I can't wait. I can't wait. All right, coming up tomorrow, David and Wilson are going to be talking with Rachel Faulkner-Brown about blending families after a huge loss and dealing with grief. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.